Chinese Head Tax Research Articles

Mass Capture: Chinese Head Tax and the Making of Non-Citizens. Lily Cho

<i>Mass Capture: Chinese Head Tax and the Making of Non-Citizens</i>. Lily Cho

Resisting a postcolonial construction of historical trauma and healing: Critical discourse analysis of public apologies in Canada

The contemporary discourse around historical trauma and healing is site for debate and resistance in public spheres. Guided by critical scholars in language and power as well as post-and settler colonialism, this study analyzes texts and contexts of two public apologies in Canada – Chinese head tax, and residential schools for Indigenous children – to examine how historical trauma and healing were understood, and by doing so how the subject and object were re/constructed to maintain or resist social (dis)orders – postcolonial racial orders – in the past and the present of Canada. Findings included: (1) a split and temporal distance between the wrong past and the benevolent present with governments constructing themselves as the good subject reifying a sincere fiction of a liberal, benevolent, and just white-nation; (2) no acknowledgement of the cause of historical trauma, namely colonial governing; (3) ongoing construction of the other racialized population as victims/burdens/lesser citizens to current Canada; and (4) the explicit demand to collective forgetting of the past/historical trauma as current healing and inclusion. We discuss social responsibilities when historical wounds continue to leave injuries and the risk of perpetuating systemic violence to people with whom we currently share the nation all of us call home.

Political and community activism in Toronto: 2000-2016

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the significance of political and community activism in Toronto’s Chinese Canadian community between 2000 and 2016.Design/methodology/approachAdopting a mixed approach (historical, political and personal), the paper draws from both primary and secondary sources to explore three different cases – SARS in 2003, the Head Tax Redress in 2006 and Maclean’s “Too Asian?” controversy in 2010 – to illustrate discrimination against the Chinese Canadian community in Toronto during the 2000–2016 period while illuminating the importance of safeguarding human rights and dignity in the community.FindingsThe outbreak of SARS in early 2003 traumatized the whole city of Toronto and sparked waves of racial discrimination and bigotry directed at the Chinese Canadian community. Meanwhile, the community’s ongoing struggle to fight for justice and redress for the Chinese Head Tax seized the opportunity in 2006 to successfully challenge the Canadian government and other political parties to recognize and apologize for the racist tax and its long-term negative impact on the community. However, despite constant efforts, discrimination against Asian Canadians rose again, fueling Maclean’s controversial “Too Asian” article in 2010. Notwithstanding Canada’s positive image abroad, racial discrimination still exists. This paper urges that Canadians of all backgrounds must come together in solidarity and work hard to advocate for social and racial justice and human rights.Originality/valueThis paper will be of interest to community activists, journalists and scholars who are interested in the history of political and community activism in Toronto since 2000. Policymakers may also learn that an unexpected public crisis like SARS can ignite racial intolerance and negative attitudes toward Chinese Canadian and other communities.

Mass capture against memory: Chinese head tax certificates and the making of noncitizens

This paper examines a complex bureaucratic process of remembering that was central to the Chinese head tax system in Canada known as C.I.9s (Chinese Immigration 9). The C.I.9s constitute the first mass use of identification photography in Canada. Unlike any moment in its prior history, the Canadian Government isolated one specific group of people, purely on the basis of race and ethnicity, in order to identify each individual member of that group through the creation of a massive apparatus that would systematically correlate their identity with a photographic image. This system was developed so that the government of Canada could remember these migrants in order to continue to exercise the processes of their exclusion from citizenship. Using the theoretical work of an early internet pioneer on surveillance, Philip Agre, and new media theorist, Wendy Chun, I suggest that the C.I.9s function as a technology of mass capture through which noncitizens are made.

If I Had a Hammer

Mixed Media and Print-Installation. If I Had a Hammer represents Canadian society’s progress in social justice. This public narrative, as depicted in the larger installation, relies on the simple motifs of a wooden file cabinet and the dynamic motion of a horse striving forwards. The work focuses on four pivotal years, which have shaped Canadian society, namely: 1854; 1947; 1960 and 2016. These years with their associated narratives/stories correspond, respectively, with the following: the abolition of the feudal system in Canada; the abolition of the Chinese head tax; the establishment of the Canadian Bill of Rights, and the beginning of the reconciliation process with Canada’s indigenous communities.

