Contesting White Supremacy: School Segregation, Anti-Racism, and the Making of Chinese Canadians

by Timothy J. Stanley

Overview

In 1922-23, Chinese students in Victoria, British Columbia, went on strike to protest a school board’s attempt to impose segregation. Their resistance was unexpected and runs against the grain of mainstream accounts of Asian exclusion, which tend to ignore the agency of the excluded. In Contesting White Supremacy, Timothy Stanley combines Chinese sources and perspectives with an innovative theory of racism and anti-racism to explain the strike and construct an alternative reading of racism in British Columbia. His work demonstrates that education was an arena in which white supremacy confronted Chinese nationalist schooling and where parents and students contested racism by constructing a new category – Chinese Canadian – to define their identity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780774819329
Publisher:	University of British Columbia Press
Publication date:	07/01/2011
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

Table of Contents

Introduction: Questioning the Existence of the World

1 The 1922-23 Students’ Strike

Part 1: Racism

2 Anti-Chinese Racism and the Colonial Project of British Columbia

3 Racializing ‘the Chinese,’ Racializing ‘the Canadian’

4 Schooling and the Organization of Racist State Formation

5 The Chinese Archipelago in Canada and the Consequences of Racialized Exclusion

Part 2: Anti-Racism

6 Resisting Racialization and the Invention of Chinese Canadians

7 Making Inclusions and Chinese Nationalist State Formation in Canada

8 Mitigating Racism through Chinese Nationalist Schooling

9 Anti-Essentialist Anti-Racisms and the Resistances of Odd Places

Conclusion: Anti-Racism, History, and the Significance of Chinese Canadians

Appendix

Notes

Select Bibliography

Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"A crucial contribution to scholarship. Featuring thorough documentation and previously underutilized Chinese-language sources, Stanley shows how white supremacy and anti-Chinese politics shaped the development of BC schools. He breaks new ground by analyzing how racism helped create a set of a consciously 'Chinese Canadians,' who were able to organize against discrimination and exclusion. In a world that continues to dehumanize those who are the targets of racism by reducing them to their victimization, Stanley provides an understanding of how individuals organized in resistance to white supremacy and used new forms of identity to claim a belonging for Chinese in Canada."—Henry Yu, Associate Professor, Department of History, University of British Columbia

Henry Yu

A crucial contribution to scholarship. Featuring thorough documentation and previously underutilized Chinese-language sources, Stanley shows how white supremacy and anti-Chinese politics shaped the development of BC schools. He breaks new ground by analyzing how racism helped create a set of a consciously 'Chinese Canadians,' who were able to organize against discrimination and exclusion. In a world that continues to dehumanize those who are the targets of racism by reducing them to their victimization, Stanley provides an understanding of how individuals organized in resistance to white supremacy and used new forms of identity to claim a belonging for Chinese in Canada.

Editorial Reviews

A crucial contribution to scholarship. Featuring thorough documentation and previously underutilized Chinese-language sources, Stanley shows how white supremacy and anti-Chinese politics shaped the development of BC schools. He breaks new ground by analyzing how racism helped create a set of a consciously 'Chinese Canadians,' who were able to organize against discrimination and exclusion. In a world that continues to dehumanize those who are the targets of racism by reducing them to their victimization, Stanley provides an understanding of how individuals organized in resistance to white supremacy and used new forms of identity to claim a belonging for Chinese in Canada. - Henry Yu, Associate Professor, Department of History, University of British Columbia

From the Publisher