DAN BERLADYN
Article 2021-08-30 21:10:34

🍁 SIR JOHN A MACDONALD

Sir John A. MacDonald
https://www.bankofcanada.ca/banknotes/bank-note-series/frontiers/10-polymer-note/

Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald personally introduced race as a defining legal principle of the state, using the term "Aryan" to describe the ideal racial makeup of Canada. He argued that different races were biologically distinct and incompatible.

"If you look around the world you will see that the Aryan races will not wholesomely amalgamate with the Africans or the Asiatics. It is not to be desired that they should come; that we should have a mongrel race, that the Aryan character of the future of British America should be destroyed by a cross or crosses of that kind".

This "Aryan vision" underpinned policies of exclusion and assimilation, including the Chinese head tax, the Chinese Exclusion Act (1923), and the residential school system for Indigenous children, which aimed to "civilize" Indigenous people by separating them from their "savage" parents and culture.

In 1885, during a House of Commons debate over the Chinese Immigration Act (which included an amendment to the Electoral Franchise Act that stripped men of Chinese heritage of the right to vote), Macdonald argued against Chinese immigration and participation in the Canadian political system.

“if [the Chinese] came in great numbers and settled on the Pacific coast they might control the vote of that whole Province, and they would send Chinese representative to sit here, who would represent Chinese eccentricities, Chinese immorality, Asiatic principles altogether opposite to our wishes; and, in the even balance of parties, they might enforce those Asiatic principles, those immoralities . . . , the eccentricities which are abhorrent to the Aryan race and Aryan principles, on this House.”

MacDonald said the Chinese took White jobs and would go on to breed a “mongrel” race in British Columbia which would only threaten the “Aryan” character of the Dominion. In his view, the prospect of having White working classes living alongside Chinese could lead only to “Evil”.

His policies shaped efforts to create a white supremacist state system in Canada. One where white supremacist views are honoured, and rewarded with public momuments. This is the very foundation of the country, and this historical context is central to discussions.