Abstract

First and foremost, the surge of anti-Asian racism and other forms of racial discrimination should be analyzed in relation to historical and current settler colonialism. According to American historian Shoemaker (2015), settler colonialism denotes a process of foreign intrusion and domination in which “large numbers of settlers claim land and become the majority”. In a settler colonial state like Canada, this ongoing process entails a dynamic triangulation of Indigenous, settler, and alien populations: (1) a logic of elimination functions to make the state “white” through the decimation of Indigenous populations, and (2) a logic of exclusion serves to keep the state “white” through immigrant exploitation and racial exclusion.

To justify the ongoing theft of indigenous land for profit, settler colonialism embraces racially hierarchical narratives that legitimize white settlers’ dominance over First Nations and other ethnic minorities. As a result, media narratives tend to deem Indigenous communities as trapped in perpetual suffering of social and economic hardship, rarely acknowledging the long-lasting damage colonial policies have done to these native communities. During the initial months of the “Idle No More” movement, for instance, Canadian print media produced considerable critiques against Indigenous activists and their settler allies, which, by framing Indigenous-led civil obedience as irrational and wrongly motivated, implicitly indicated Canadian settler colonialism as a historical past instead of present-day reality (Chen, 2018).

Like First Nations, ethnic minorities are subject to a racial hierarchy set by settler colonialism. There are three parallel processes sustaining the reproduction of this hierarchy: Indigenous elimination, anti-Black racism, and immigrant exploitation (Kashyap, 2020). Overseas Asians and Asian Americans coming to Canada have been targeted by strategies of immigrant exploitation and exclusion throughout the Canadian history. Although early Asian migrants such as early Chinese immigrants arrived before Canada became a state, they had never been fully accepted as Canadians.

Instead, from as early as the era of transcontinental railroad building which relied on the cheap labor of Chinese workers, Asian immigrants have been a vulnerable labor force whose existence was purposefully controlled at the border. Limiting Asian immigration began in 1885 with the imposition of a head tax on Chinese migrants. The Komagata Maru incident excluding immigrants from India later in 1914 also illustrates that white Canadians wanted Canada to be “a white man’s country”. Between 1895 and 1950, there were more than 175 anti-Asian laws in Canada, most notably, the Chinese Exclusion Act (1923) and the Internment Act to persecute Japanese Canadians during World War II (1942). These racist immigration policies were central to defining who was a “citizen” and who was a “foreigner”. They were created to assure white domination.

Today, Canada’s immigrant policies, despite their improvement, continue to exploit Asian Canadians and immigrants. They are often abstracted as economic expressions of alien capital all in the interests of white (re)settlement. Currently, Canada runs a “Start-Up Visa” program aiming at attracting selected, privileged groups such as wealthy migrants and those with foreign capital investment. In sharp contrast, the racialized temporary migrant labor programs such as migrant live-in caregiver program (predominantly Filipina women), admit migrant workers into the country to perform labor deemed unattractive yet necessary for the well-being of Canadian citizens. These migrant workers often remain within a few, lower-skilled occupations when they switch jobs, even after receiving legal permanent resident status.

Therefore, the current surge of anti-Asian racism in Canada reveals the inconvenient truth that Asians, even after raising multiple generations here, are still seen as “perpetual foreigners” and the embodiment of the “Yellow Peril” threat. Even the “model minority” myth, which presents a seemingly positive stereotype, distorts the realities of many working-class Asians’ daily lives (Lee-An & Chen, 2021). By portraying Asians as hard-working, independent, intelligent, and economically prosperous, this myth denies the socio-economic, political, and educational barriers faced by Asian Canadians and Asian Americans.

As poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong argues, the persistence of the model minority myth in the public mind puts Asians in a tough spot in North America’s racial hierarchy: “Neither Black nor White, Asians are simultaneously stereotyped as model minorities and perpetual foreigners, and thus used as a wedge between Black and white people” (Ome, 2021). Indeed, if we trace how the myth emerged in public discourse, it becomes evident that the initial advocacy of Asians being the ‘model’ over other minorities occurred during the 1960s when the Civil Rights movement struggled for the equal rights of African Americans (Chun, 2020). This is hardly a mere coincidence.

Not only is Canadian mainstream media culture largely amnesiac about the above historical facts, its tolerance and indifference to anti-Asian sentiment have played a crucial role in nurturing violence like the Atlanta shootings.

2.2 The Flaws of Canadian Multiculturalism

In Canada, racial issues are often discussed under the concept “multiculturalism”, which can be understood as “a feel-good celebration of ethno-cultural diversity, encouraging citizens to acknowledge and embrace the panoply of customs, traditions, music and cuisine that exist in a multiethnic society” (Kymlicka, 2010, p. 98). To the Canadian society, multiculturalism is a demographic fact, a national policy, as well as an ideology (Berry, 2013). It is a demographic fact since Canada is the most multicultural country with the highest percentage of foreign-born citizens in the world. This country of immigration is a society of mixed races, languages, cultures, religions, and more.

