...OBASAN Just Race? Racism is an irrational bias, positive or negative, towards people of a racial background. It has been a part of the social fabric since recorded history. In Joy Kogawa’s Obasan (1983), the protagonist, a Japanese-Canadian woman by the name of Naomi, is inadvertently introduced to the atrocities suffered by Canadians of Japanese ancestry during the Second World War. Naomi, now an adult, discovers the hardship and institutional racism that Japanese people faced, whereby they were forbidden “to go anywhere in this wide dominion without a permit” and the government had “requisitioned the Livestock Building…to house 2,000 ‘Japs pending removal’” (Kogawa, 1983, p.95), through a series of letters written by her Aunt Emily to her mother. The letters and conversations between Naomi and Emily reveal the impact of prejudicial policies and discourse on people of all ages including, Stephen, Naomi’s younger brother. The themes of racism, both of the subconscious and overt varieties, highlighted by Kogawa are also prevalent in Angela Aujla’s “Others in Their Own Land: Second Generation South Asian Canadian Women, Racism and the Persistence of Colonial Discourse” which points out the role of government as well as the general public in propagating racial prejudice against South Asian women. In Obasan, Kogawa provides evidence that shows how Japanese people faced racial discrimination through and after World War II. Aunt Emily’s letters written to her sister, Nesan...
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...Treatment of Japanese Canadians During WWII: An Atrocious Chapter in Canadian History In 1942, the middle of World War Two, Japanese Canadians in British Columbia were forced to enter internment camps. Many of them would remain there until the end of the war and following it would have to relocate in Canada or be deported to Japan. Years later, in 1988, the Canadian government would apologise for the terrible treatment that Japanese Canadians endured in this time. The actions of the government regarding Japanese Canadians during WWII were unnecessary and a social injustice. The internment of these people was unjust due to their treatment within and outside of the camps, no prevention of any harm, and its encouragement of racism in a time of fear. When the government enacted the War Measures Act, the 22,000 Japanese Canadians living on the West Coast were invited to move to “relocation centres” near the Okanagan...
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...Racism and Power A Formal Research Paper on Racism HSP-3UI-03 Jenna Yates 06/16/2014 -1- Introduction Over the generations, there have been horrific examples of racism around the globe. The holocaust, the slave trade and Apartheid in South Africa are all examples of appalling events throughout history that display racism. In addition to these extreme examples, racism exists on a smaller scale in peoples day to day lives. For example, there are people who face certain disadvantages, like being denied employment, denied an apartment or denied a friendship all because of their race. While there is definitely a movement to eradicate racist actions and beliefs, they still exist. Despite education and a history of horrible experiences with racism, it is still a huge issue in our culture and in our environment. This is so, because there is always a group who benefits from racism and it is hard to let this power and privileges go. Racism has been an effective tool for those in a position of power and privilege to maintain their status, income, recourses, the ability to make decisions, etc. Racism empowers some and disempowers others. Even though we have seen the down side of racism, it is something we continue to repeat from country to country and decade to decade because we know it works to maintain power. Despite all the advances society has seen in research, knowledge and technology, mankind has not been able to abolish racism. Therefore, in spite of our understanding...
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...Japanese internment camps were established in Canada and America in 1941, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Prime Minister Mackenzie King deemed it a necessary act to protect Canada. Japanese-Canadians were forcibly taken from their homes, instructed only to bring as much as you can carry. They were then taken to large empty buildings like abandoned factories and empty sports arenas. They were held there, similar to the ghettos used in Germany, to wait until they could be placed on a train and set to the internment camps. The internment camps were located in very isolated locations in Northern British Columbia. The camps were set up with shacks or tents for the Japanese inmates. There were no clothes provided for the inmates and meals...