“Trust Me, I’m Sorry”: The Paradox of Public Apology

This apology means nothing. After what they've done, why would we trust a word out of their lying mouths?How can we move forward when they won't even say they're sorry?INTRODUCTIONAn astute observer of public apologies will recognize the dissonance expressed in the two sentences above. Together, they demonstrate what we might call the paradox of public apology: namely, that even as we condemn (and outright mock) the public apologies issued by heads of states, politicians, as well as CEOs of corporations and other NGOs, public demand for such apologies continues to arise with predictable regularity each time a public figure or institution is found guilty of wrongdoing, negligence, or failure.1 We seem to insist on this ritual even as we indict it as just that- mere ritual. Why is this? Why demand something that is increasingly devalued and dismissed? If official apologies are little more than political theater, why does the public appetite for this performance remain so insatiable?In this paper, I draw out a significant, shared element motivating both the dismissal and the appetite for contemporary public apology: trust. I propose that the significance of public trust goes a long way to explaining the paradox of apologies. While apologies have multiple functions, each function aims, in part, to restore conditions of warranted trust following wrongdoing (Koehn 2013). In typical cases of interpersonal apology, often taken to be the model for public apologies, the relationship between apology and trust becomes a question of measuring trustworthiness; a successful apology persuades the recipient that the speaker2 is now more trustworthy than she once was, or is at least sincerely trying to become more trustworthy. A good apology gives the victim new reasons to trust the apologizer. In taking the expressive significance of apology seriously, we might even say that much of the merit of the apology stands in, as a kind of proxy, for the merit of the apologizer. Valuable apologies are trustworthy apologies, and trustworthy apologies reveal trustworthy apologizers.In the case of public apologies, the connection between expression and motive is murkier, for a host of reasons. It is harder to use an official apology as a reliable measure for the trustworthiness of the speaker or, indeed, of the institution that she represents. Much of the blanket criticism aimed at public apologies emerges, I suspect, out of a sense of vulnerability and indignation-a suspicion that we are being asked and even expected to trust someone who has not yet earned it. Yet, if this is so, why does public appetite for apology remain insatiable? The answer, I believe, lies with the object of apology-the wrong which is being apologized for.Some state and institutional apologies are issued for historic wrongs: incidents and abuses in the distant (and not so distant) past for which acknowledgement has never been given and redress never made: examples range from the Irish Potato Famine (UK) to the Chinese Head Tax (Canada) and the Tuskegee syphilis experiment (US). Here, the demand for apology seems less surprising, since ongoing silence and lack of recognition are enduring, painful wrongs-spanning decades and even centuries. Official apologies alter distorted and oppressive histories. They set the record straight by correcting official accounts and acknowledging groups of citizens whose existence was denied or near-eradicated (Gibney and Roxstrom 2001; Nobles 2008; MacLachlan 2010). They represent and even enact important public moral change by asserting the wrongness of past norms and policies (for example, racist immigration practices or genocidal colonialism) that were once considered acceptable or even morally appropriate, and they announce and assert the very real harms these wrongful policies caused. Apology may not be all that victims of past wrongs and their descendants want, but it is less puzzling that apologies are often part of the reparation they demand (Torpey 2001; Walker 2013). …

Righting Canada’s Wrongs: The Chinese Head Tax and Anti-Chinese Immigration Policies in the Twentieth Century by A. Chan

