Deconstructing Whiteness: an Analysis of Dominant Perceptions of Chinese University Students

Home , Perpetual foreigner

Deconstructing Whiteness: An Analysis of Dominant Perceptions of Chinese University Students

Elisabeth Sian Dennis

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts

Department of Social Justice Education University of Toronto

Deconstructing Whiteness: An Analysis of Dominant Perceptions of Chinese University Students

Elisabeth Sian Dennis

Master of Arts

Department of Social Justice Education University of Toronto

2018 Abstract

Through analysis of results from four in-depth interviews and two online forums, this thesis examines the current views White Canadian university students hold about Chinese students at the University of British Columbia. Drawing on critical Whiteness studies and Foucauldian critical discourse analysis, this study aims to examine the complex ways White hegemony is perpetuated on university campuses. The results reveal that historical constructions of Chinese

Canadians as foreign and threatening were perpetuated at the university. Additionally, the results show that although the interviewed students recognized the existence of racism on campus, they minimized its effects and denied the level of privilege they held. The thesis concludes by exploring the larger policy and educational implications of these views, as well as the possible consequences for Chinese students.

Acknowledgments

First, I would like to acknowledge my supervisor Dr. George Sefa Dei for his scholarship, knowledge, and guidance throughout this degree and thesis project. I would also like to thank Dr. Nina Bascia for her support, encouragement, and guidance on all things educational policy. This project would not have been possible without either of them.

I would also like to thank my colleagues and friends in the department of Social Justice Education for sharing your knowledge and encouraging me to see this project through. Muhammad and Meng, thank you for always being there to listen and supporting me in any way I needed. Anne, thank you for your friendship and the endless hours you spent going through each and every word with me, and for not letting me give up.

To my family, thank you for the endless support despite your opposition to me moving across the country. I am especially grateful to my amazing sister Laura: thanks for being an amazing editor as well as a great support system. Kellie, thank you for your patience, love, and encouragement, and for being my rock through this process.

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments...... iii

Table of Contents ...... iv

List of Tables ...... vii

List of Appendices ...... viii

Introduction ...... 1

1.1 Background: Anti-Chinese Racism in Vancouver ...... 1

1.2 Scope of Study ...... 3

1.3 Self Location ...... 5

1.4 Clarification of Terms ...... 6

1.5 Whiteness in Canadian Education ...... 7

1.6 Chapter Overview ...... 10

Literature Review ...... 11

2.1 Attitudes Towards Asian Americans ...... 11

2.1.1 In Education ...... 12

2.2 Shifting Discourses of Asian Americans ...... 15

2.3 The Role of Whiteness ...... 17

2.4 Canadian Context ...... 20

2.5 Gaps in the Literature...... 22

2.6 Point of Departure ...... 24

Theoretical Framework ...... 25

3.1 Critical Whiteness Studies ...... 25

3.1.1 Denial of Privilege ...... 25

3.1.2 Fluidity of Whiteness ...... 27

3.1.3 Anti-Racist Approach to Whiteness Studies ...... 29

3.2 Critical Discourse Analysis...... 30

3.3 A Critical Analysis of Historical Discourses of Chinese Canadians ...... 32

3.3.1 100 Years of “Yellow Peril” ...... 32

3.3.2 Model Citizens: Constructing Asian Americans in Opposition to Other Minority Groups...... 33

3.3.3 Model, But Still Not Accepted: Discourses of Perpetual Foreigner ...... 35

3.4 Summary ...... 37

Methodology ...... 38

4.1 Connection to Theoretical Frameworks ...... 38

4.2 Data Collection ...... 39

4.3 Data Analysis ...... 42

4.4 Challenges & Limitations ...... 44

4.5 Researcher Positionality...... 46

Research Findings: Perceptions of Chinese Students ...... 48

5.1 Interview Findings ...... 48

5.1.1 Model Minority ...... 49

5.1.2 Yellow Peril ...... 51

5.1.3 Perpetual Foreigner ...... 53

5.2 Social Media Findings ...... 55

5.2.1 UBC Confessions ...... 55

5.2.2 UBC Subreddit ...... 58

5.3 Discussion ...... 60

5.4 Summary ...... 67

Research Findings: Maintenance of White Hegemony ...... 68

6.1 Results ...... 68

6.1.1 Individualized Definition of Racism ...... 68

6.1.2 Denial of privilege ...... 71

6.1.3 Perceptions of International Student Privilege ...... 73

6.2 Discussion ...... 77

6.3 Summary ...... 80

Conclusion ...... 82

7.1 Summary of Results/Gaps in the Literature ...... 82

7.2 Implications for Chinese Students ...... 84

7.3 Policy Implications ...... 85

7.4 Broader Implications ...... 87

7.5 Policy Suggestions ...... 88

7.6 Other Suggestions for Practice: Educational Futurity ...... 90

7.7 Future Research ...... 92

References or Bibliography ...... 93

Appendices ...... 108

List of Tables

Table 1: Participant Profile ...... 41

Table 2: Perceptions of Chinese Students ...... 49

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List of Appendices

Appendix A: Recruitment Flyer ...... 108

Appendix B: Interview Guide ...... 109

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Introduction

1.1 Background: Anti-Chinese Racism in Vancouver

Step Aside, Whitey! The Chinese are taking over! So you can now enjoy the ‘privilege’ of being marginalized in the community your forefathers built, have neighbours who speak your language, and not be able to afford a home! Not what you signed up for? Join the Alt-Right. Let’s save Richmond.

The above message was printed on a flyer and distributed to homes in neighbourhoods in Richmond, British Columbia in November 2016 (Anderson, 2016). The message calls for White residents to “save Richmond” by resisting the supposed “taking over” by Chinese residents, with the implication being that Richmond and Greater Vancouver should be White. The flyer also invokes the colonial language of “forefathers”, negating the violent history of settler colonialism and denying that Richmond is in fact unceded Musqueam territory. Additionally, the flyer mocks the concept of privilege by putting the word in quotes and suggesting that White people are marginalized in the community. The distribution of this flyer exemplifies the type of anti- Chinese and White nationalist sentiment surfacing in Greater Vancouver. The growing population of Chinese and other negatively racialized immigrant groups in Vancouver, and Canada as a whole, has led to pushback by White Canadians who believe the country should be majority White.

One area where this pushback is occurring is higher education, where there has been a lot of discussion about the number of Chinese students enrolled in British Columbian universities. Jokingly dubbed the “University of a billion Chinese”, there have been many recent controversies over Chinese students, particularly Chinese international students, at the University of British Columbia (UBC) (Hartlep, 2014; Todd, 2017). Peter Wylie, a UBC Okanagan professor, argued in a recent article that UBC is displacing domestic students by admitting “foreign students” with lower qualifications. This was denied by the vice-provost of enrollment but is part of a larger conversation surrounding international students, especially Chinese ones, at the university (Todd, 2017). Another hot topic is that of the Vantage One program, a pathways program designed to help international students who did not meet the English proficiency requirement transition into UBC. One student response sums up the negative reaction some students are having towards the college: “When someone can’t actually speak English and you’re making a place for them, making an entire college for them, that is going out of your way to try

1 2 to get more money out of students who shouldn’t be at UBC” (Neatby & Yogesh, 2017). Although this student did not specifically mention race, it is clear that the pushback against Vantage college and international students as a whole is directed towards Chinese students in particular. The articles use coded racial language and specific examples of students coming from Beijing and Asia therefore implying anti-Chinese sentiment despite the lack of direct naming.

The concern over Chinese enrollment was aired almost forty years ago in a CTV Episode of W5 entitled “The Campus Giveaway”. It reported that over 100,000 “foreign students” (mainly from China) were taking away educational opportunities that could have been awarded to “Canadian students” (Hawthorn, 2009). The report showed a university lecture hall filled with Chinese students as a visual display of this, reinforcing the idea that non-White Chinese students could not be Canadians. Later research by the Committee of the Council of Chinese Canadians identified all the students shown in the report as permanent residents or local-born Chinese Canadians, yet this report showed them to be foreign and therefore, unwelcome (Hawthorn, 2009). This W5 documentary sparked protests from Chinese Canadians coast to coast and led to the creation of committees to address discrimination against Chinese Canadians. Yet forty years later, there is a resurfacing of this concern about the number of Chinese students in Canadian universities.

