Racism rears its ugly head

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 08/03/2021 (1685 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Despite repeated denials, it is clear the Chinese government downplayed the severity of the initial COVID-19 outbreak in the city of Wuhan in December 2019.

But as guilty as Chinese President Xi Jinping and his officials might be in not doing more to contain the virus and the enduring crisis that has wreaked havoc across the world, it absolutely does not justify the hate, violence and scapegoating of Canadians and Americans of Chinese and Asian descent. (Suffice it to say that if the virus had originated in the United Kingdom under similar circumstances, Brits and Scots in North America would not have been targeted.)

In San Francisco on Jan. 28, Vicha Ratanapakdee, an 84-year-old immigrant and grandfather from Thailand, was out for a morning walk in a suburban neighbourhood when suddenly he was rammed from behind by a person who charged him. Ratanapakdee fell hard on a cement driveway, hitting his head. The blow caused bleeding in his brain and he died two days later without regaining consciousness.

A 19-year-old teenager has been charged with murder and elder abuse. Yet Ratanapakdee’s family insists the tragic incident was the result of hate and the economic hardships caused by COVID-19.

They may be correct. Since the onset of the virus, anti-Chinese and anti-Asian bigotry have dramatically increased in Canada and the U.S., leading to numerous incidents of harassment and violence. In both countries, whether it is on public transportation, shopping in a store or merely walking on a sidewalk, Asians have been bullied, screamed at, spat on and physically assaulted. They have also been the targets of online abuse.

In early September 2020, the Toronto chapter of the Chinese Canadian National Council issued a report indicating that more than 600 incidents of anti-Asian racism had been reported to that date across Canada, and that Canada had a “higher number of anti-Asian racism reports per capita than the United States.”

Indeed, the results of a survey conducted by Angus Reid and released last June indicated that of the more than 500 Chinese Canadians who participated, half reported being called names or insulted as a direct result of the COVID-19 outbreak, and more than 40 per cent stated they had been threatened or intimidated.

Historically, crises — whether war, economic depression or pandemic — have brought out the best and worst in some people. Overt discrimination is no longer legal in Canada and the U.S. as it once was, but prejudice remains endemic. Today, we denounce it publicly and teach students its many lessons and dangers, but it remains beneath the surface of western society, rearing its ugly head during times of extreme stress.

In the case of COVID-19, it has to be pointed out that a contributing factor to anti-Asian racism was former president Donald Trump’s deliberate use of the terms “China virus” and “kung flu.” As with other polarizing events, he stoked hate, giving it credence and the presidential seal of approval. As CNN has noted, in some reported hate incidents in the U.S., “perpetrators repeated the former president’s language.”

At the same time, anti-Chinese and anti-Asian attitudes have a long history in North America. In the early 20th century, few issues frightened white Canadians and Americans more than unwanted immigrants from the non-English, non-Christian world. At the top of the list of undesirables were the Chinese, followed closely by the Japanese. Both groups represented the “unassimilable Yellow Peril.”

Chinese labourers had sacrificed themselves to build the Canadian Pacific Railway in Canada and the Transcontinental Railway in the U.S., yet that did not mean they were welcome to stay on when those projects were completed. By the mid-1880s, the U.S. had passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, virtually banning all Chinese immigration, and Canada had imposed restrictive head taxes. In 1923, Canada banned nearly all Chinese immigration, a ruling that was not repealed until 1947.

The history of the Chinese in Canada is a story of discrimination, race riots — such as the one in Vancouver in 1907 precipitated by the Asiatic Exclusion League — and fearmongering. Feeding the hysteria was the widely held belief that Chinese men used opium to exploit and sexually assault white women. The Methodist Church officially deemed Chinese restaurants as “dangerous places” for Canadian women.

As an example, in Toronto in 1913, Horace Wing, a Chinese merchant, was arrested and charged with “procuring a white woman for immoral purposes” after he hired a young white woman named Minnie Wyatt as a stenographer. She had sought the job by placing an ad in the newspaper; her parents had reported Wing to the police.

Equally devastating was the punishment imposed in 1939 on Velma Demerson, a white 18-year-old who was charged under Ontario’s Female Refuges Act as being “incorrigible” because she was pregnant and living with Harry Yip, a Chinese waiter. Her father had also reported her to the police. She was confined for one year to Toronto’s refuge for wayward girls and her newborn son was taken from her.

The world has changed a lot since then. Yet the ugly and truly irrational racism engendered by the stress and strain of COVID-19 is another reminder that we have not advanced as far as we think.

Now & Then is a column in which historian Allan Levine puts the events of today in a historical context. His most recent book is, Details are Unprintable: Wayne Lonergan and the Sensational Café Society Murder.