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opinion

Henry Tsang is an artist, associate dean at Emily Carr University of Art and Design and author of White Riot: The 1907 Anti-Asian Riots in Vancouver.

I didn’t ask to be born Chinese. I came out that way because my mother is, and my father was. I’m pretty sure they didn’t ask to be Chinese either, it just happened to them. Where I was born, it was not a strange thing to be Chinese. The Indian people, however, had a much tougher time of it in Hong Kong, as some Chinese were not always pleasant nor polite to them. The white British had a much easier time, privileged to be part of the colonial power structure, literally handed opportunities that others could only dream of.

There are some great advantages to being Chinese, such as being able to identify with a culture with a deep and rich past, full of artistic, literary, scientific and cultural accomplishments. There’s also the food, which is diverse and complex, like the people. But there are also some serious disadvantages to being Chinese where I live, in Canada, on the unceded ancestral territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh peoples, also known as Vancouver.

I still remember the plane ride from Hong Kong to Vancouver in 1968; it was my first time in the air, a big adventure for a three-year-old. My family was moving from one British colonial space to another, just after amendments to Canada’s 1967 Immigration Act attempted to address its history of racial discrimination. So the fact that we were born Chinese was not being held against us for the first time since Canada was founded. We were leaving to escape the extreme civil unrest of the 1967 Hong Kong riots, with large-scale anti-government protests shutting down the city and bombs going off everywhere. But as a young child, I was not aware of the political and social environment. I wasn’t even aware that I was Chinese until I arrived in Canada.

Everything felt different in Vancouver. Hong Kong was a vibrant, bustling city, full of people and energy. Vancouver felt smaller, less dense with wide open spaces, and quiet. The people were reserved and predominantly white, at least where we lived, and although many languages were spoken, English was dominant. But the Chinese people were also different, even if they were mostly Cantonese, for many spoke dialects from rural areas that were unintelligible to us city folk.

I grew up with kids from many parts of the world, among some who were born here, and some whose ancestors have lived in this place since time immemorial. I experienced racism in combination with all the other -isms, but perhaps because I am a straight, abled and cisgendered male, it has been anti-Chinese racism that has most negatively affected my sense of self. It was not until I was older that I began to understand the special place that Chinese people had in Canadian, as well as American, history; that they were targeted with very specific legislation and sometimes violence that stretched back to the mid-19th century, and this has not fully gone away.

Because I wasn’t born here, I am very aware of my place in this society on this land, and I try to not take my privileges for granted. Sometimes I wonder what life would have been like if my family had moved to Canada 100 years ago. But that would not have been possible, for in 1923, Canada passed the Chinese Immigration Act, also known as the Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred all Chinese people, with the exception of diplomats and scholars, from entering Canada. This was in effect until 1947, repealed in part because of Canada’s participation in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

However, we could have moved to British Columbia 150 years ago, two years after the colony joined Confederation. But we would not have been able to live where we wanted, as neighbourhoods were racially segregated, nor would my parents be able to work in the many jobs and occupations that expressly prohibited the hiring of Chinese people.

I have also wondered what it would have been like to be in Vancouver during the 1907 anti-Asian riots. I didn’t learn about this significant event while growing up here, nor about Vancouver’s first anti-Chinese riot in 1887, a few months after its incorporation as a city. I was never introduced at school to the internment of the Japanese Canadians, Italians, Ukrainians and others during the two World Wars, nor the Indian Act, nor the Komagata Maru incident. We did not learn that one of the first acts of the newly formed provincial government of British Columbia after it became part of Canada was to disqualify Indigenous and Chinese people from voting in the provincial elections, then later from municipal elections. As kids, we learned about women gaining suffrage, but our educators neglected to clarify which women, because it certainly wasn’t all women.

I envy the kids these days who grow up in a more diverse cultural environment. They are more accepting of differences, whether it’s ethnicity, religion, language, gender, physical or cognitive ability. It’s more normal to be different because there are more people growing up differently together. We are benefiting from the hard work and risks taken by those who preceded us to make our society more inclusive and tolerant. Today, the social, cultural and political situation is much improved, and overt discrimination on many fronts is no longer legal.

But anti-Chinese sentiment is on the rise yet again, especially since 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic, and with it a dramatic increase in anti-Asian violence. Fanned by anti-China sentiment, animosity and blame extended into a pan-East Asian discrimination that targeted vulnerable people, especially women and seniors. If there was ever any doubt about whether events in the past affect our current lives, this is yet more proof.

Compounding these hostile attitudes is the continuing demonization of mainland China on the global economic and political stage. These have all contributed to a fraught cultural context that Canadians of Chinese heritage find themselves having to negotiate, whether we have any relationship to the People’s Republic of China or the ruling Communist Party or not. We often find ourselves being once again lumped into one simplistic and homogenous racial, political, economic and cultural identity bereft of any difference and opposition, by those who are uninterested in such distinctions.

However, in recent years there has been progress that is heartening. The efficacy of the Black Lives Matter and Idle No More movements and increased vigilance against anti-Asian and anti-Muslim violence have contributed toward a growing public awareness of systemic racism across many sectors of society, in particular the dominant culture. In turn, this has created an environment in which power imbalances are more readily acknowledged. More importantly, it is even encouraged these days to find ways to take action against the historic practice of inequality. There is much work to be done to combat continuing prejudices and biases that have a long history in Canada. But it is my hope that by being aware of and addressing the injustices that previous generations have had to endure, we can engage in the dialogue and reflection necessary to continue building the kind of society that we who have the privilege and honour of calling this land our home can be proud of.

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