The issue of Chinese enrollment was also raised in a now infamous article which sparked a lot of scholarly debate on the subject: Maclean’s “Too Asian?” which asked whether the student bodies of Canadian universities were becoming disproportionately populated by Asian students (Findlay & Kohler, 2010). White students in the article argue that select Canadian Universities have the “reputation of being Asian” which can make them a “bit of a killjoy” (par. 2/3). The authors argue that this is not about racism but instead that “many White students simply believe that competing with Asians—both Asian Canadians and international students—requires a sacrifice of time and freedom they’re not willing to make” (Findlay & Kohler, 2010, par. 4). As various critics have pointed out, this article presents a view of Asian Canadians which reinforces their difference and “Othered” status (Cui & Kelly, 2013). It also reinforces the view that Asians are in fact a model minority, and that hard work was the reason for their success in these contexts (Heer, 2012). This further perpetuates the myth that “Canadian institutions operate as pure meritocracies” (Findlay & Kohler, 2010, par. 7), which minimizes the historical and ongoing

3 institutional racism in which these institutions engage (Yu, 2012). As Coloma (2013) argues, this article exposes how Asians “occupy a paradoxical subject position as an un/wanted racialized minority population in Canada”, and how they can become unwanted when they are “perceived as threats to the normalized sociocultural order and take away positions and resources from ‘rightful Canadians’” (p. 588).

1.2 Scope of Study

My current study aims to build on these insights and explore why there is a perception that Canadian universities are “too Asian”, or particularly in the case of Vancouver, too Chinese. Specifically, this study seeks to examine the views of White Canadian university students and understand the factors which influence views of Chinese Canadians at UBC. Drawing on critical Whiteness studies and Foucauldian critical discourse analysis, this study aims to examine how these views recreate or perpetuate larger discourses which serve to preserve White hegemony. Previous research has shown that White hegemony is maintained through shifting discourses about various negatively racialized groups and those which deny the racism faced by these groups. This study aims to examine the views of White students at UBC and analyze how these views contribute to existing discourses that maintain this hegemony. Understanding this allows for an interrogation of the individual and systemic factors which uphold White supremacy in the university context. The results of this research therefore can be used to inform policy decisions at UBC and other universities across Canada.

Following the above research objectives, the three main research questions guiding this study are:

1. What are the current views of Chinese students held by White Canadian students at the University of British Columbia and how do these compare to previous views cited in the literature?

2. What factors influence these views about Chinese students at the University of British Columbia?

3. Are White Canadian university students continuing to perpetuate White hegemony in their views? If so, how?

To determine the current discourses on campus and the factors which influence them, I conducted four interviews with a gender-stratified sample of self-identified White domestic students at the University of British Columbia. To supplement these interviews, I conducted a review of two online sources, the UBC SubReddit and the Facebook page UBC Confessions, and analyzed the posts relating to Chinese or Asian students. I chose UBC as the site of my study because as discussed at the outset of this paper, it is a context with growing controversy surrounding this topic. Additionally, Vancouver has one of the largest non-White populations of any city in North America, with East Asians being the largest ethnic minority group (Outten, Schmitt, Miller & Garcia, 2012, p. 17). At UBC itself, among incoming students in 2013, White students were reportedly a minority (29%) and Chinese students numbered just over a third of the population (Farrar & Mathieson, 2013). These factors make UBC a crucial location to study the responses to an increasing Chinese population.

This study will be conceptualized using a combination of critical Whiteness studies and Foucauldian discourse analysis. The field of critical Whiteness studies aims to cast Whiteness as a problem and examine the intricate ways that White supremacy is preserved. Foucauldian discourse analysis unveils how language and discourses about certain groups are implicated in power relations. This research draws from both fields to analyze the multifaceted ways that White hegemony and power is maintained in Canadian universities, through the example of views about Chinese students.

The rationale for this study is threefold. First, despite the various news articles and controversies surrounding racism towards Chinese students in Canadian universities, little scholarly research has been written on the shifting views towards this group. Secondly, there is a global rise in the visibility of White nationalistic sentiment, which is coupled with a view of White victimization. This belief that White privilege no longer exists and that White people need to take their power back is a dangerous one for all negatively racialized groups. This study aims to shed light on the dynamics of that victimization and propose strategies for resisting this view. Finally, similar sentiments in select universities in the United States led to covert exclusionary policies against Asian American applications. This study will discuss the policy implications of this work to resist similar exclusion in Canadian universities.

1.3 Self Location

As Dei (2000) argues, “anti-racism entails a recognition of the individual and collective responsibility to use multiple positions and differential locations of power, privilege and social disadvantage to work for change” (p. 25). I am a White heterosexual cis-gender female and have spent my entire life in the geographical region known as Canada. As a dominant body, I understand that I am implicated in settler projects and benefit from the current systems of racism in Canada. This implication gives me a responsibility to engage in anti-racist theorizing which works to dismantle all forms of racial oppression. In particular I aim to draw attention to the historical and ongoing oppression of negatively racialized bodies. In doing so, I do not wish to take up space or silence the authentic voices of those who have experienced racism and oppression. I instead believe I should use my privileged position to interrogate Whiteness and White privilege, which is what I aim to do in the study.

I came to this work through my experiences growing up in Vancouver and especially during my undergraduate degree at UBC. As a White domestic student on the UBC campus, I had an insider position to the beliefs and opinions of other White students and have heard and witnessed many discriminatory things about Chinese Canadians. For example, one White student who I encountered in one of my psychology classes noted that she was “so happy she transferred to arts” because “she used to be in science, but the competition was too fierce because there were too many Asian students”. Instances such as these inspired me to explore this topic and unpack why these beliefs exist and how we can attempt to dismantle the systems which allow them. Through my undergraduate degree in sociology, I also began to further acknowledge my own White privilege. Acknowledging this privilege was not necessarily easy, because it gave me great guilt and responsibility. This awareness and acknowledgement led to a desire to further unpack Whiteness, and how this privilege is structurally built into society and the education system. The goal with this research is to deconstruct the factors and forces which perpetuate White hegemony and privilege, and work to dismantle them.

In this paper, I aim to study the ways in which Whiteness operates in the discourses about Chinese students at the University of British Columbia. This conceptual focus on Whiteness rather than the experiences of Chinese students is intentional. As a White body, I do not presume to speak on behalf of Chinese students or to their experiences. As an anti-racist scholar I

6 acknowledge that the burden for education about race should not solely be the responsibility of negatively racialized scholars and educators. Thus, my call to action is to take this work into White communities to educate about the ways in which privilege and Whiteness operate. As Dei argues in his theorizing of critical anti-racism studies, “doing anti-racism work is about action and practice” (Dei, 2013, p. 6). It is my responsibility to take this theorizing on the deconstruction of Whiteness into my own sites and accompany it with actions to contribute to the disruption of Euronormativity. My work does not end with this thesis, but instead is a lifetime commitment to challenging White supremacy in my daily life and any workplace I enter.

1.4 Clarification of Terms

Prior to reviewing the literature, it is important to define some key terms and explain the way I use these terms throughout my thesis.

Chinese/Chinese Canadian

I use the term Chinese or Chinese Canadian to denote individuals of Chinese descent or nationality. By using this term, I do not intend to reproduce the foreign status of Chinese Canadians but instead am using it to explore how the majority group forms discourses about this group. The focus of this thesis is the attitudes towards both Chinese domestic students and Chinese international students. I recognize the different histories of these groups, and I try to distinguish between the two when possible but because they are often conflated by my participants, I use Chinese students as a blanket term to refer to both.

Asian American/Canadian

Although the focus of my research is on Chinese students in particular, I draw from research more broadly on Asian Americans and Canadians. Following common practice in the field, I use the more encompassing terms Asian American and Asian Canadian to denote individuals of particularly East and Southeast Asian descent in North America, which embraces Chinese Canadians. I recognize the breadth and heterogeneity of this group and by using it, do not intend to homogenize the members. Oftentimes discourses about a specific subset of this group are applied to all members of the Asian American group. For example, one of my participants stated “I think because a lot of people are unable to distinguish between: Are you from Vietnam? Are you from China? Are you from South Korea? Like, it’s just all Asian people.” I believe we need

7 to fight against this homogenization and only use this term when it is referring to how dominant discourses are created.

