This post by Melanie Ng[1] is part of the “(In)Security in the Time of COVID-19” series. Read the rest of the series here. Vancouver: On a cold February night in 1887, an anti-Chinese lynch mob of white men razed a Chinese work camp. Lanterns in hand and singing the U.S. Union army marching song “John Brown’s Body,” the mob set Chinese… Read more »
In this post, Dr. Donica Belisle, author of Retail Nation: Department Stores and the Making of Modern Canada, and Associate Professor of History at the University of Regina, discusses the ways that Canadian retailers have profited from anti-Indigenous and anti-Black racism. She argues that capitalist enterprise has long profited from colonialism and white supremacy in Canada. This year marks the… Read more »
Laura Ishiguro and Laura Madokoro In recent weeks, we have seen white supremacist rallies in cities across North America, from Charlottesville to Quebec City. On each occasion, anti-fascist and anti-racist activists, along with other community members, have confronted these rallies with large and diverse counter-demonstrations, largely shutting them down, overwhelming them, or rendering them caricatures of their original plans. On… Read more »
David Atkinson Nativism continues to hide in plain sight in Canada. Martin Collacott’s recent editorial on immigration in the Vancouver Sun resuscitates the same xenophobic ideas that animated white supremacists in British Columbia a century ago. While he conceals the source of his anxiety with terms like “visible minorities” and “newcomers,” his arguments represent a thinly veiled invocation of “Yellow… Read more »