Chan, Arlene. Righting Canada’s Wrongs: The Chinese Head Tax and Anti-Chinese Immigration Policies in the Twentieth Century. Toronto: James Lorimer &amp; Company Ltd., 2014. Print.This is a non-fiction book about the history of Chinese immigration and settlement in Canada. It takes the reader through a very long historical period that starts from the time the Chinese first stepped foot in Canada in the eighteenth century, through struggling under racial discrimination in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, to attaining redress and public apology as captured in the title “Righting Canada’s Wrongs”.The title suggests a very serious topic that may not appeal to some readers looking to read for pleasure. However, this is an excellent resource for students doing a school or family genealogy project, or for those with an inquisitive mind. Once the book is opened, the photographs will definitely catch the attention and spark the interest of the reader. The author has skillfully used over 200 rare archival and modern day photographs and real-life audio accounts to make this book into an educational and thought-provoking audio-visual historical document. The only drawback is that the reader has to go back and forth between reading the book and going online to listen to the audio. While the book gives a good account of Chinese Canadian history, it missed the struggles and successes of the Prairie Chinese whose experiences are well-captured in the rich collection of rare archival materials housed in the Bruce Peel Special Collections Library of the University of Alberta, the Glenbow Museum, and the Edmonton Archives.The first chapter introduces the reader to the story by providing a brief historical background. Young readers may not be familiar with the two Opium Wars, British Columbia joining the Canadian Confederation, the First and Second World Wars, and the Chinese head tax redress campaign. Therefore, it will be very helpful if these events can all be put into historical perspectives by specifying the year of occurrence. The back of the book contains valuable references, such as: a “Timeline” diagram, a Glossary, a list of suggested reading, a list of visual credits, and an index to aid the readers. The “Timeline” diagram effectively chronicles significant historical events relevant to the story being told. However, it is inaccurate to say that Hong Kong becomes a British Colony in 1898. Hong Kong is a general name to mean the Island of Hong Kong and its surrounding islets, the Kowloon Peninsula, and the New Territories. Historically, Hong Kong Island was ceded to Britain in 1842, the Kowloon Peninsula ceded in 1860, and the New Territories leased for 99 years from 1898 to 1997. A similar inaccuracy is in the caption for a photograph on page 52 taken in Kowloon. At that point in history, it was a British Colony and not a part of China. This book is more suitable for young readers of grade five and above. They will get more out of reading this book if they are guided by parents or teachers who can help them better understand and appreciate the complex issues and historical occurrences. Recommended: 3 out of 4 starsReviewer: Helen Kwan Yee CheungHelen Kwan Yee Cheung has a B.Soc.Sc. from the University of Hong Kong and an MA from the University of Alberta. She has a diverse background of business, social work, psychology, personnel, and intergovernmental relations, having worked in the provincial and federal public service for twenty-five years. She has curated an exhibition “Painted Faces on the Prairies” for the Bruce Peel Special Collections Library of the University of Alberta in 2014 and currently working on a second project about Chinese merchants in the Canadian West as the Library’s guest curator.

Contesting White Supremacy: School Segregation, Anti-Racism, and the Making of Chinese Canadians by Timothy J. Stanley (review)

Reviewed by: Contesting White Supremacy: School Segregation, Anti-Racism, and the Making of Chinese Canadians by Timothy J. Stanley Darren E. Lund Timothy J. Stanley . Contesting White Supremacy: School Segregation, Anti-Racism, and the Making of Chinese Canadians. Vancouver, BC: UBC Press, 2011. 326 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $34.95 sc. Perhaps the first thing a reader might notice about this book is that it covers an ethnic relations topic about which many believe they are already quite aware. Most school textbooks and popular media sources now routinely refer to the mistreatment of Chinese immigrants in Canada over the past century or so. Likewise, many people have heard about the Chinese Head Tax, and have learned of the harsh labour conditions related to the completion of our national railway. Perhaps not surprisingly, what Stanley capably uncovers in this carefully researched volume is that the texture of the Chinese Canadian experience is much more nuanced than we might have imagined. It is also compellingly written, and the organization of the chapters leads the reader, not only chronologically but also conceptually, through this previously ignored piece of our national past. Stanley's narrative focus for the book is on a particular Students' Strike in 1922-23 in Victoria, BC, in which over 200 Chinese students participated for over a year in action to protest the school board's race-based segregation of their education. His historical approach to these events includes a critical "anti-racist history" framework that resists binary notions of oppressor and victim. Instead, the author emphasizes the legitimacy of personal accounts in favour of relying only on "official" records and accounts from the time. Stanley draws on a number of Chinese language sources that provide important and previously unavailable perspectives on the events under consideration. The author's first chapter offers a helpful contextualizing of these events, with vital explication of the sometimes invisible process of racialization necessary for race-based discrimination to take place. In accessible language, Stanley exposes the mutable form of racisms that serve to create a particular set of representations, exclusions, and segregations. In the case of Chinese immigrants and their families, the particular setting of British Columbia is important, with its specific history and anti-Asian sentiment that comprised the backdrop for this remarkable set of events. This book is organized into two main parts, Racism and Anti-Racism, and the former includes chapters on the Student's Strike, on "Anti-Chinese Racism and the Colonial Project of British Columbia," the racializing of both "the Chinese" (a more [End Page 265] complicated category than the easy label suggests) and "the Canadian." Important information on the organization of provincial schools as part of colonization, the formation of the racist state, and consequences of racialized exclusion, round out this rather gloomy section of the book. Shining a critical light on our own history means including detailed documentation of widespread and vicious anti-Chinese violence over several decades, from many sources, and taking several forms. Part Two is much more gratifying, providing the active response from the targeted group, with a careful outlining of their specific forms of resistance, organizing, and mobilizing toward more inclusive engagement with Canadian society on their own terms. Included throughout the text are photographs and illustrations from the time, that effectively bring the events to life. Stanley also provides a robust set of over 60 pages of footnotes that evidences painstaking research from a wide range of archival, official, and other sources. His attention to detail, nuanced appreciation of varying accounts of events, and respect for individuals' autonomy and viewpoints, all add to the significance of this work. I am eager to know how learning about these incidents and narratives from the past might influence and inspire a new generation of Canadians to negotiate their own citizenship, but this will have to be another project. Readers are certainly given a deep and multifaceted look into the Students' Strike and its aftermath. More importantly, Stanley documents the agency and self-determination this event symbolized for an ethnic group more likely to be demonized and, somewhat more subtly, dehumanized in popular discourse and official policies and documents. The book pioneers a critical approach to...