White/ Whiteness

By White people or White bodies, I am referring to persons who are perceived as White or as a member of the dominant group. Despite no scientific basis for the existence of races, those perceived to be White hold privileges in a White supremacist society and therefore it is important to use race as a distinguishing factor. Though as Dei (2000) argues, “rather than posit “who exactly is Whiteness,” we must adhere to Giroux’s (1997) caution against conflating a warranted critique and careful interrogation of Whiteness with criticisms of White people” (p. 28). By examining how White hegemony is maintained in universities, I am not claiming that every member of the majority group holds the same beliefs or discourses. Instead, I’m looking at the broader question of how Whiteness and its supremacy is maintained systemically through these discourses.

When discussing Whiteness in this thesis, I am talking of Whiteness not only as a socially constructed racial category but as a system of domination that is enacted not exclusively by White bodies. As defined by Dei (2000),

Whiteness is a social construction with political, cultural and economic capital. It is produced by and productive of the social contexts of power that constructs difference, normality and privilege. It is also an ideology in the way it conjures images, conceptions and promises that provide the frameworks through which dominant and other groups represent, interpret, understand and make sense of social existence (p, 28).

This definition of Whiteness importantly emphasizes the power of Whiteness to define other groups and the ways in which it can be enacted to maintain a White supremacist system.

1.5 Whiteness in Canadian Education

The education system in Canada was formed out of a colonial idea to assimilate Indigenous children into Euro-Canadian culture. Residential schools were designed to isolate children from their families and disparage Indigenous languages and culture. Although the last residential school in Canada closed in 1996, Eurocentric schooling practices are still present in Canadian

8 schools and universities. As Neeganagwedgin (2013) argues, “common themes that existed more than 100 years ago still persist in the current school system in Canada. For instance, colonialism, paternalism and historical omissions of First Nations students’ cultures and communities are some of the major driving forces in some Canadian schooling institutions from kindergarten to post-secondary schooling” (p. 22). White hegemony was further perpetuated by White settlers towards all other negatively racialized groups in Canada through similar exclusion in the education system. The creation of segregated schools, such as those for Chinese students in Victoria, reinforced the Othered status of non-White immigrant groups and excluded them from full participation in Canadian society (Stanley, 2011).

Canadian universities were also built on colonial ideals and formed exclusively to reflect the experiences of White males. As argued by Smith (2001), “universities in Canada were founded in and were integrated with the ruling apparatus of imperial powers that were implicated in the genocidal treatment of the people native to the territory we call Canada, institutions of slavery, [and] the subjugation of other civilizations” (p. 151). While there is increasing diversity at many universities in Canada, the climate and curriculum continue to be tailored to White students and faculty. Canadian universities sustain colonial ideals by imposing the ideology of Whiteness while excluding the contributions of Indigenous and other negatively racialized people. As argued by Henry and Tator (2009), "access and equity are often denied to both racialized faculty and students through the everyday values and norms, discourses, and practices within a dominant White Anglocentric, Eurocentric, and racialized culture" (p. 3). This occurs in everyday practices with White faculty, staff and students who devalue the knowledges and experiences of negatively racialized students, faculty and staff. It is also manifested in institutional policies and procedures of the universities which “promote, sustain, or entrench differential advantage or privilege for people of certain races” (Henry & Tator, 2009, p. 29).

This institutional racism is evident in struggles over curricula and course offerings. Eurocentric knowledges are recognized as more legitimate within the academy, and other knowledges and epistemologies are marginalized and excluded (Scheurich & Young, 1997). Eurocentric content and frameworks “are often not only given more resources and curriculum space, but also more dominance and status especially when it comes to hiring and promotion/tenure decisions" (Henry, Dua, James, Kobayashi, Li, Ramos & Smith, 2017, p. 46). Due to this, there is an underrepresentation of racialized faculty in most Canadian universities. As found by Kobayashi

(2009), despite members of “visible minority” groups holding 18.7% of all doctoral degrees in Canada, they only make up 12% of faculty positions. This underrepresentation of negatively racialized faculty often means that students do not see themselves represented in the course offerings and often cannot find mentors in their field of study.

Institutional racism also manifests itself in the representation of students at the university. For example, policies which favour domestic credentials over foreign credentials and the use of a narrow definition of success in evaluating applications allow for the preference of White applicants over negatively racialized ones. This leads to the continuation of White dominance in the university and the lack of representation by negatively racialized groups. For example, a survey given to a representative sample of new UBC students in 2013 found that only 6% of the direct entry student population is South Asian, 2% Latin American, 1% Black and 1%

Indigenous (Planning and Institutional Research Office, 2013). Most Canadian universities only have education equity programs for Indigenous students, which are not adequate for addressing the underrepresentation for other negatively racialized group.

Commitments to the liberal principles of equality and tolerance are touted by many Canadian universities but are many times “non-performative” (Ahmed, 2012). These are used to reinforce the dominance of Whiteness while giving the appearance of inclusivity. These diversity initiatives and the idea of multicultural education often serve to include negatively racialized groups in a tokenistic way, with no analysis of power and privilege (Dei, 2011). In universities, other knowledges and epistemologies are allowed to exist in the margins in “African Studies” or “Asian studies” programs while Western Eurocentric knowledges are taught as the norm (Henry & Tator, 2009).

The goal of anti-racist educators is to challenge this Eurocentricity and create a truly inclusive schooling experience for negatively racialized students. Studies have shown that especially for Black students, academic success within this Eurocentric system has come at the expense of their well-being and cultural identity. As argued by Dei, Mazzuca, McIsaac and Zine (1997), “the fact that students feel that a Black person must give up their personal and group identity in order to be successful reflects their situation in the school system” (p. 156). Ladson-Billings (1995) has argued that there is a need for “culturally relevant pedagogy” which allows for students “to maintain their cultural integrity while succeeding academically” (p. 476). Negatively racialized

10 students need to be represented, physically and in terms of their knowledge, in the current education system at all levels. Arguments relating to the overrepresentation of Asian students in universities serve to deflect attention away from the dominant status of Whiteness. Despite the decreased levels of White enrollment in universities, Eurocentric values and culture still dominate in all facets of the academy. This present study aims to challenge this White dominance and the arguments about Asian Canadians which deflect from it, with the goal of disrupting Eurocentricity and allowing for possibilities for greater representation of other groups and their knowledges.

1.6 Chapter Overview

The next chapter, Chapter Two, reviews the existing literature pertaining to the shifting discourses of Asian Americans in higher education and the relevant empirical research in

Whiteness studies to conceptualize this study in the current scholarly debate. Chapter Three focuses on the theoretical frameworks used in this study, namely critical Whiteness studies and critical discourse analysis. I explore the various ways Whiteness has been theorized by scholars in the field, with a focus on how the fluidity of Whiteness and denial of privilege operate to maintain White hegemony. I then outline how a Foucauldian approach to discourse helps to understand how historical narratives of Asian Americans served to maintain a certain set of power relations. In Chapter Four, I outline my methodological framework based on this theoretical analysis. I include my methods of data collection and analysis, including details about the interviews and my participants. Chapter Five analyzes the views of White UBC students about Chinese students and uses critical discourse analysis to situate them amongst the various historical views. In Chapter Six, I examine the other strategies used by White students to maintain hegemonic Whiteness at the university. Chapter Seven, my final chapter, will offer concluding thoughts about the broad theoretical and policy implications of my work, as well as discuss possible directions of future research. I will end with the implications of this work for educational futurities and propose some suggestions for practice

Literature Review

In the introductory chapter, I outlined some examples of the anti-Chinese sentiment currently being expressed in Vancouver and the rationale by some residents and students who are perpetuating these beliefs. This chapter focuses on the previous empirical literature which has looked at these negative attitudes in Canada and in the United States. I focus most of my attention on the views of Asian Americans specifically in higher education and explore different theories which may account for the increasingly negative views. My review of the literature includes studies specifically about discourses on Asian Americans and Canadians as the research shows this group is positioned differently than other negatively racialized groups. I aim to use the example of Chinese Canadians to illustrate the ways that discourses about a group can shift to preserve White hegemony. Therefore, I also reviewed literature on Whiteness in higher education to examine how this hegemony is sustained in university settings. For both topics, I highlight the Canadian literature because there are key differences between the United States and Canada. I discuss the strengths and gaps of the previous literature on both topics and conclude with the point of departure of this study.

