Why can't racists get more creative with it?
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When answering how anti-”Hindoo” sentiment in BC and California was related to racism against west-coast Chinese and Japanese, Orientalsim comes strongly into question; it was the result of already well-established stereotypes surrounding the Orient and its people, and because of this, “white perceptions of East Indians were framed by the community’s fixed assumptions about previous Asian immigrants” (Ward, 82). In other words, as Ward points out in the fifth chapter of his book entitled White Canada Forever, the anti-”Hindoo” sentiment shared parallels with the Sinophobia and Japanophobia that preceded it, though it manifested itself in its own particular forms of hostility and to varying degrees. That is not to say that this racist fear was anything new, in fact it simply presents itself as a recycled reason for imposing racist hierarchies on a new influx of immigrants who pose a threat to the white and civilised "destiny" of the west-coast. This sentiment did not arise in isolation, but drew upon existing animosity towards the Chinese and Japanese immigrants of the west-coast. Since East Indians were seen as “merely another dimension of the province’s longstanding Oriental problem”, such that they were “unclean, diseased, and a threat to public health”, it is clear that these fears regarding the new arrivals to BC echoed similar fears that were once directed towards the Chinese (Ward, 83).
Additionally, it is worth mentioning that although the racist stereotypes attributed to East Indians on the west-coast stemmed from those already existing related to the Orient, the Chinese, and Japanese, this was only a starting point as “a distinct image soon formed in the minds of the west coast whites” (Ward, 82). The preconceived stereotypes that white Canadians had of East Indians aligned with colonial depictions, such as India being framed as a “land of teeming millions, of filth and squalor, of exotic, peculiar customs, and therefore differed slightly from those of the Chinese and Japanese. Nonetheless, both groups were seen as fundamentally unassimilable, which reinforced the racial hierarchies already present on the west-coast. This strong sentiment perpetuated politics and Labour Councils in the province, with the Secretary of Victoria TLC affirming that East Indians were “found to be both unwilling and incapable of assimilating with the people of the western races who have settled and developed this country” (Ward, 83). It was believed that the admission of East Indians would be detrimental to the future of a civilised society in BC since they were seen as being “outside the mainstream of life in the province” (Ward, 83). This fear of a cultural and racial divide reflected the same anxieties that had fuelled the resistance to Chinese and Japanese integration - this was clearly nothing new and white Canada's oppressive tactics were clearly lacking some creativity.