本文发表在 rolia.net 枫下论坛Prof. Henry Yu History Department, UBC

Henry Yu is a professor of History at the University of British of Columbia. He was born in Vancouver and graduated from UBC, the son of immigrants from China but also the fourth generation greatgrandson of Chinese migrants who came to B.C. in the 19th century.
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Thirty years after CTV aired its infamous W5 program insinuating that Canadian universities had too many “Asians,” Macleans magazine repeats the same error of using racial stereotyping to make a nonsensical argument.

Rather than dealing with the true issues of meritocracy, the role of universities in screening for the rewards of p...rofessional careers, and whether higher education means more than just a higher income later in life, Macleans obscures any insights it might make with racist profiling of “Asians” and “whites.”

Do the journalists and editors of Macleans and the Toronto Star not know the history of anti-Asian agitation in Canada and the United States?

The title “Too Asian” draws upon over a century of racist politics using the term “Asian” to flatten everyone who looks “Oriental” in the eyes of bigots into a single category which is somehow threatening to “white” Canadians. Have we not advanced enough over the last 30 years to recognize that people with black hair who do not look like their families came from Europe can still be “Canadian,” rather than the assumption that the writers make that they must be eternal foreigners and the opposite of “Canadian” and “born in Canada”?

Judging from the first 300 comments on Macleans’ online edition, amost every single one of which was more articulate and intelligent than the journalists in dismissing the article as being pointless and inflammatory, we hope that a younger generation of Canadians who have grown up in a much more engaged and diverse society than the Macleans newsroom see a future that no longer needs to rely on racist stereotypes and fear mongering. Perhaps that is the lesson of the silly article, that our young bloggers and non-journalists from a wide spectrum of backgrounds are more insightful than the segregated newsrooms of so many of our English and French language media print media, where nary a non-white face interrupts the fantasy world within which our reporters and editors continue their dialogues only with each other.

Each day in my classes I hear intelligent and humane dialogues between students of every colour and from everywhere around the world, something that makes UBC and other Canadian universities special places that seemingly have better sense than anyone in a position of responsibility at Macleans or the Toronto Star.更多精彩文章及讨论，请光临枫下论坛 rolia.net