2.1 Attitudes Towards Asian Americans

Most of the scholarly explorations of the perceptions of Asian Canadians and the racism they have faced is historical in nature. These scholars chronicle how Asians were physically excluded from immigrating to Canada and ideologically excluded from citizenship, particularly in British Columbia during the period surrounding Confederation (Roy, 1989; Stanley, 2011; Ward,1978). Others looked at how racism against Chinese Canadians continued until the end of the Second World War across Canada (Backhouse, 1999; Chen, 2004). Li (1979) conducted one of the few studies done after the war and examined attitudes towards East Indians and Chinese immigrants in Saskatoon. In his study of 652 residents, he found that 26.5% of his participants were opposed to Chinese immigration to Canada and 11.5% of participants would move “if they came in great numbers to live in [their] district” (p.72). Despite the plethora of historical studies, few scholarly studies have examined the present views of Chinese Canadians.

The annual national opinion poll conducted by The Asian Pacific foundation, a not-for-profit organization aimed at improving Canada’s relationship with Asia, provides some insight into the current views. Their 2017 poll of 1,654 representative Canadians found that 51% of respondents

12 want to maintain the current rate of immigration from Asia, while 26% want to reduce the number. These respondents are most in favour of increasing immigrants from the highly qualified professional category (53%) and least in favour of increasing the number in the refugee category (27%). The Asian Pacific Foundation’s 2016 poll, which encompassed a representative sample of 3,526 Canadians, focused on more specific issues relating to immigration. It reported that the majority of Canadians (62%), and in particular British Columbians (72%) are concerned that there is too much Chinese investment in real estate. Additionally, almost half (46%) of the respondents “worry that China’s growing economic presence in Canada is a threat to the country’s values and way of life” (p. 42). Although this survey does not assess the overall views of Chinese immigrants or residents, it gives some insight into some of the concerns of Canadians regarding this topic.

An informal study conducted by the Georgia Straight newspaper in Vancouver in 2016 found similar concerns amongst Vancouver residents. They analyzed five weeks of correspondence sent to the city of Vancouver on the subject of housing affordability and found explicitly racist emails about Asian immigrants. One email notes: “I am disgusted that all of the BC and Lower Mainland especially is being sold out to Asians. The Kerrisdale/Dunbar/UBC area is like being in the Orient… The majority don’t give a hoot about Canada, don’t assimilate, don’t look after their property, and many don’t even pay income taxes” (Lupick, 2016, par. 2). Other emails argue that “Asians are pricing all White people out of the housing market in the Lower Mainland and it must be stopped” (par. 4) and that “Vancouver was a lovely city in which to live and grow up in however it is not nice anymore…due to all the Asians who have moved there” (par. 3). These studies examining the perceptions of Asian Americans in real estate shed light onto why some Vancouver residents may be opposed to more Chinese immigration.

2.1.1 In Education

With regards to education, numerous studies have been conducted mostly in the United States to assess the view of Asian Americans. Many of these studies have examined the model minority stereotype, or the belief that Asian Americans are succeeding in the education system. In one such study, Wong, Lai, Nagasawa and Lin aimed to test the model minority hypothesis and the perceptions of various groups towards Asian Americans by conducting telephone interviews with 1,257 students at Washington State University campuses. They hypothesized that if Asian

Americans are in fact a ‘model minority’, they will be perceived as highly motivated to do well at all levels of education, most likely to succeed in their chosen careers and most likely to do well in college (Wong, Lai, Nagasawa and Lin, 1998). Students from African American, Native American, Latino and White backgrounds all perceived the academic performance of Asian Americans as better than all other negatively racialized groups and perceived them as most likely of all groups to succeed in their careers (Wong, Lai, Nagasawa and Lin, 1998). Students consistently rated Asian Americans as better than other minority groups on all the model minority items and each group did not significantly differ in their perceptions of them as a model minority. Interestingly, Asian American students also viewed their own group as better than the others and higher on the model minority items (Wong, Lai, Nagasawa and Lin, 1998).

Although little research has tested this perception in Canada, as Pon (2000) suggests, “that is not to say that the “model minority” discourse has not been imported into Canada” (p. 279). He outlines how the perception has been prevalent in Canadian newspaper articles throughout the 1980s and 1990s, whereby journalists refer to Asians as “academic giants”, “math whizzes” and as “at, or near, the top of the scholastic heap” (as cited in y, 2000, p. 283). This categorization continues today in popular discourse about Asian Canadians, and “dovetails neatly with Canadian discourses of multiculturalism” (Pon, 2000, p. 283). As found by Baumann and Ho (2014) in their content analysis of Canadian commercials, East Asians were typically represented as “technocrats” who are expected to get good grades and “interested only in climbing up the social ladder through academic excellence” (p. 164). This representation is consistent with the model minority view found in the American literature, showing that similar perceptions exist in the Canadian context.

The literature looking at perceptions of Chinese international students in both Canada and the United States suggests that there may be conflicting views of Chinese success. In Ruble and Zhang’s 2012 study, 146 American students from a large Midwestern university were asked to indicate the percentage of Chinese international students who they believed possessed particular traits. Participants attributed model minority attributes such as smart, hardworking, good at math and science, and studious to the highest percentage of Chinese students (m=76.18%). These traits were all viewed mostly favourably by the participants, being rated an average of 5.69 on a 7- point favourability scale (p. 207). Despite this favourable perception, negative stereotypes such as only being friends with other Chinese students, not being well assimilated, and being socially

14 awkward were also attributed to more than half of Chinese students, showing that both positive and negative stereotypes existed simultaneously.

This ambivalence between positive views and negative experiences could be explained by Fiske et al’s (2002) stereotype content model. They argue that “stereotypes are captured by two dimensions (warmth and competence) and that subjectively positive stereotypes on one dimension do not contradict prejudice but often are functionally consistent with unflattering stereotypes on the other dimension” (p. 879). In three studies with participants at the University of Massachusetts, University of Colorado, and Wisconsin, they find that Asians are part of a cluster which is categorized by the majority population as high competence and low warmth. This combination elicited both envy and admiration from the participants when they tested the affective reaction to all stereotype combinations. They label this response envious prejudice and argue that this “volatile mix of emotions…could create hostility when groups feel threatened” (p. 897).

This ambivalent stereotype model is replicated in Ho & Jackson’s (2001) “Attitude Towards Asians” (ATA) scale. They argue that non-Asian students can have both positive and negative views of Asian Americans, and that negative attitudes can sometimes stem from positive attributes. In their first study of 889 undergraduate students at a large midwestern university, they found evidence that the existence of positive factors (such as success and intelligence) can sometimes underlie negative attitudes towards Asian Americans. (p. 1559). Their second study of 483 undergraduates expanded on these insights and found that “individuals who believed that Asian Americans possessed the model-minority characteristics were also likely to believe that they possessed negative stereotypic traits” such as being anti-social, nerdy or deceitful (p. 1565). These individuals were also found to have more negative beliefs about Asian Americans and expressed feelings of both admiration and envy towards this group. Consequently, although the model minority stereotype is seemingly positive, it can evoke negative sentiments from the majority group.

Parks and Yoo (2016) find a similar link between endorsement of the model minority stereotype and anti-Asian sentiments in college students and attribute the link to the colour-blind racial attitudes of White students. The authors hypothesized that this correlation was due to White students’ “efforts to indirectly neutralize the threat or challenge to their White privilege and

15 worldview” (p. 292). The success and unrestricted mobility of Asian Americans could possibly be viewed as competition to White students who are also trying to achieve upward social mobility.

Wang refers to this phenomenon as the thin line between the model minority stereotype and the previous stereotype of Asians as yellow peril, which was characterized by the fear that Asian immigrants threatened White wages and Western values (Wang, 2008). Asians are viewed as a model minority group but are only allowed to be elevated to a certain level of success that does not create competition with the dominant group. The perception of Asian Americans is therefore “two-faced”: all the traits that make Asian Americans successful also make them a possible threat to the majority (Wu, 2003, p. 67). As Lai (2013) argues, even people who hold positive beliefs about Asian Americans might have negative attitudes towards them when they feel threatened by their competence and success.

2.2 Shifting Discourses of Asian Americans

Much of the existing sociological and psychological literature has used group threat theory as a possible explanation for negative views of Asian American students. Group threat theory argues that negative attitudes towards a minority group arise from a fear that “the subordinate racial group is threatening, or will threaten, the position of the dominant group” numerically (Blumer, 1958, p. 4). By this hypothesis, the larger the minority group the greater the threat to the dominant group resulting in an increased likelihood for them to harbour negative views towards the minority. In other words, “the size of a given minority has a direct bearing on anti- immigrant attitudes amongst the majority” (Hjerm, 2007, p. 1253). With regards to education, the theory posits that any numerical group that threatened the majority position of White students would be viewed negatively. Many scholars have tested this theory with regards to Asian Americans as they account for a large percentage of the population at many North American colleges and universities.