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...colonies that settled or move to a new country, colony or a “new world”. This settlement was an important characteristic of colonialism in the 19th century. In the development of the course settler colonies especially European settlers affected the live of First Nations Women in Canada, in terms of their culture, lifestyle, family organization, and religion. European colonies devaluated native population with regulations like the Indian Act. DIFFICULT KNOWLEDGE Knowledge that often challenges the dominant ideology, which is difficult to accept and we reject it and its source, or we embrace it without a critical evaluation. DIASPORA Comes from the Greek term “diasperin”, Used to refer to any ethnic population forced or induced to leave their original homelands. Also people who leave their homelands to find work or search for asylum. An example of diaspora in the topics cover in the course is the high amount of Chinese population who came to Canada to work. They weren’t forced, rather they chose to start a new life in a new place. Also, during WWII, the boats of Jewish who came to Canada looking for asylum. This term have helped me gaining knowledge about the migration of different ethnic population to Canada during the 19th and 20th century. THERE IS NOTHING OBJECTIVE ABOUT OBJECIVITY Objectivity means to have a neutral position in a specific topic or issue. Been objective is not possible because any ideology or thought always have a defined side or position that contradicts other...
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...stems in part from Government sponsored racism and the capitalistic use of immigration as a means to defy the labour movement. We can start with the stereotyping and discrimination of the Irish in the 1840’s, our first large scale exploitable labour pool and move right through to today’s racial profiling and cultural unacceptance of Arabs and east Indians. Through our history the acceptance of immigrants gradually improve but even today we haven’t achieved an acceptable level of tolerance. Were not perfect but we eventually seem to learn from the mistakes of our past. After Mackenzie King and into the sixties government supported racism through our immigration department seemed on the decline. With the 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms Act being signed into the constitution we took a huge leap forward. However, this doesn’t erase a past full of discrimination and exploitation of immigrants by government, employers and labour. In Canadian history immigrant workers have been racially stereotyped, discriminated against and subjected to differing levels of acceptance within Canadian culture and the working class society. Immigrant workers found themselves in varying levels of distress upon arrival to Canada, being exploited by employers, shunned by labour and oppressed as second class citizens by government. This may be considered a product of the times but the slow, gradual change to tolerance is unacceptable, and not the image Canada wants to project to the rest of the world...
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...quote by the Japanese Centennial Project to represent the mistreatment of the Japanese Canadians in Canada. Between the years 1941 and 1949, the Japanese people of Canada had their belongings taken, and were relocated to internment camps in the interior of British Columbia. Where they would be forced to stay for the entirety of the war. The human rights violations, hardships in the camps, and the redress that came too late made the Japanese Canadian internment a national disgrace. The internment began after the Japanese attack on Hong Kong and Pearl Harbour....
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...Following the prosperity of the 1920’s, an economic crisis struck Canada and the entire world: the Great Depression. For nearly a decade, poverty, unemployment, and droughts plagued the country with the government taking little action. Work camps and government relief were unable to sustain families or individuals, leading to the rise of radical ideas and changes. New political parties supporting communism and socialism was the start of new changes later implemented in Canada. During this period, many were fighting for equality and justice (the on-to Ottawa trek). Around the world, extremism was on the rise: fascism in Spain, Italy and Germany, and totalitarianism in Japan. Canadians volunteered to join the International Brigade to help during the...
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...miniscule alongside injustices that include internment of enemy aliens and intolerance against others based on their heritage. Dealing with these injustices proves to be extremely hard, as the response needs to be sensitive to those affected, and promptly address the factors involved in the injustice. Furthermore, throughout history, numerous injustices had occurred that governments of today have to face, especially for those that occurred within Canada. To be able to promptly and adequately...
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...being to time travel. The past treatment of the Aboriginal people and other racial minorities in Canada is not a subject of pride. However, the German government today is not said to be responsible for all the deaths caused by Hitler or the depraved handling of the Jews. In the same way, the current Canadian government should not be held liable for the wrongs of its predecessors. It is common knowledge that Canada is a nation of various races, ethnic backgrounds, religions and cultures. This is a result of the actions of the current government. In the past these Aboriginals and minorities were not given equal pay to the Canadians of that time. Their children were forced to attend residential schools, as a result they were away...
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...In Wayson Choy’s novel The Jade Peony, Meiying is a bright girl whose forbidden relationship with Kazuo is continually impeded by racism. Meiying attempts to maintain this relationship but since she isn’t capable of coming to an equilibrium, the Chinese and Japanese teen couple living in Vancouver is forced to break up. Throughout the duration of the Second World War, the Canadian-Japanese are strongly discriminated against by the Canadian-Chinese. The “tall”, “elegant”, and “smart” (238) babysitter of Sek Lung that everyone in has come to love, experiences unbelievable hardship. Meiying tragically dies at the end of Choy’s novel. Choy classifies Meiying as a bright, likable person, and someone who is filled with potential from Sek Lung’s...
