Contesting White Supremacy: School Segregation, Anti-Racism, and the Making of Chinese Canadians - Softcover

Stanley, Timothy J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0774819324 ISBN 13: 9780774819329

Publisher: UBC Press, 2011

Synopsis

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 this title

About the Author

Timothy J. Stanley is a professor of anti-racism education and education foundations in the Faculty of Education at the University of Ottawa.

From the Back Cover

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 and runs against the grain of mainstream accounts of Asian exclusion, which tend to ignore the agency of the excluded. In Contesting White Supremacy, Timothy Stanley combines Chinese sources and perspectives with an innovative theory of racism and anti-racism to explain the strike and construct an alternative reading of racism in British Columbia. His work demonstrates that education was an arena in which white supremacy confronted Chinese nationalist schooling and where parents and students contested racism by constructing a new category - Chinese Canadian - to define their identity.

From the Inside Flap

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 and runs against the grain of mainstream accounts of Asian exclusion, which tend to ignore the agency of the excluded. In Contesting White Supremacy, Timothy Stanley combines Chinese sources and perspectives with an innovative theory of racism and anti-racism to explain the strike and construct an alternative reading of racism in British Columbia. His work demonstrates that education was an arena in which white supremacy confronted Chinese nationalist schooling and where parents and students contested racism by constructing a new category - Chinese Canadian - to define their identity.

Edition details

• Publisher: UBC Press
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0774819324
• ISBN 13: 9780774819329
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 344