Redress for old wounds: Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper's apology for the Chinese head tax

This essay examines how political leaders apologize for historical injustices. Specifically, we analyze Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper's apology for the head tax imposed upon Chinese immigrants. The prime minister's apology was historic in that it marked the first time a Canadian Prime Minister formally apologized for the head tax. We argue that Harper used a combination of the frontier myth and collective apology rhetoric in his expression of remorse toward the Chinese-Canadian community. While controversial, this rhetoric created a discursive space for a constructive and strengthened relationship between the Chinese-Canadian community and the Canadian government.

Second-Generation Connections Marginalizing Identity

What does it mean to be Canadian? Or rather, what does it mean to have a Canadian identity? I cannot speak for every second-generation Canadian, nor do I want to. I can only speak of my experience as a second-generation Canadian of Barbadian descent and how it has shaped my identity.Here's my checklist of a typical Canadian: he or she was born in Canada, speaks English and/or French, celebrates Christmas, is Christian, plays hockey, owns a snow shovel, drinks Canadian beer, has a barbeque on Canada Day, watches hockey every Saturday night, is friendly and polite, has liberal views, dislikes American hegemony but watches American TV shows, loves thy neighbour, and generally cares about the wellbeing of others.It's an incomplete list, but it's safe to say that I fit the criteria of what I believe to be a Canadian. However, in my experience, most people would argue that I'm not.I may think that I'm Canadian, and inherently and consciously do the things that a Canadian is supposed to do, but if you took one look at me none of that would matter. Why is that? I forgot to add the most important element of Canadian identity: you must be white.That may be a trivial assessment, but it's the truth. When you think of Canada or a Canadian, you don't think of a Muslim woman in a hijab, or a Sikh man in a turban, let alone a black man. My ancestors could have fought in the War of 1812 as Loyalist supporters, or been one of the first settlers of Canada in Nova Scotia or southwestern Ontario, but that still would not make me a Canadian. Once you don't look the part, whatever you do or however you act no longer matters. You become the other in your own country. You enter a state of identity limbo. You ask yourself, if society doesn't see me for who I think I am, then who am I?As a black and second-generation Canadian, I personally face two different struggles for identity. I am a black Canadian man, not a black man who happens to be Canadian. But I am also a child born in Canada of Barbadian emigrants. And both of these are significant.What makes me Canadian?I am Canadian. Regardless of how the wider society sees me, I firmly believe that my roots and existence lie in this country.Creating a checklist of Canadian identity is pointless. Tying myself to what I perceive to be Canadian cores and values does not hinder my ability to understand the truth of my existence. Physically, I am not the prototypical Anglo-Saxon descendant of lyth-century western European settlers. I cannot trace my Canadian roots before the 19603. I cannot claim that my grandparents fought for this country in the Korean War, let alone the First or second World Wars. Does that make me less Canadian?This country has manipulated its identity and fallen prey to selective and collective amnesia about its colourful past-the open African and aboriginal slavery practiced for over 200 years, the exclusionary and racist immigration policies, the Chinese head tax, the 120126 is too many approach to Jewish immigration during the second World War, and the internment of Japanese Canadians during that same period. That is only a small glimpse of how this country has treated-and clearly defined-who is a Canadian, and most importantly, who should be allowed to be Canadian.I clearly understand that Canada has made several legal and institutional changes to open its doors to all races and creeds. We have passed through the Trudeau years and the first and second instalments of the multiculturalism act. Legally, you can be a Canadian Muslim woman or a Canadian Sikh man. However, this acceptance of Canadianness does not transcend to an open social interpretation of Canadian identity.As a hyphenated Canadian-African-Canadian, black-Canadian, but, most importantly, Barbadian-Canadian-I find it difficult to hold myself to one specific culture. My life is a hybrid of a multitude of pasts and histories. I am Canadian, but I am not Barbadian. …