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...conceivably participate in prostitution as "undesirable" and banished their entrance into the United States (Takaki, 257). The law was upheld to initiate prohibition of Chinese women from the United States, keeping male workers from bringing their families (Takaki, 257). Both older and current Asian immigrants formed coalitions and protests, for example, the Pacific Coast race riots of 1907 in San Francisco, California and Vancouver, Canada. Anti-Japanese protestors, who attempted to achieve segregated schools for Caucasian and Japanese students, led the San Francisco turmoil (“Japanese Americans of San Joaquin”). These instances urged the United States to seek the 1907 Gentleman's Agreement with Japan, which stated that the Japanese government would forbid resettlement to the United States and the government consented to force less confinement on Japanese immigrants (Lee, 113). This implied Japanese outsiders were banished unless they had beforehand obtained property or were relatives of existing settlers (Takaki, 251). The disallowances of Chinese and Japanese migrants were strengthened and were extended to all of Asia. The Asiatic Barred Zone Act of 1917 denied all migration from any area that incorporated Asia (“A dollar a day/ 10 cents a dance). The Immigration Act of 1924 presented national cause for the whole Western Hemisphere, with the standard for Asian nations being set at zero (Takaki, 252). This presented a time of close rejection to Asian migration in the United States....
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...Social Nationalism Vocabulary Term | Definition | Example | State | an area forming part of a federal country such as the United States or Australia with its own government and legislature and control over most of its own internal affairs; or a country or nation with its own sovereign independent government | -the various states of USA and Australia that form the country as a whole | Nation | a community of people or peoples living in a defined territory and organized under a single government | -Canada, USA, Australia | Nation state | A sovereign state inhabited by a relatively homogeneous group of people who share a feeling of common nationality | -Albania, Iceland, Estonia, Japan-the local ethnicities are relatively homogeneous | Country | a nation or state that is politically independent, or a land that was formerly independent and remains separate in some respects | -sovereign states-France, Italy, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia | Patriotism | a proud supporter or defender of his or her country and its way of life | -American, support of the American way of life, government, military, etc. | Nationalism | the desire to achieve political independence, especially by a country under foreign control or by a people with a separate identity and culture but no state of their own | -Tibet, want to gain independence from the PRC as they were annexed by the PRC | Race | one of the...
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...The history of national origin and racial exclusion in U.S. immigration laws serves as a lens into this nation's soul. There is no better body of law to illustrate the close nexus between race and class than U.S. immigration law and its enforcement. The United States also has a long history of restricting (if not outright excluding) entry of certain racial minority groups into the country. Transference of hate and displacement of frustration from one racial minority to another explain much in the heated racial dynamics of the twentieth century. Cognitive dissonance theory teaches us how the nation can be so harsh to noncitizens of color while claiming that racism is dead in America. . Immigration law expressly defines who can and cannot enter...
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...America has enshrined in its constitution the Bill of Rights with the specific purpose of protecting the civil liberties of its citizens. Among its provisions are the freedoms of speech, religion, and peaceful assembly, together with the rights of due process. These statutes notwithstanding, they did not protect Japanese Americans from being forcefully relocated and incarcerated during World War II, and more recently, the detention of thousands of Arab-Americans following the 9/11 attacks. Today the injustices perpetrated on those Japanese-Americans are widely acknowledged, but significantly, the Supreme Court decision affirming the legality of that mass detention has yet to be overturned. There will always be limits to freedom; the pertinent question is where those lines are drawn and the role they play in the ordinary lives of the citizens. Limits on human freedom can be viewed likewise. In America there are definite limits but they are more like the moat; the citizens are hardly aware of them. They are not intrusive. Executive powers to establish military tribunals for example, are definite boundaries and gross infringements on the citizens’ freedom. Similarly Canada has its War Powers Act that gives its prime minister as sweeping a power as Malaysia’s ISA. Indeed the War Powers Act was used in 1970 by no less than the libertarian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. Because these statutes are rarely invoked except in national emergencies, citizens do not feel constrained by them...
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