In 1971, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau announced multiculturalism as an official government policy. Under this policy, ethnic groups are granted the right to preserve and develop their own cultures within Canadian society so as to promote public respect for ethno-cultural diversity. Overtime, multiculturalism has also become an ideology and been integrated into part of Canada’s national identity. Today, most Canadians take pride in multiculturalism. Indeed, a recent survey shows that over 70 percent of Canadians hold a positive view toward multiculturalism (Canseco, 2020).

In recent decades, however, Canadian multiculturalism has been increasingly criticized for its inherent flaws (Benhabib, 2002; Kymlicka, 2015; Phillips, 2009). While celebrating inclusion and accommodation, this policy has largely failed to address the widespread racial and ethnic disparities in Canadian society (Herry, Rees, & Tator, 2010; Simpson, James, & Mack, 2011). This is because multiculturalism ignores the harsh reality of the widespread economic and political inequalities in Canadian society. Accommodating cultural distinctiveness and diversity alone will not solve the inequalities but instead exacerbate power inequalities between the majority and the minority groups.

Indeed, multicultural practices often result in labor market discrimination and downward mobility of immigrants. Pakistani women in Toronto, for instance, must sometimes suitably display their cultural distinctiveness and at other times learn how to dress and act in a way to conform to the culture of the dominant group to navigate the job market (Ameeriar, 2012). Another telling example is the Canadian Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program, which, as Perry (2012, p. 189) argues, presents “a relic of Canada’s racist and colonial past, one that continues uninterrupted in the present age of statist multiculturalism”. By regulating the rights and freedoms of an ongoing flow of temporary non-citizens, the program allows the Canadian state to simultaneously maintain its moral superiority and construct an invisible racial hierarchy exploiting foreign temporary workers.

Canada’s “management” of ethno-cultural diversity through multiculturalism also fails to control racism against ethno-racial minorities (Henry, 2002). Although many Canadians see multiculturalism as a symbol of Canadian identity, those who feel that immigration levels are too high also represent a considerable proportion of the Canadian population. A recent survey has revealed that while most Canadians agree that diversity is a defining characteristic of Canada, they also believe that too many minority groups are seeking special treatment and they blame immigrants for not adopting “Canadian values”, whatever they are (Scotti, 2018). In fact, Canadian multiculturalism has provided a tacit basis for discrimination and racial violence. Below, we outline three major reasons for why its flaws contribute to the rise of anti-Asian racism.

First, promoting multiculturalism as Canada’s national identity has allowed Canadians to ignore the harsh realities of many minorities and to refute the claim that racism is alive and well in the country. Denying its existence allows racism to fester and persist. This contributes not only to the rise of anti-Asian racism during the COVID-19 pandemic, but also to the lack of interest in discussing racism against Asians or simply Canadian racism. As a result, when Asians encounter racism, they are oftentimes forced to put up with it, not knowing who to turn for help and how to cope with it.

Second, multiculturalism serves as an institutional mechanism that protects whites from social interaction with visible minorities. It has led to the creation of segregated racial and ethno-cultural enclaves (Simpson et al., 2011). Thus far, multiculturalism has only served to maintain the status quo, allowing for the preservation of the cultural hegemony of the dominant cultural group. Indeed, after half a century of practice, visible minority groups are still invisible and the English, and to a lesser extent, the French, have continued to play a central role in defining Canadian society and culture (Henry & Tator, 2006). Anti-Asian racism is integrally tied to the fact that Asian Canadians continue to be segregated socially, economically, and politically in Canada.

Third, multiculturalism tends to neglect the fact that cultures are not static but can be constantly updated and adapted. By foregrounding the idea of culture as the property of an ethnic group or race, it reinforces the othering process that perceives minorities as eternally distinctive and different. According to Phillips (2009, p. 14), multiculturalism “exaggerates the internal unity of cultures, solidifies differences that are currently more fluid, and makes people from other cultures seem more exotic and distinct than they really are”. By dividing people into ethnic boxes and using the boxes to highlight their distinctiveness and define their needs and rights, multiculturalism policies also run the risk of contributing to intergroup competition and threat. The aforementioned “model minority” myth, for instance, purports the erroneous view that systemic racism against Asians does not exist since they have ‘succeeded’ in Canada. It also ignores the tremendous heterogeneity and diversity within the broader Asian Canadian population, which is made up of a multitude of ethnicities, cultures, languages, and immigration experiences. By constructing Asians as the answer to racial and economic challenges, as the model race, as the deserving other, the established racial hierarchy also uses Asians to justify the ongoing racism toward black and indigenous people.