Reconciling with History: The Chinese-Canadian Head Tax Redress

apology to Chinese Canadians at the Parliament of Canada for the imposition of the head tax and expressed sorrow for the subsequent exclusion of Chinese immigrants as a result of the 1923 Chinese Immigration Act. It took 121 years after the first head tax was levied on Chinese entering Canada and 83 years after the passing of the 1923 Act before Canada officially recognized the historical wrongdoings to the Chinese. Despite intense lobbying by Chinese-Canadian community organizations and individuals since the first Chinese Canadian filed a claim in 1983 to have the amount of the head tax returned to him, it was only after seven prime ministers had taken office, and many negotiations and court proceedings had taken place, that a settlement was reached in 2006. Why did the Canadian Chinese head tax redress take so long to materialize, especially in view of the 2002 apology offered by Helen Clark, Prime Minister of New Zealand, to New Zealand Chinese on account of a similar head tax? This report traces the history of the Chinese head tax redress in Canada and examines the factors that contributed to its settlement. Origin of the Chinese Head Tax in Canada 1

Calling Power to Account: Law, Reparations and the Chinese Head Tax Case (review)

Calling Power to Account: Law, Reparations and the Chinese Head Tax Case (review)

Redress Express: Chinese Restaurants and the Head Tax Issue in Canadian Art (Deliberations on a Preliminary Course)

Last summer I came across a most remarkable prefixed rubric via Canada's national newspaper The Globe and Mail. All aboard the Redress Express, the headliner read. 2 The media had coined this name for the cross-country train ride to Ottawa by Chinese head tax payers and their families to hear Prime Minister Stephen Harper deliver a long overdue apology on June 22, 2006.

Calling Power to Account: Law, Reparations, and the Chinese Head Tax Case

Calling Power to Account: Law, Reparations, and the Chinese Head Tax Case, David Dyzenhaus and May Moran, eds., Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005, pp. 471.This is a collection of fifteen essays that addresses different aspects of the Chinese head tax case. Edited by two law professors and written mostly by lawyers and law professors, the collection has a strong legal flavour. The book begins with the legal case of Mack vs. Attorney General of Canada. However, the book does not provide a succinct summary of the case. In brief, the case involves three Chinese Canadians, Shack Jang Mack, Quen Ying Lee and Yew Lee, filing a statement of claim through their attorney in December, 2000, in a class action on behalf of head tax payers in the Ontario Superior Court. In all, the case went through three courts, and the original ruling dismissing the claim of head tax payers was upheld by the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court.

Recognition, Redistribution and Redress: The Case of the “Chinese Head Tax”

Abstract. This article uses the recent Canadian campaign seeking redress for the infamous “Chinese head tax” as a vantage point from which to consider whether recognition-seeking social movements are undermining the cause of egalitarian redistribution. Methodologically, the article seeks to complement the normative theorizing and conceptual model-making that have tended to characterize the “recognition versus redistribution” debate by focusing more concretely on the dynamics of an actual social movement campaign. The article demonstrates how this approach can help to identify important nuances in recognition campaigns that blanket claims about recognition's impact both ignore and serve to obscure.Résumé. Cet article étudie la récente campagne canadienne cherchant la réparation dans les cas d'application de l'infâme taxe d'immigration aux Canadiens d'origine chinoise. Cette campagne offre l'opportunité pour étudier si les mouvements sociaux militant pour la reconnaissance des situations d'abus perpétrées par le passé sont en train d'éroder la cause de la redistribution égalitaire. D'un point de vue méthodologique, l'article essaie de compléter la théoretisation normative et le developpement de modèles conceptuels qui ont seulement pris en compte le débat dit “ de la reconnaissance versus la redistribution ”, en se concentrant plus sur l'étude de la dynamique d'une campagne sociale contemporaine. L'article montre le fait que cette approche peut aider à mettre en exergue d'importants nuances dans les campagnes dites “ de la reconnaissance ”, que des études plus generaux sur l'impact de la reconnaissance ignorent.