Samson (2013) aimed to test how White students might respond to the impending threat of losing their dominant group position, especially in selective elite universities. He used survey data from the Golden Bear Omnibus Survey, which had 440 White respondents. He employed a split-ballot design, where participants were “randomly assigned to one of three ballots that first ask respondents to consider competitive group threat from one of the following ethno-racial groups:

Blacks, Hispanics or Asians” (p. 238). Half of the participants were then exposed to an experimental frame that specified the proportional share of Asians at the university. The dependent variable was how important students rated specific factors for admission decisions at the University, with the main one being grade point average (GPA). Samson hypothesized that White students who were exposed to an Asian over-representation scenario in universities would decrease the importance they think GPA should have in admissions, as compared to participants in the other scenarios (Samson, 2013). The results show support for this hypothesis as when other factors were controlled for, exposure to Asian over-representation caused respondents to decrease the importance placed on GPA (p. 244). Samson concludes that “this finding weakens the argument that White commitment to meritocracy is purely based on principle, since the importance given to a particular meritocratic criteria, here grade point average, varies depending upon the outgroups under consideration and the extent of the group threat they pose to Whites” (p. 253).

Maddux, Galinsky, Cuddy and Polifroni (2008) aimed to test ‘realistic threat’ as a mechanism that could account for the relationship between negative attitudes towards Asian Americans and components of the model minority stereotype. One part of the study used an experimental method to test this ‘realistic threat’ hypothesis on 40 White introductory psychology students who were American citizens. Participants were told to read a scenario of a class where the demographic was predominantly Asian and were either assigned to be partnered with an Asian student or a Black student. The hypothesis was that if they were partnered with an Asian student, this would be viewed as an advantage and therefore threat would not be felt whereas if they were partnered with a Black student, the student would feel competition and be threatened by Asian student success. The results of the study showed that attitudes and affect towards Asian Americans differed based on the assigned condition. Global attitudes and global affect toward Asian Americans were significantly more negative in the realistic threat condition (Maddux, Galinsky, Cuddy, & Polifroni, 2008). A further study done by these researchers aimed to increase the reality of the threat by creating a situation whereby participants would gain or lose money based on how well they performed relative to another individual. Maddux, Galinksy, Cuddy and Polifroni (2008) manipulated who their opponent was and the subject covered (either science or pop culture). For this part of the study, they recruited 97 White American-born students on the university research website. The results of this study did not support the

17 hypothesis that realistic threat was the mechanism, as no significant differences in attitude were found depending on the opponent or topic.

Various other empirical studies also found evidence contrary to group threat theory with regards to Asian Americans in education. Nguyen (2016), in her doctoral thesis, aimed to explore why negative views existed towards Asian Americans in education and hypothesized that group threat would be the strongest predictor of presence of anger. She presented participants with a list of controversial statements such as “that it is legal for same-sex couples to marry” and asked them how many of the statements angered them. For the experimental group, she added the statement “the large number of Asian-Americans entering higher education.” She found that there was no significant difference in the presence of anger for the experimental group, showing that the Asian American item did not evoke any additional feelings of anger. Additionally, she found no evidence for group threat as “symbolic racism, principle objection, and negative stereotypes all had no effect of presence of anger towards Asian Americans in this domain” (p. 57).

Lin, Kwan, Cheung & Fiske (2005) also aimed to test whether the competence of Asian Americans could produce a group threat response. They found evidence of Fiske et al’s stereotype content model, whereby there is a mix of envious anti-Asian American prejudice but found that this attitude was not correlated with the perceived percentage of Asian Americans on campus. They concluded that the low-sociability stereotype, not the high-competence stereotype, was linked to negative impressions of Asian Americans, disputing the role that competition plays in group threat. The American literature therefore is in disagreement about the possible causes of the negative views towards Asian Americans in education. Some studies have found strong evidence for the role of the proportional number of Asian students in producing negative views, especially when it is seen as causing a direct threat to White students and their position. Others have disputed this and instead attribute the negative views to other factors such as sociability. This contradiction points to the complexity of this issue and how further work is needed to explore the various factors that may work together to create negative views in different contexts.

2.3 The Role of Whiteness

My third research question examines the role of Whiteness in discourses about Chinese Canadians and how these discourses work to further White supremacy. Much of the empirical research in Whiteness studies looks instead at White identity construction (see: Frankenberg,

1993), and especially in Canada, focuses on White teacher candidates (see: Carr & Lund, 2007; Levine-Rasky 2000; Solomon, Portelli, Daniel & Campbell, 2005). But as my study focuses on how Whiteness affects attitudes and opinions of White university students, I limit my literature review to major empirical studies whose participants are university or college students.

The majority of studies on White university students explore their racial identities and perceptions of racism towards other groups. For example, Chesler, Peet and Sevig’s 2003 study “Blinded by Whiteness” aimed to look at how attitudes of White students are expressed in universities. They conducted individual and small-group interviews with a select sample of White students from varied backgrounds at the University of Michigan. The major theme that emerged from the interviews was that participants did not think about being White. Even in the presence of diversity at the University of Michigan, they did not see themselves as having a White identity. Many of the participants had what they referred to as a colour-blind view of race, where they wanted to move away from the concept and emphasize humanness instead. Some of the White students found conversations about privilege discomforting and felt resentment to students of colour when Whiteness was raised. For example, one participant noted: “I think white males have a hard time because we are constantly blamed for being power-holding oppressors, yet we are not given many concrete ways to change” (p. 225). The study also examined participants’ attitudes towards affirmative action, and felt it placed them at a disadvantage. Consistent with their denial of privilege, many participants felt that there was now equal opportunity and no racism, and therefore affirmative action gave students of colour something they have not earned.

Bonilla-Silva and Forman (2000) also aimed to track White college students’ interpretive repertoires on racial matters such as their racial attitudes and opinions on affirmative action, housing integration and other policies. They wanted to compare the participants answers on a social attitudes survey with their views expressed during in-depth interviews to determine what affected students’ racial responses. The results of the survey show that the majority of White students oppose affirmative action, and believe it negatively affects their educational and career chances. For example, 51 percent of participants are against and 36 percent are ‘not sure’ about reserving openings for Black students. Although 87% of White participants believe that discrimination affects the life chances of Black people, only 30% agree with the statement that

“Blacks are in the position that they are in because of contemporary discrimination” (Bonilla- Silva & Forman, 2000).

Careful reading of respondents’ interview answers showed that White respondents are more prejudiced in the interviews than in the survey. Content analysis of the responses in the interviews showed that 85% of participants oppose affirmative action, but this was rarely done in a straightforward way (only 25%). Instead, it was done indirectly by emphasizing the importance of hard work and bringing up the notion of unfair advantage. On intermarriage, the almost 90 percent who approved of it in the survey dropped to 30 percent in the interviews. Also, with regards to the impact of discrimination, in the interviews, 35 out of 41 participants expressed doubts about whether discrimination affects minorities in a significant way. Many claimed ignorance to racism because they were White, and others stated that they believed minorities believe there is racism, but do not themselves believe it. Bonilla-Silva and Forman conclude that White participants use a “new racetalk” to avoid appearing racist and used different semantic moves to save face. For example, participants feigned ambivalence about racial issues and hesitated to answer in order to avoid appearing racist.

Cabrera (2014) found similar themes in his study of twelve White male students at a Western United States university with a student population made up of almost 40% Asian/Pacific Islander as compared to the 34% White population. He found that for the most part, his participants gave an individualized definition of race instead of viewing it as a “systemic reality” (p. 41). The participants in his study also minimized the issues of racism at the university and were dismissive of claims of racism made by negatively racialized students. For example, one of his participants stated that negatively racialized minorities say “‘Well you fired me because I’m black’ or ‘You fired me because I’m Asian.’ And so I think that’s ridiculous” (p. 43). Many of his participants also highlighted their own hard work when talking about racism to reinforce meritocratic principles and justify inequality. Additionally, Cabrera found that many of his participants believed in “reverse racism” and viewed affirmative action and racially-based organizations as marginalizing white men”. As Cabrera argues, in so doing, the participants “framed white males as the primary victims of contemporary racism.” This White victimization ignores the fact that White bodies (especially males) have privilege in a White supremacist capitalist society and serves to maintain hegemonic Whiteness in universities.