2.3 The Return of “Yellow Peril”

Having reviewed both global and local factors contributing to anti-Asian racism in Canada, we now turn to the Canadian media sphere where global and local discourses meet. Media framing of the COVID-19 pandemic plays an important role in mediating public expressions of prejudice and xenophobia. Recent analyses of pandemic related news coverage such as Bolsen, Palm, and Kingsland (2020), Calvillo, Ross, Garcia, Smelter, and Rutchick (2020), and Dhanani and Franz (2021) have collectively demonstrated that when media stories emphasize the pandemic’s severe economic and social impacts or wrongfully accuse the connection between COVID-19 and China, people reading them are more likely to express negative attitudes toward Asians and to hold the belief that resources should be prioritized for citizens instead of immigrants.

These analyses are also sharply critical of right-wing media outlets’ repeated reference of COVID-19 as either “the China virus” or “the Chinese virus”. Dhanani and Franz (2021), for instance, argue that linking the virus to the country reporting it for the first time presents a problematic adoption of stigmatizing language that intentionally seeks to stoke up criticisms of Chinese cultural practices, skepticism of the Chinese government, and sensationalized depictions of Chinese food outlets. From a social-psychological perspective, people’s tendency to connect outgroups with the threat of contracting a disease or illness roots in an adaptive and self-protective response (Faulkner, Schaller, Park, & Duncan, 2004).Consequently, framing techniques that foreground the connection between COVID-19 and foreigners reinforce existing biases against outgroups, thereby increasing prejudicial responses.

Therefore, the “insider versus outsider” dichotomy, by implicitly framing Asian communities as a threat to Western society and culture, has provoked socially entrenched racism and xenophobia (Le, Cha, Han, & Tseng, 2020; Wang et al., 2020). In addition, its frequent appearances in North America’s COVID-19 coverage have contributed significantly to the return of “Yellow Peril” tropes in public discourse (Calvillo et al., 2020; Chun, 2020; Luo, 2021).

Indeed, the associations between disease, racism, and Asian Americans are hardly new in North America. The stigmatization and “othering” of people of Asian descent follows a historically recurring process that tends to be amplified and replicated “when widespread fear of catching disease engenders prejudice against groups that are different from the majority population, positioning them as effective scapegoats” (Gover, Harper, & Langton, 2020, p. 661).

The alarming return of “Yellow Peril” tropes manifests itself on both institutional and individual levels (Elias, Ben, Mansouri, & Paradies, 2021; Roberto, Johnson, & Rauhaus, 2020). On the institutional level, government policies such as elevated tax burdens, education and housing segregation, barriers to citizenship (Gover et al., 2020) further sustain racial inequalities. On the individual level, research has identified people’s leaning toward “white Christian nationalism” as a powerful predictor of whether they deem bigoted exclusionary practices as acceptable. Hyped up by Trump and his supporters, white Christian nationalism functions as a proxy for political and religious conservatism, which wrongly “equates national belonging and membership with ethnocultural markers including race, nativity, and religious background” (Perry, Whitehead, & Grubbs, 2020, p. 2). Under this kind of influence, racially dominant and well-established groups are more likely to perceive people of Asian descent as “foreigners” outside their place of belonging who threaten the “normality” of Western societies.

Notably, over the past few years, the prevalence of white nationalism in online disinformation has led to the concerning radicalization of certain segments of the general population who hold hostile attitudes toward Asian minorities even before the current pandemic (Marwick & Lewis, 2017). According to Davey, Hart, and Guerin (2020, p. 40) in their recent analysis of right-wing extremist activists across mainstream and alternative social media platforms, “attacks on and discussion of the Muslim community, immigrants and Justin Trudeau are particularly salient to right-wing extremism actors”. Nonetheless, more alarming is the trend that “right-wing extremists in Canada” are getting used to conveying hateful narratives in implicit ways, “becoming adept at treading the fine line around what is permissible within the terms of service for social media platforms” (Davey et al., 2020, p. 40).

This means that underlying a seemingly peaceful atmosphere could be quietly growing racial tensions. Right-wing extremism covertly spreading via social media platforms is a major contributor to pandemic-fueled racism, which recently has transformed the city of Vancouver into “North America’s anti-Asian hate crime capital” (Pearson, 2021).

In sum, the escalation of socio-political conflicts, worsened by the ongoing pandemic and sharpened by Donald Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric, is undeniably responsible for the loss of lives caused by anti-Asian hate crimes. Current Canadian mainstream media culture, however, has largely failed to respond to the attacks by right-wing extremism and white supremacy.

3 Discussion: Politicizing Transcultural Communication