Making Chinese-Canadian masculinities in Vancouver's physical education curriculum

Abstract

Our paper illustrates how males of Chinese descent in British Columbia (BC) have historically been victims of overt and subtle forms of discrimination, and describes how racism is and was integrally linked to notions of class, gender and the body. Highlighted in our historical overview are issues around race and masculinity for Chinese males as they existed (and still exist) in the BC educational system, especially in sport-related and physical education (PE) contexts. We examine how some of these issues continue to impact Vancouver's schools through Millington's (2006) study of masculinities in secondary PE which showed how that environment, while offering the potential for various masculinities to flourish, tended to promote hegemonic gender identities as ‘normal’. In particular, we show how Chinese-Canadian boys, both Canadian born as well as more recent immigrants from Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China, continue to be subject to subtle racist understandings of Chinese masculinities—understandings that are often camouflaged by the dominant national rhetoric of multiculturalism. We conclude the paper by arguing that if indeed schools’ curricula exacerbate problematic understandings of race and masculinity that underlie discriminatory behaviours and attitudes, then physical educators need the tools to develop strategies for change.

Keywords:

• Chinese-Canadian masculinities
• Physical education
• Racism
• Multiculturalism
• Secondary schools

Notes

1. Li points out that culturally it is difficult to justify treating all the people of China and the Chinese Diaspora as one entity since historical conditions and social realities have produced many variations. We are talking here of the Chinese in Canada even though many of them originated in their own generation or in their ancestral past from China (Li, 1998, p. 5). BC Stats., Distribution of Ethnic Identities in BC Schools, 2001.

2. Edward Said (1979) has described Orientalism as a ‘western style of dominating, restructuring, and having authority’ over the non-western world. Imaginings of the Orient, including China, have functioned, he says, in opposition to whatever symbolized the West and often portrayed the ‘sensuality, promise, terror, sublimity, idyllic pleasure and intense energy of this region of the world’ (pp. 3, 118).

3. At which time the Chinese were 6% of the total population—down from 20% in the 1880s. The exclusion act lasted for 24 years. No new arrivals were allowed into the country. The Government of Canada officially apologized to the Chinese community in Canada on 21 June 2006 for demanding this head tax and has agreed to pay $20,000 to each Chinese-Canadian still alive who was levied such a tax. Few are still alive.

4. There were large numbers of single old men in Vancouver's Chinatown dwelling in bunkhouses in ‘Coolie Cabins’ or in small rooms in wooden boarding houses, back alley shacks and shop cellars (McDonald, 1996).

5. The sex imbalance among the Chinese during these years was about 25 times that of the national average and though it decreased it remained relatively high until 1981 (Li, 1998, p. 65).

6. ‘The Chinese enter a protest’, The Victoria Daily Columnist, June 12, 1902, p. 3.

7. Cautionary warnings often came from community elders who focused on the notion of ‘play ball, no rice to eat.’ (Zieff, 2000).

8. Similar perceptions of Japanese athletes in Vancouver in the 1920s was evidenced by public perceptions of the famous Japanese Asahi baseball team. By comparison with white Canadian athletes they were infantilized and feminized through the characterization of their highly technical and intricate style of play as ‘little ball’ or ‘brain ball’ in comparison to the larger body types and more aggressive style of play of the white Canadian teams (Jette, 2007).

9. The immigrant act of 1967 removed race and ethnicity as criteria for entering Canada.

10. The scenic British Properties of West Vancouver that are controlled to this day by England's famous Guinness family were most notable in their exclusion of non-white communities where no person of African or Asiatic descent (except servants of the occupier of the premises in residence) shall reside or be allowed to remain on the premises (British Properties, 1942). Similar restrictions were employed in the city's posh Point Grey and Shaughnessy regions, as well as in certain parts of east Vancouver (Anderson, 1991; Wynn & Oke, 1992, p. 137).

11. From 1985 to 1994, there were 243,888 immigrants from Hong Kong, 41,176 from Taiwan and 67,903 from mainland China. (Citizenship and Immigration Canada, 1993–1994 Immigration Statistics, Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services).

12. An example here is the often stated anxiety that Chinese-Canadian students, by virtue of their superior grades (earned from long hours of study which leaves them little time to become ‘balanced’ citizens) were gaining too many places in medical schools and top colleges and that ‘foreigners’ were taking up places due to Canadian youth. Similar anxieties have been aired in the US and the UK around the ‘model minority’, leading to suggestions, for example, that the Chinese are inward looking and do not wish to assimilate with working class groups (Lee, 1996). ‘In fact the “model minority” stereotype serves Whiteness in that it allows Asian students to be grouped together, rendered invisible and dismissed, all under the pretext that this is an Asian cultural preference’ (Diangelo, 2006; Cheng, 1996, p. 1994).

13. See, for example, PE-BC, Action Schools!BC, and the Canadian Association of Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance as well as the BC Teacher's Federation.

14. The Teacher's Federation is also a part of the International Solidarity Program that deals with issues such as gender equity, labour justice and anti-privatization of education in the global context (BC Teacher's Federation, 2006).