Most participants in various studies use what Bonilla-Silva terms colour-blind racism, whereby participants refuse to acknowledge the importance of race in order to justify contemporary racial inequality. This is categorized by what she calls “abstract liberalism” where the ideas of liberalism are extended to negatively racialized people in an abstract way to rationalize an unequal situation. She cites an example of Sue, a student in a Southern United States university, who stated “I think they should have the same opportunities as everyone else. You know, it’s up to them to meet the standards and whatever that’s required for entrance into universities or whatever”. This belief about equal opportunity ignores the effect of past and ongoing discrimination, and as Bonilla-Silva (2003) argues, “safeguards White privilege” (p. 276). These cited practices by American White students aim to minimize the effects of racism on negatively racialized students and argue against programs such as affirmative action. They reflect a desire among White students to maintain White hegemony in the university.

2.4 Canadian Context

Although Canadian literature cites similar minimization by White students, the Canadian context differs in two significant ways. First, Canadian universities take a different approach to affirmative action policies than in the United States. As found by Kuspinar (2016) in her dissertation on affirmative action in Canada, due to a Supreme Court decision to improve the educational outcomes of disadvantaged groups, many Canadian universities practice what is termed “education equity” especially for Indigenous groups. She found that all six major universities that she looked at had a category for Indigenous applicants and refer to diversity in admissions policies but other than Dalhousie, don’t have specific quotas. Dalhousie was also the only studied university who included Black students in their education equity initiatives. Secondly, the Canadian context differs because of the official multiculturalism policy. As argued by Dei (2011), multiculturalism “comes to appropriate and obscure important discussions about privilege, systemic power, and the way in which particular bodies come to be identified within these moments” (p. 16). The official policy of multiculturalism in Canada constructs a view of Canada as free of discrimination, which serves to further minimize discussions of race and conceal systems of White privilege. These differences between the two contexts make it imperative that research is conducted in Canada on the effects of Whiteness in university to expand on the insights gleamed from the American research with the additional contextual factors in mind.

One such explorative study was done by Norton and Baker (2007) who aimed to investigate interpretations of Whiteness among White Canadian university students at the University of British Columbia. They conducted interviews with sixteen students who self-identified as White, who were recruited through mediators in each department. The authors found all participants to be “racially tolerant, well-meaning White students” (p. 3) but tended to communicate existing discourses of race and power. The main reactions that participants exhibited in reference to their Whiteness were invisibility, indifference or guilt. All participants but two denied they had White privilege and viewed equity programs at the University negatively due to the belief that it privileges other negatively racialized groups over them. Consistent with findings in the United States, many of the participants exhibited “colour-blind views” towards race. The White participants as a whole had not thought about how race could affect their lives on campus, but instead it was seen as only affecting other groups. Overall, the White Canadian participants in this study used similar strategies to deny their privilege to those in the United States and had similar responses to equity programs on campus. Additionally, although the study was not directly about the attitudes towards Asian students, these views were brought up by participants. There was an overall belief that the White participants “did not consider their Asian counterparts to be as non-White as were students of other racial groups” (Norton and Baker, 2007, p. 10). Some negative views of Asian students were expressed, as the participants viewed them as segregated” and some perceived their intelligence to be “threatening” (p. 10).

Another study conducted by Outten, Shmitt, Miller and Garcia (2012) aimed to look at how White participants would react to becoming a numerical minority at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. In the study, they had 160 gender-stratified White participants read information about expected ethnic demographics in the future, and randomly assigned participants to one of two conditions. One condition was the realistic future in which Whites became a numerical minority, and the other was one where Whites remain a majority. The dependent variable was intergroup threat, which assessed participants perception of how White Canadians were threatened by changing demographic patterns and the influence participants perceived different groups to have. They were also asked to indicate how warm or cold they felt towards specific groups, one of which was East Asians. Participants in the White minority condition felt significantly more angry toward and fearful of ethnic minorities, and this effect was stronger for attitudes towards East Asians than for other ethnic groups. Outten, Shmitt, Miller and Garcia

(2012) concluded the specific negative view towards East Asians was because “derogating outgroups that are the most relevant to perceived threat can serve as a means to protect threatened group identity” (p. 21).

Much of the other literature in Canada on this topic has been written as a response to the Maclean’s ‘Too Asian’ article and is theoretical in nature. For example, Coloma (2013) explores the ambivalent views towards Asians and refers to them as an “un/wanted” population in Canada. He echoes Pon’s sentiment about how the positive view of Asian Canadians exists to further the Canadian brand of multiculturalism but argues that this view is starting to change with the increase of Asian immigrants. He attributes the shifting views to a threat felt by the majority about Asians taking away their resources and dominant position. Cui and Kelly (2013) similarly argue that the dominant group’s beliefs about universities being “too Asian” emerged to justify the exclusion of Asians from these spaces, and to “maintain their dominant social status and privilege to access various social resources” (p. 171). The threat of Chinese students to the dominant group’s position and status drives this group to adopt negative views.

2.5 Gaps in the Literature

The quantitative studies in psychology and sociology provided insight into how competition may shift views of Asian Americans. They outlined how on a whole, when White participants in the United States and Canada are presented with a possibility or threat of being outperformed by Asian Americans, they exhibit stronger negative views towards this group. These quantitative large-scale studies provide evidence that there are shifting attitudes towards Asian Americans in response to competition and other factors in universities. Overall, the studies used various methods to test these attitudes and took measures to remove social desirability and other biases from the results. In many of these studies, participants were randomly assigned to conditions which allowed for fair comparison and the ability to draw conclusions about the relationships between the variables. Overall, these studies attempted to maximize their internal validity, reliability and generalizability with their multiple tests, large sample sizes and random assignment.

However, these attempts to control the internal validity by using controlled hypothetical scenarios in a lab setting may have decreased their external validity in speaking about the reality of the views towards Asian Americans. Additionally, these studies do not present the whole

23 picture of attitudes towards Asian Americans and reproduce some harmful stereotypes. All of the studies homogenize “Asian Americans” or “East Asians” as a whole and fail to look specifically at which groups are viewed as most threatening. These studies also reproduce the model minority stereotype and do not examine its accuracy or the political motivation behind its creation. Furthermore, these studies found contradictory results about the causes for negative perceptions of Asian students. As these studies were quantitative in nature, they did not explore the relationship between various factors found to lead to negative views or ask for details about why participants had these beliefs. They therefore fail to pick up the nuances of why these views may shift. The empirical studies especially fail to theoretically explore how this response may be fueled by the desire to protect White hegemony and supremacy. They examine what conditions may create a threat for White students and influence their views, but do not critically analyze the advantages White bodies have. More empirical research is therefore needed about the role of Whiteness in these shifting perceptions.

Existing research on Whiteness outlines the different ways White identity is formed and viewed by White students in university settings. Common themes found across the literature included the denial of privilege, the use of coded racism and the belief that affirmative action or equity programs negatively affected White students. The use of interviews allowed for a deeper understanding of why participants had these views on Whiteness, and the true purpose of colour- evasive views on race. The results of this research provide empirical support for theories developed in critical Whiteness studies, which I am using to ground this study.

As noted above, the majority of the data and studies conducted on Whiteness in higher education is from the United States, where there are distinct differences. Many of the same themes were also found in the Canadian study at the University of British Columbia where most White participants rarely thought about their own racial location and denied their privilege. But this one study is limited and is outdated by ten years and therefore needs updating to fit the current political moment and demographic trends. The field would benefit from new analysis into how these dynamics play out in a Canadian university, especially one where there is a combination of Canadian official multiculturalism and the Vancouver anti-Chinese sentiment.

2.6 Point of Departure

Although the dynamics of White identity formation and racial attitudes is thoroughly explored in Whiteness studies, my research aims to extend this research to specifically look at how this occurs in relation to Asian Canadians. There is very little research in this field which looks at how Whiteness is currently working to create discourses and attitudes about Asian Canadians. This idea has been discussed theoretically in many studies (see: Kim, 1999; Kim, 2000; Ng, Lee & Pak, 2007; Yu, 2012) but has rarely been explored with empirical research. Norton and Baker’s study has some discussion of White students’ perception of Asian Canadians, but this is not the focus of the study. Notably, this study does not problematize these perceptions or examine their role in maintaining White hegemony. This critical analysis of these discourses is important to ensure that the hegemonic constructions are challenged and not reproduced in the work. The combination of examining perceptions of other groups and Whiteness itself allow for a deeper look at how White hegemony is not perpetuated only through the denial of racism and privilege, but also through discourses of other groups. By looking together at the attitudes of Chinese Canadians and the dynamics of Whiteness, this study allows for a deeper understanding of the complex ways White hegemony is sustained.

