WWII and race in the Post-Nazi era
Part VI of a series on the history of race in Canada and the US. After the end of World War II, there was a significant shift in race-thinking. As the horrors of the holocaust came into popular awareness, it became less acceptable to talk about the differences between races in general, and white-supremacy in…
Income Disparity: Part II
Of the G8 countries, the US has the largest income disparity between the highest and lowest income earners. Canada isn’t far behind.
Between the world wars: 1920s and 1930s
Part V of a series on the history of race in Canada and the US. As the western world was rebuilding itself in the wake of World War I, races continued to be seen as a ‘natural’ way of categorizing humans. During this time, Caucasian became more widely used to describe an increasingly broad range…
1870s to 1924: Increasing immigration
Part IV of a series on the history of race in Canada and the US. “To become White has often been constructed as synonymous with becoming truly American” (Maher, 1997, p. 4). The end of the civil war in the US and the resulting massive internal migration of African-Americans through the 1870s, as well as…
The “White Canada” Policy
Part III of a series on the history of race in Canada and the US. Canada is often described as a “nation of immigrants.” This telling of history often includes “Canada’s present-day Indian and Inuit [who] became this country’s first immigrants when they journeyed to America by way of the Bering Strait” (Knowles, 2007, p….
Early race history: Slavery and Colonization
Part II of a series on the history of race in Canada and the US. In the US, whiteness was enshrined by Congress as early as 1790, when “all free white persons” had the opportunity to become citizens. Although Congress included white in the definition of who could become a citizen, it did not articulate…
A Brief History of ‘Race’ in Canada and the US
This is the first of a series that I will post on the history of race in Canada and the US. The word race, as it refers to biological or genetic differentiations among humans, first appeared in the english language in the last decade of the fifteenth century, the same time that Europeans arrived for…
Anti-racist cartoons
I just came across this great cartoonist who has a whole page dedicated to anti-racist cartoons. Intelligent, insightful and funny… this is the kind of culture I want to be part of creating! It turns out that he is also the artist that drew one of my all-time favourite cartoons about the history of race…
Increasing disparity
A report released in 2008 by the OECD shows that in most developed countries the gap is growing between the rich and the poor. The important thing to note is that it is growing in most countries. This shows that this growing gap is not inevitable (not that we thought it was – but some…