Racism Towards Chinese Gold Miners In British Columbia

History 1120-01

Dr. Tracy Penny Light

Evan Weddell (T00223633)
November 11 2016

This the voice of the west and it speaks to the world:

The rights that our fathers have given

We’ll hold by right and maintain by might,

Till the foe is backward driven.

We welcome as brothers all white men still,

But the shifty yellow race,

Whose word is vain, who oppress the weak,

Must find another place.

CHORUS:

Then let us stand united all

And show our father’s might,

That won the home we call our own,

For white man’s land we fight.

To oriental grasp and greed

We’ll surrender, no never.

Our watchword be “God save the King”

White Canada for ever.¹

cited in Khushwant Singh, A History of the Sikhs, vol. 2, 1893-1964.

Copyright © 2002. McGill-Queen’s University Press. All rights reserved.

Racism Towards Chinese Gold Miners In BC

The Chinese people have played an important role in the formation of Canada. Without their sacrifices much of our history would be different. They were vital to the construction of the transcontinental railway and to the gold rush in BC. Despite being so important to the economy their contribution in the past has been extremely marginalized. It is only in recent history that the injustices the Chinese were subjected to have been addressed. One of the problems they faced was outright racial discrimination. The discrimination they faced was directly related to the white colonist’s fear that the Chinese would steal their jobs because they accepted a lower wage. It is perplexing the intensity of the hostility the immigrants faced because just a century earlier the East was praised for its technologies and enlightened social order.² This change in public opinion was due to propaganda spread by the British that Anglo-Saxon’s were the superior race.³ This racist ideology became a part of the society of BC. The British spread this propaganda after the gold rush because they no longer had a need for cheap Chinese labour. These racist beliefs were the foundation of institutional racism in British Columbia and Canada. There are numerous examples of institutional racism towards the Chinese in Canada such as the head tax. This paper will show widespread racist beliefs in British Columbia that were supported by the Government and spread by propaganda directly influenced Canada’s institutionally racist policies after Confederation. In this paper the treatment of the Chinese in BC is considered as an example of institutional racism. First; some examples of racism that existed in BC are considered. Second; some of the possible reasons behind the racial struggles and what racism is are explored. Finally I will conclude my paper with a summary of what I have discussed. I will be providing evidence from a primary document and multiple secondary sources to back up my claims.

When the Chinese initially came to BC they were said to receive the same rights and privileges as the whites. While this may have been true during most of the colonial period, primary documents from before confederation show that by the early 1870’s this was not the case. The discrimination they faced was directly related to the end of the gold rush. During the rush BC had a large demand for cheap labour. This led to the Chinese being very well treated in the colony because they would do work that other people didn’t want to for cheap. As the gold rush finished the need for labour decreased and all of the Chinese now in BC became competition for less jobs. The racism towards the Chinese increased in an attempt to curb their immigration into the colony. This “sinophobia” had spread up from California with the white miners.⁴ The Colonists were fine with the Chinese when they needed help, but now they wanted them to leave. Before the mid- twentieth century, the colonists of BC wanted only white people to live in BC. The original plan was to allow the Chinese to immigrate until the work was done, then send them back home.⁵ The Chinese were tolerated as long as their was gold to be mined because the colony needed people and mining gold is hard work. During the early years of the gold rush the Chinese were praised for being hard-working. The praise still had very racist undertones. The majority of the population of the colonies of Victoria and BC thought of the Chinese as less than human. The fear of Asian competition caused racism to become part of the provincial identity.⁶ People in the colonies were openly racist towards the Chinese. An article in Victoria’s newspaper the Daily Colonist said, “They may be inferior to Europeans and Americans in energy and ability; hostile to us in race, language and habits, and may remain among us a pariah race; still they are patient, easily governed, and invariably industrious…”.⁷ As you can see, even when complimenting the Chinese they still used racism to justify what they said. The colonists of BC were afraid the Chinese, “would over-run the land like grasshoppers,”⁸. The British used racial discrimination to ensure a steady supply of cheap labour for the colony. This racism was used to justify the horrible working conditions and meager wages they were paid. It became normal to pay Chinese workers less then you would pay a white person to do the same job. This was indentured servitude. The colonists were afraid the Chinese would steal their jobs because they accepted a lower wage. Instead of paying them a higher wage people just used racism to justify the practice. The blame for the acceptance of the lower wage was placed on Chinese society and morals. A representative of the BC Knights of Labour had this to say, “…they are enabled not only to live but to grow rich on wages far below the lowest minimum at which we can possibly exist. They are thus fitted to become all too dangerous competitors in the labour market.”.⁹ They believed it was the Chinese fault for being unable to assimilate into western culture. The reality was that British Columbia at the time did not allow the Chinese to, nor did they ever actually want then to ever fully assimilate into the country.

