100 Years since Vancouver’s Anti-Asian Race Riots

[aaron at istop.com]

 100 Years since Vancouver’s Anti-Asian Race Riots - Racism and its role in
Class Society  	  Print   	  E-mail
By Miriam Martin in Vancouver   
Monday, 01 October 2007
Friday September 7th marked the 100 year anniversary of one of the B.C. labour
movement’s darkest moments – the anti-Asian riots of 1907. The riots targeted
residents and shops in Vancouver’s Chinatown and Japantown, with some 9,000
participants carrying placards reading “Stand for a White Canada” and calling
for an end to Asian immigration to British Columbia. The riots were incited by
the Asiatic Exclusion League (AEL) – an organization formed in San Francisco
in 1905 and in Vancouver on August 12th, 1907. Shamefully, it was a coalition
of 67 labour unions that founded the San Francisco AEL, and by 1908, it
reported 231 affiliated organizations, 195 of them trade unions.

This mobilization of organized workers against other workers along racial
lines highlights the need for a clear understanding of why racism exists and
is allowed to exist, the pernicious role it plays under capitalism, and the
real road to its abolition.

On September 7th 1907, a march organized by the AEL ended with a series of
inflammatory speeches at Vancouver City Hall (then on Main St). Mobs of up to
9,000 flooded into Chinatown, beating people up and causing thousands of
dollars of damage to store fronts. They then poured into Japantown where
residents fought back with clubs and broken bottles. Canadians are taught in
grade school that we live in a country built upon multiculturalism, but
nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, like all colonies, Canada’s
birth and development were, not plagued, but supported and sustained by racism.

Wherever class society exists, the ruling class uses racism and other
prejudices to try to keep the oppressed classes divided. As long as working
class people are pitted against each other along race, gender or religious
lines, they will be distracted from their common enemy – the capitalist
system, and will not have the unity necessary to defeat it. Fortunately, this
“divide and rule” tactic has its limits. When the inability of the capitalists
to meet the needs of ordinary people becomes apparent, the class questions
cuts across these other questions and a recently divided working class finds
unity out of necessity. There are numerous examples throughout history of the
class question uniting workers assumed to be pitted permanently against each
other. One example from close to home, is that of the Québec working class
during the Common Front of 1972, which cut across national lines and united
French and English workers against the capitalist exploitation of Québec.

European settlement and development of the colonies in the Americas would not
have been possible without racism on the part of the white settlers. A belief
in the superiority of their race, culture and religion was essential to
rationalizing the obliteration of literally thousands of indigenous nations,
not to mention people, by open warfare, theft of livelihood and disease.

Similarly, the large scale exploitation of Asian immigrant labour, in
particular Chinese labour, would not have been tolerated if it were not for
racism among the Caucasian population who had themselves immigrated to Canada
not so long before. As many Canadians are aware, Chinese labourers played a
key role in the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR). In British
Columbia in particular, they made up the major part of the workforce. When
B.C. joined confederation in 1871, it was under the condition that a railway
be built linking B.C. with eastern Canada within ten years. “It is simply a
matter of alternatives” said Prime Minister John A. Macdonald in relation to
the hiring of cheep Chinese labour; “either you must have this labour or you
can’t have the railway.”

In 1880, an initial 7,000 Chinese workers were brought from California, and
another 5,000 were brought directly from China, basically sold by Chinese
gangs with representatives in Victoria (B.C.’s capital city). These workers
lived and worked in abysmal conditions, making just $1 a day, while white,
black and native workers made approximately $3 a day. The most dangerous
stretch of railway, the 500 km that go through the Fraser Canyon, was built
almost entirely by Chinese labourers. To give an idea of just how unsafe the
conditions were, by the end of 1881, only 1,500 workers remained from the
latter group of 5,000 who came from China. The rest had died from illness or
in explosions and other construction accidents. So, the contractors arranged
for more Chinese labourers to be shipped over.

The completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1885 meant that, as far as
the Canadian government was concerned, there was no more need for Chinese
immigration. Many of the workers who had survived the building of the railway
found work in B.C.’s deadly coalmines, where they faced the same conditions of
exploitation. In Cumberland, home to some of the world’s most deadly coalmines
at the time, the museum still displays the original company lists of the names
of hundreds of miners killed on the job. Names, that is, unless the fallen
miner was Chinese, in which case he was listed, “Chinaman #1, Chinaman #2, etc…”

In 1885, the Canadian government passed the infamous “Chinese Immigration
Act”, requiring a $50 head tax on each Chinese immigrant to Canada. This
amount was raised to $100 in 1900, and $500 in 1904 (a significant amount of
money at the time). Additionally, the Chinese Immigration Act threatened
Chinese workers with deportation if they participated in a union. In
Cumberland’s Big Strike of 1912, this meant that the Chinese workers, having
paid their life savings to come to Canada, crossed the picket lines, creating
a major rift between the workers, along racial lines. The same scenario was
played out elsewhere.

The ruling class continues to use racism to justify the increased exploitation
of groups of workers. In America, Latin American immigrants are paid poverty
wages to subsidize the profits of huge janitorial companies. Filipino women
with multiple science degrees are employed for less than minimum wage to care
for the children of wealthy Canadians and Americans. In large factories,
workers are divided by race, with foremen who speak their own language, in
hopes that this will undermine any possible attempts at unionization. In these
instances, racism is not just about race, but about profit. Race is simply a
pawn in the profit-making game of the capitalists.

To view racism as a simple issue of one race pitted against another, or even
one race exploiting another is a gross over-simplification. In a system that
prioritizes profit at all cost, racial, religious, cultural, and other
differences will be exploited wherever it is profitable. The specifics are
somewhat random. As an example, a Spanish woman immigrating to Britain might
be expected to clean toilets for a poverty wage and be treated as a second
class citizen. In the Americas however, and South America in particular, where
the Spanish were the colonizers, this same woman would enjoy a position of
privilege where race is concerned.

We find that all around the world, there are those that exploit and those that
are exploited – those that profit off the work of others, and those that work
for the profit of others. Both camps include people of all races, religions,
cultures and ethnicities. It would be ignorant to deny that racial inequality
exists. Race however, is not sufficient as an explanation for it. If it is a
simple matter of “all whites” as a homogeneous group naturally being prone to
subjugate “all non-whites” as a homogenous group, then we have no explanation
for the Condoleeza Rices and the Li Ka-shings of the world, or for the
millions of white working class and poor people who themselves struggle to
survive within the capitalist system.

Racism and other prejudices are born out of fear, ignorance and superstition,
including religious superstition. What could foster racism more than a belief
that “my people” will go to heaven, while all others will not? Even supposedly
alternative concepts such as the new age take on karma or the notion
(popularized by The Secret) – that “if you only visualize positive things,
they will come to you” – foster and enforce racism and distract from the class
divisions and economic system that really cause misery around the world. These
ideas are a slap in the face to the third world. Are whole regions of Africa
and the Middle East in a current state of barbarism because the people there
did not “ask, believe, and receive” good things? Are the world’s wealthiest
elite in the United States in the positions they are in because of the good
they have done for others? The conclusions that one would have to draw are absurd.

The capitalist class maintains and, when profitable, attempts to deepen
prejudices among the working class. The capitalist system itself also sustains
prejudices by creating want and competition among neighbours. It is ignorance
about the lives and beliefs of other people that makes someone who is visibly
“different” an easy target for blame when life feels like a constant and
confusing struggle. Without want and hardship, there would be no need to seek
such scapegoats. Without ignorance and superstition, there would be no reason
to fear those who look different or lead different lives. But want and
hardship will exist as long as the capitalist system exists, because it
depends on the increasing exploitation of the majority of the population.
Ignorance and superstition will similarly exist as long as a whole layer of
society are deprived of a decent education.

The socialist transformation of society will sweep away all of the class
contradictions, poverty and despair that breed prejudice. The billions of
dollars produced on a daily basis will be freed up and invested in real decent
social programs, including healthcare and free education. Full employment will
lead to shorter working hours, freeing up time for education and participation
in the running of society. Rising standards for the vast majority of the
world’s population will do away with feelings of fear, want and competition.
There will be no reason to seek scapegoats when the real culprit – the
capitalist system – has been eliminated. Socialism will create the material
preconditions for a world without racism.

Campaigning against racism, sexism and other prejudices is not enough to do
away with these symptoms of a sick society. Absolutely, we must fight with
determination against the ignorance and prejudice that exist in the ranks of
the labour movement, but it must be in the larger context of doing away with
the capitalist system, or our efforts and precious time will be wasted.