The current research will use a methodology consistent with the Whiteness research to explore the issue of shifting discourses of Chinese Canadians. The use of interviews will help to gain insight into how and why the theorized dynamics of shifting discourses may be occurring on current university campuses. The sociological studies which looked at this were purely quantitative and controlled in lab settings, so the present study will allow a more in-depth look at what factors influence these views and the justification as to why.

Theoretical Framework

This chapter provides an overview of the two theoretical frameworks that I am working within for this study: critical Whiteness studies and critical discourse analysis. Critical Whiteness studies examines the ways in which Whiteness is constructed and maintained while critical discourse analysis looks at the role of discourses in upholding hegemonic power relations. Together, they allow me to examine the various discursive strategies that White students use to maintain White hegemony in the university. I provide an overview of the relevant theoretical literature from each discipline and discuss the possibilities of using these framings in my current study. I conclude by applying critical discourse analysis to deconstruct the dominant perceptions of Chinese Canadians.

3.1 Critical Whiteness Studies

The field of critical Whiteness studies (CWS) aims to cast Whiteness as a problem which needs to be investigated and mark “Whiteness as a particular identity—even peculiar—rather than as the presumed norm” (Roediger, 2002, p. 21). As argued by Doane (2003), the goal is to “reverse the traditional focus of research on race relations by concentrating attention upon the socially constructed nature of White identity and the impact of Whiteness upon intergroup relations” (p. 3). It aims to make visible the practices and accompanying beliefs which hold up White privilege and supremacy, with the goal of dismantling these systems. Scholars in this discipline, and others who have written about Whiteness, have been very diverse in their definitions and areas of focus. Whiteness has been theorized as a rewarded social category (see: DuBois, 1920; Rothenberg, 2008; Wise, 2011), as property (see: Harris, 1993), as an invisible norm (see: Morrison, 1992; Keating, 1995) and as terror (see: hooks, 1997). Some other scholars have focused instead on how and why the White racial category has been created (see Allen, 1994), and its relationship to anti-Blackness (see: Baldwin, 1963; Fanon, 1952). For the purposes of this study, I have chosen to focus on how White supremacy and hegemony are maintained through White bodies’ denial of privilege and the fluidity of the White category across time.

3.1.1 Denial of Privilege

As discussed in the literature review, many empirical studies in CWS have emphasized how in current day society, many White bodies practice colour-blind racism whereby they “refuse to

26 acknowledge the reality of racism and reject any consideration of how their own racial identity provides them with privileges vis-à-vis people of colour” (Wise, 2010, p. 18). Although this theorizing on colour-blindness is important in disrupting White supremacy, Annamma, Jackson and Morrison (2017) importantly remind us that the term “colour-blind racism” is ableist and implies passivity of those who engage in it, which “locates the problem and power within an individual” instead of within systems (p. 154). They instead encourage us to expand this theorizing and view this denial of privilege as an ideology of “color-evasiveness” which resists the equation of blindness with ignorance and aims to “situate individuals in systemic context, identifying how these systems constrain and enable participation of the historically oppressed” (p. 158). By framing denial of racism as colour-evasive, it moves beyond the individual effects of this action to a broader discussion of how this denial helps continue White supremacy. There is a widespread belief among White bodies that White privilege and racism against negatively racialized bodies was in the past, which serves to perpetuate White supremacy. Many White bodies celebrate improvements and as Baldwin (1963) notes, “for hard example, white Americans congratulate themselves on the 1954 Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation in schools; they suppose, in spite of the mount of evidence that has since accumulated to the contrary, that this was proof of a change of heart—or, as they like to say, progress” (p. 100).

This denial of the realities of racism has negative effects for negatively racialized bodies as it “deepens white racial hostility to the very people of color about whom whites are technically resolving not to think of in racialized and bigoted ways” (Wise, 2010, p. 24). Ahmed (2004) importantly notes that Whiteness and its privileges are “only invisible to those who inhabit it” (par. 14) and its invisibility does not reduce the material effects. As hooks (1997) argues, “Black people still feel the terror, still associate it with whiteness, but...it is easy to silence by accusations of reverse racism or by suggesting that black folks who talk about the ways we are terrorized by whites are merely evoking victimization to demand special treatment” (p. 176). This denial therefore allows for the continuation of the status quo, which leads to the reproduction of White hegemony.

The denial of White privilege allows White bodies to believe there is an equal playing field and blames negatively racialized bodies for their own failures. This colour-evasive belief therefore is used to justify opposition to diversity initiatives and affirmative action, as they are viewed as unfairly privileging negatively racialized students (Doane, 2003). Through these beliefs, White

27 bodies claim they experience “reverse racism” and are victims of these initiatives (Bonilla-Silva, 2003). In Canada for example, the University of Alberta president, who herself is negatively racialized, expressed concern over the over-representation of women and negatively racialized bodies at Canadian universities, and questioned whether “affirmative action for men” and White students is needed (Ghabrial, 2012, p. 50). As a response to these statements, an editorial in the Globe and Mail stated that “in an equitable, multicultural and productive society, a helping hand must be given to any group that lags behind, even if it was once a front-runner” (Globe and Mail, 2009). This brand of colour-evasiveness uses the liberal terms of multiculturalism and equity to argue that White males are the ones in need of assistance. These beliefs divert attention away from Indigenous and negatively racialized students who are marginalized by ongoing systemic racism and in so doing, allow this marginalization to continue unchecked. As Dei (2017) argues, “liberal discourses that proclaim we are all “one human race” with equal rights, and we live in a society that values multiculturalism, deny the fact that social inequalities and violences are structured through race itself” (p. 18). Other brands of this racism take a subtler form where they couch their arguments in terms of the need for “balance” and “attractiveness” in their institutions. Especially with regard to Asian Canadians, there is an argument that increased Asian enrollment would lead to balkanization and that White enrollment is needed for balance (Ghabrial, 2012, p. 52).

This theorizing on how colour-evasive attitudes of race serve to reproduce structural White hegemony is useful to the current study as it explains how White bodies can justify feeling marginalized and underrepresented at UBC. The minimization of the effects of race on campus allow students to ignore the presence of systemic White privilege. The current advocates for the belief that Chinese international students are taking the spots of White domestic students use a similar lens to argue that domestic students are being marginalized. This framework therefore provides a useful way to explain White students’ presumed rationale for these views and may offer insight into why certain views towards Chinese Canadian students exist.

3.1.2 Fluidity of Whiteness

Another contribution of CWS is the need for Whiteness to be understood as a racialized social identity and system which is historically contingent and is flexible to change over time to preserve White hegemony. Who is considered White or proximate to Whiteness has varied over

28 time depending on the socio-historical context. Many scholars (for example: Brodkin, 1998; Roediger, 2005) have written about how previous groups who were viewed as non-White and foreign (such as Eastern Europeans, Irish Americans and Jewish Americans) became consolidated into the White category. The expansion of the White category to include these groups occurred to preserve the power of Whiteness in the face of threats by other negatively racialized groups. As Brodkin (2001) states, “the meaning of Whiteness, its variability and its fluidity all derive from its position of power and privilege vis-à-vis particular non-white others” (p. 147). The consolidation of Whiteness served to strengthen this position of privilege and reinforce the subordinate position of Black Americans. As argued by Baldwin (2010), in order to be consolidated into the White category, racialized groups had to embrace an identity based on the discrimination of Black bodies. As a result of this anti-Blackness, groups formally considered non-White or even Black (such as the Irish) were absorbed into Whiteness. This was possible because “Whiteness has assumed its meaning in the context of a constructed negative meaning of Blackness” (Dei, 2017, p. 44).

Bonilla-Silva (2004), in his proposed tri-racial model, argues that some groups have now been granted an honorary White status, including light-skinned Latinos, some Asian Americans, Middle-Eastern Americans and most multi-racial Americans. Within the honorary White category, one can see that those who have light-skinned privilege or who, on some measure, conform to the Eurocentric notions of success, are placed closer to Whiteness. As Bonilla-Silva argues, “the honorary white strata…is the product of the socio-political needs of Whites to maintain White supremacy given local and international changes” (p. 942). He argues that the success of the honorary Whites category will lead to an increased conviction in the denial of structural racism. Therefore, this flexibility of Whiteness allows for increased concealment of its effects and permanency. The fluidity of the White category and the racial hierarchy has only served to increase White supremacy. Thus, in order to disrupt this supremacy, it is important to examine the ways this flexibility operates.

