The Chinese Immigration [Exclusion] Act, 1923 andthe Structure of Anti-Chinese Racism in Canada

The Chinese Immigration Act, 1923, also known as the Chinese Exclusion Act, banned the entry of Chinese people to Canada and required all Chinese in Canada, including the Canadian born, to register with the government. The act devastated Chinese Canadian lives and communities. This paper applies two of Hannah Arendt's insights into the social organization of totalitarianism to understand how anti-Chinese racism has been structured. Focusing on the discourse of Asian/Chinese exclusion in the Canadian House of Commons and Senate in 1922 and 1923, the paper shows that the idea of Chinese exclusion was closely linked to the white supremacist vision of Canada that its land and resources were and should be the monopoly of people of European origins. As such, anti-Chineseracism was not just an ideology, or individual prejudices or ignorance, but it was a social structure that was integral to the making of the country, and whose invention can be traced historically. The historical activity of the Chinese in trying to stop the passing of the act brings the functioning of this social structure into sharp relief. The consequences of this structure continue today.