The belief that Anglo-Saxon peoples were the height of evolution and that the colonies success depended on the white man’s superiority comes from imperialism.¹⁰ The British used this method throughout their empire. They would establish the superiority of whites and subordinate the Asian immigrants. The British did this in Australasia and in South Africa.¹¹ If you can convince your subjects that a certain ethnic group is less human than they are it allows for them to oppress the other group. This is institutional racism. There are many examples in the past of outright institutional racism against the Chinese in BC. There was the head tax as well as songs¹² and newspaper articles¹³ that propagated negative ethnic stereo-types about the Chinese. The belief that the Chinese were inferior to the white colonists is something that the Government of the colonies and the majority of the colonists considered to be fact.¹⁴ When you have a population that is openly racist towards people and it is supported by the government and government policies that is institutional racism. The fact that this was before Confederation and when BC was still a British colony makes it hard to define as institutional racism. It is difficult to provide direct examples of British institutional racism in BC for this era but we presume it still existed. It is difficult to provide examples of the government supporting the racism because it was a time of great political change. Soon after the gold rush a completely different government would be in power. This being said it is still possible to find examples of racism that were supported by the government of the colonies. For example the gold commissioner in Barkerville posted a notice that all Chinese working at the mines must take out a license.¹⁵ I call it institutional racism because the Chinese were unwanted by the dominant society. This is a view that was supported by the British government. By using propaganda they influenced public opinion that the Chinese were lazy, stupid, and sent all of their money out of the colony.¹⁶ The British Empire used racism to further its own agenda and to ensure the success of the colonies. It is quite surreal that when speaking of the immigrants’ flaws, usually in the next line they also applaud the Chinese for being hard-working and industrious. They had to provide a means for the people to feel justified in their racism. They also could not smear the reputation of the Chinese so much as to make people feel their immigration was pointless. The Chinese had to be just inferior enough that it was justified paying them less, but not so useless that their was no point to allow them to immigrate. This was a slippery slope to maintain and could be why as the need for cheap labour decreased the racial discrimination and government policies that hindered immigration for the Chinese increased.

The problem with racism is that it is always based on stereo-types. Stereo-types while they sometimes have small kernels of truth in them are for the most part completely false. The Chinese in BC were subjected to many rumors that they were unclean, that they lived and thrived in cramped housing, and that they carried disease with them. There was a growing fear at the time that the East was going to overtake and consume the West because of its massive population.¹⁷ This fear helped convince people that these stereo-types were true. On the Chinese part sometimes they did live in very cramped conditions and many of the customs they brought with them were very strange to the European colonists. Much of what the Chinese did was influenced by their lack of social support and poverty. These very poor Chinese workers were trying to make enough money so they could support their family’s back in China. Their frugality was necessary to their success.¹⁸ The belief that the Chinese were stupid fails to include the fact that they spoke and wrote a different language. The colonists criticized the Chinese for not speaking or writing English but presumably very few colonists ever attempted to learn Mandarin or Cantonese. It is quite frustrating that the colonists did not realize the hypocrisy of the situation. They would disparage the Chinese for being stupid, uncivilized and living too cheaply, but then fail to realize the Chinese situation was directly caused by their lack of equal wages, poverty and cultural differences. They would turn a blind eye to the disadvantages the immigrants had and instead blame all the problems caused by them on their race or country of origin. This belief that the Chinese “problems” was caused by their own culture also applied to their low wages. The colonists feared the Chinese were going to take their jobs because they would accept less pay. This acceptance of a meager wage was blamed on the culture of China. The West viewed the East as forcing its people to be happy with very little.¹⁹ The fact they managed to blame the Chinese for accepting the low wage instead of blaming the employer for offering it in the first place is absurd. It is the very cause of racism when you fail to look at the real cause of the problem and instead blame it on where a person came from.

Imperialism is the cause of many of the problems facing our world today. The actions and choices of people hundreds of years ago are still effecting us to this day. We would like to tell ourselves that humans are not like this anymore. Sadly, we just have to look at the recent election down south to know that racism is still alive and well in many shapes and forms. The British government’s treatment of indigenous, Asian and African populations is in some ways unforgivable. Taking this point of view is not going to solve or fix anything. We have to realize the mistakes our ancestors have made in the past and work to correct them in the future. This can only be done with respectful, thoughtful discussion amongst the different people of the world. We are at a point in our world history where we are either going to take a large step forward or just about to fall backwards in regards to peace on earth and human rights. In my paper we have discussed the treatment of the Chinese and how widespread racist beliefs in BC and Canada after the gold rush influenced the governments later institutional racism. The treatment of the Chinese by the British before confederation is also institutional racism. There were racist ideas in the colony that were supported by both the British government and the media of the time. I consider this to be institutional racism. In the era I researched specifically no government policies had been established yet. This being said however people were still discussing such policies and the mood of the people at this time directly influenced the later institutionally racist policies of Canada. The policies that were put into place were supported by the people. This ideology did not just happen. It was created as an end to a means. The British used racism as a tool to control a group of people that had fulfilled their purpose to them. I cannot think of a more clear definition of institutional racism. In conclusion, government supported institutional racism is never a good thing and is something we need to ensure never occurs in the future.