History Post-confederation (1867-)
Contesting White Supremacy
School Segregation, Anti-Racism, and the Making of Chinese Canadians
- Publisher
- UBC Press
- Initial publish date
- Jan 2011
- Category
- Post-Confederation (1867-), British Columbia (BC), Historiography, General, Discrimination & Race Relations
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9780774819329
- Publish Date
- Jul 2011
- List Price
- $34.95
-
Hardback
- ISBN
- 9780774819312
- Publish Date
- Feb 2011
- List Price
- $36.95
-
eBook
- ISBN
- 9780774819336
- Publish Date
- Jan 2011
- List Price
- $34.95
Classroom Resources
Where to buy it
Description
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 at the time and runs against the grain of mainstream accounts of Asian exclusion, which tend to ignore the agency of the excluded.
Contesting White Supremacy offers an alternative reading of racism in British Columbia. Drawing on Chinese sources and perspectives and an innovative theory of racism and anti-racism to explain the strike, Timothy Stanley demonstrates that by the 1920s migrants from China and their BC-born children actively resisted policy makers’ efforts to organize white supremacy into the very texture of life. The education system served as an arena where white supremacy confronted Chinese nationalist schooling and where parents and students rejected the idea of being either Chinese or Canadian and instead invented a new category – Chinese Canadian – to define their identity.
About the author
Awards
- Winner, Founder Award, Canadian History of Education Association
- Winner, Clio Award for British Columbia, Canadian Historical Association
Contributor Notes
Timothy J. Stanley is a professor of anti-racism education and education foundations in the Faculty of Education at the University of Ottawa.