John A. Macdonald, “the Chinese” and Racist State Formation in Canada

Abstract

In 1885, John Alexander Macdonald took the right to vote away from men racialized as Chinese on the grounds that they were biologically different from “Canadians” and that their presence threatened “the Aryan character” of Canadian society. Through the 1885 Electoral Franchise Act, Macdonald was seeking to consolidate colonial expansion into the west by constituting the federal polity around the owners of private property, i.e., of land that had been converted from the collective control of Indigenous people. As elsewhere in the world, European colonialism in Canada involved taking control of Indigenous people’s territories and converting it to the private ownership of European colonizers. Making ownership of property the key to membership in the federal polity explains Macdonald’s initial support for giving the vote to women. It also explains why his legislation gave the vote to Indigenous people who met the property qualification. For Macdonald, ownership of private property was the final proof of an individual’s acculturation to colonial dominance. Property-owners from China, by contrast, threatened European dominance in British Columbia. Basing exclusion on alleged biological difference made it inescapable and permanent. The 1885 Act was thus a key moment in forming the racist state in Canada. Indeed, the strong opposition to Macdonald’s introduction of biological racism, including in the Canadian Senate on the part of his own appointees, underscores the significance of this change, one that would have consequences for racialized and excluded groups for many years to come

The ‘Other’ Here and the ‘Other’ There:

“…For many years, however, I chalked each encounter up to an experience with an ignorant person. I did not consider them in terms of their relationships to wider societal systems of nationalist exclusions (Hage, 2000;Stanley, 2016). I began to find ways of understanding these encounters and of unpacking myself through delving into works that helped me develop a poststructuralist, anti-essentialist epistemological lens, particularly applied to antiracist, national, and cultural analyses, in an attempt to recognize the social construction of the racialized and (trans)national boxes I placed myself within and concomitantly the effects and affects they had/have on my sense of place.…”

“…And, although the debate over which comes first, "race" or racism, has yet to be settled, there is an overwhelming stance that "race" is a constructed category. Stanley (2011;2016) outlines that for a racism to occur, a person or group must first be racialized, and then excluded, where they experience significant negative consequences as a result of the exclusion. What this means is racisms do not just create "race" by imposing essentialized meaning upon differences, and continue to re-create "race" in relation to changing contexts (Stanley, 2016) and do so in support or justification of acts of division and exclusion (Goldberg, 2009;Miles, 1989).…”

The Capaciousness of No: Affective Refusals as Literacy Practices

“…Scholars of color have critiqued the whiteness of literacies for decades (Kinloch, 2010; Ladson‐Billings & Tate, 1995; Richardson, 2006), including the role of literacy in othering and colonizing practices (Stanley, 2016; Tarc, 2015; Viruru, 2012). In our various research, we have turned to affect theory, feminist new materialist, Indigenous, and critical race scholarship to help us make sense of literacies that are both sensible and nonsensible, material and immaterial (Burnett, Merchant, Pahl, & Rowsell, 2014; Tarc, 2015).…”

“…This manifests through ongoing practices of excluding those who do not fit into a humanist logic (and deeming them illiterate) or rehabilitating some (making them literate enough) to function within the system. An example of how this logic operates is the Canadian Residential School System, which used the practices of civilizing Indigenous people through literacy practices (Stanley, 2016). The overrepresentation of white, cis‐hetero, male authors and characters in literary texts used in the school curriculum demonstrates the figure of humanity that is deemed universal and valued in countries such as Australia, England, and Wales, where we conducted the research discussed in this article.…”

The Legacy of Sir John A. Macdonald: How a Historical Inquiry Project Led to an Understanding of Racial Literacy

“…He became engaged with this project when he listened to Timothy Stanley speak, and specifically when Stanley discussed SJAM as "having a white supremacist vision of Canada" and that he committed "genocide" towards First Nations (see also Stanley, 2016). Steve found this viewpoint to be vastly different and overwhelmingly critical compared with anything he had ever heard about SJAM, and he turned his project into a quest to ask many different sources their opinion on this statement.…”