This conception of Whiteness as fluid is important for my study as it helps to understand how the White category can shift to remain in power. Depending on the historical context, Chinese Americans/Canadians have been assigned differing levels of proximity to Whiteness to ensure Whiteness remains in power. This study aims to examine how this shifting definition of Whiteness changes in the current historical moment with the increased numbers and success of

Chinese Canadians. By examining Whiteness as flexible instead of stable, it allows for a close examination of how Whiteness operates and affects the opinions of other groups.

3.1.3 Anti-Racist Approach to Whiteness Studies

Many scholars have criticized CWS for its possibility to re-center Whiteness and deny the realities of racism for negatively racialized groups. Howard (2004) for example, has argued that certain branches of Whiteness studies run the risk of undermining the significance and scope of White privilege and “exacerbating the invisibility of, not white identity/ies, but white privilege” (p. 68). In particular, he argues that works exploring the notion of ‘White trash’ deny the racial privilege held by poor White bodies. The disaggregation and demarcation of Whiteness into various identities is used to dispute claims about widespread White privilege and serves to entrench the White supremacist project (Howard, 2004). As Dei (2017) argues, many times discussions of other forms of oppression and the use of an intersectional analysis are “coopted to refute the saliency of race and Blackness” (p. 57). Research looking at the fluidity and demarcation of Whiteness is therefore oftentimes used to evade conversations about White racial privilege and reinscribe White supremacy.

As not to reinscribe Whiteness in this work but instead disrupt it, I will follow the lead of other White anti-racist scholars and do this work with significant self-reflection and “through engagement with the critical anti-racist work of those positioned as racially subordinate in a White supremacist system” (Howard, 2004, p. 75). Dei (2000) maintains that “in our anti-racist praxis we must centre the interrogation of Whiteness in a way that does not shift attention away from the plight and concerns of society’s disadvantaged” (p. 28). We need to ensure that we recognize the salience and centrality of race for negatively racialized bodies. As Omi and Winant (1993) stress, it is necessary to “argue against the recent discovery of the illusory nature of race, against the supposed contemporary transcendence of race, against the widely reported death of the concept of race” (p. 52). The belief in this racial transcendence serves to erase the consequences certain groups face as a result of their perceived race, and therefore needs to be challenged. By examining Whiteness, I aim to expose how the fluidity of Whiteness and colour- evasive framing of race deny this salience and serve to reproduce White supremacist systems.

3.2 Critical Discourse Analysis

A further limitation of critical Whiteness studies for its utility in the current study is its exclusive focus on Whiteness, and its lack of focus on attitudes towards other groups. Although some scholars writing in Whiteness studies have pointed to how Whiteness operates as the norm to which other groups are compared, it does not address the extent to which identities and discourses of other groups are imposed and controlled by Whiteness. To address this limitation, I combine my analysis of CWS with Critical Discourse Analysis. As defined by Fairclough (2013),

by ‘critical’ discourse analysis I mean discourse analysis which aims to systemically explore often opaque relationships of causality and determination between (a) discursive practices, events, and texts, and (b) wider social and cultural structures, relations and processes; to investigate how such practices, events, and texts arise out of and are ideologically shaped by relations of power and struggles over power; and to explore how the opacity of these relationships between discourse and society is itself a factor securing power and hegemony (p. 93)

Consistent with the objective of critical Whiteness studies, by using critical discourse analysis I aim to shed light onto the various discursive processes which sustain White hegemony in order to disrupt them. Discourses about Asian Americans have changed to maintain White hegemony in different times and contexts, and this thesis examines if these views have shifted to exclusionary discourses when this hegemony is threatened.

Foucault’s approach to discourse importantly recognizes the ahistorical nature of representations, and how binaries may change to maintain White hegemony. Thus, critical discourse analysis can account for the limitations of Whiteness studies by examining how discourses about other groups may change to maintain White hegemony. As defined by Foucault, discourse is a “group of statements which provide a language for talking about—a way of representing knowledge about—a particular topic at a particular historical moment” (as cited in Hall, 1997, p. 44). He argues that the production of this discourse is not unrestricted but “is at once controlled, selected, organized and redistributed according to a certain number of procedures, whose role is to avert its power and its dangers, to cope with chance events, to evade its ponderous, awesome materiality” (Foucault, 1972, p. 216). Foucault emphasizes that all discourses are inscribed in relations of power and the dominant group has the power to define discourses about particular topics or groups, which serves to maintain the power of Whiteness. Critical discourse analysis

31 highlights how larger systems of power and control serve as underlying codes of spoken and written language.

Fairclough (2013) defines this process as the “technologisation of discourse” which is “a specifically contemporary form of top-down intervention to change discursive practices and restructure hegemonies within orders of discourse” (p.88). He argues that technologisation of discourse allows the dominant to construct or maintain hegemony. As conceived by Gramsci, he defines hegemony as “leadership as well as domination across the economic, political, cultural and ideological domains of society” (Fairclough, 2013, p. 61). Fairclough argues that discourse has a dual relationship to hegemony; hegemonic practices typically take the form of discursive practice and discourse itself is also a sphere of cultural hegemony. He contends that these two aspects are connected “in that it is in concrete discursive practice that hegemonic structurings of orders of discourse are produced, reproduced, challenged and transformed” (p. 130). It is therefore important to pay attention to how hegemonic discourses are produced or reproduced in institutional practices but also in everyday language. By engaging critical discourse analysis in this study, I am analyzing what discursive practices the participants use in their everyday language which maintain White hegemony.

As various scholars have pointed out, Foucault’s theories and analysis ignored the ways power operated in the arenas of race and colonialism, specifically in terms of how power has differential consequences for social groups (see: Said, 1993; Spivak, 1988; Young, 1995). Despite this, his theorizing on knowledge and power when combined with an anti-racism approach, has great utility for examining discourses about Chinese Canadian students in three main ways. First, the connection of discourse and hegemony as outlined above is a useful approach for looking at the ways the White majority maintain their power through various discursive processes about themselves and other groups. Secondly, Foucault’s conception of discursive formations as “a space of multiple dissensions; a set of different oppositions whose levels and roles must be described” (Foucault, 1972, p. 155) is useful for understanding the opposing discourses about Asian Canadians. As discussed in the literature review, there is ambivalence and contradictions in the discourses used about the success of Asian Americans, thus Foucault’s conception of discourses becomes useful in this analysis. Finally, the theorizing of power as not just unilateral but being produced and reproduced in everyday interactions helps to understand how the individual beliefs of White students serve to perpetuate larger power

32 relations. Combining discourse analysis with critical Whiteness studies allows me to theorize about how mechanisms of maintaining White supremacy influence the discourses about negatively racialized groups. In this way, it allows me to answer my research question about how White supremacy is maintained through White individual’s attitudes towards Chinese Canadians.

3.3 A Critical Analysis of Historical Discourses of Chinese Canadians

Historical discourses about Asian Americans such as the yellow peril and model minority have been informed by Whiteness and spread with the purpose of maintaining its power. Although the discourses are about Asian Americans, they have broader implications in upholding the hierarchical racial structure. They have been used to form and maintain perceptions of other groups, ideas about Canadian citizenship, and the belief in meritocracy and thereby are used to justify the superior position of White Canadians. I will examine the three prevalent historical and ongoing discourses about Asian Americans/Canadians using critical discourse analysis and explore how these discourses have been inscribed in relations of power.

3.3.1 100 Years of “Yellow Peril”

When the first major wave of Chinese migrants came to Canada in the 19th century, predominately for the gold rush and then later for labour, White settlers viewed this group as a “yellow peril”. This perception attributed disease, filth, and loose morals to Chinese immigrants and presented them as unassimilable with Western civilization (Anderson, 1991). White settlers used this yellow peril construction to label Chinese immigrants as unfit to settle in Canada. Following Foucault’s rules of exclusion, Western immigrants gave themselves the exclusive right to create discourses about Chinese Canadians and about what it meant to be Canadian. As Razack (2002) argues, national mythologies allowed European settlers to “become the original inhabitants and the group most entitled to the fruits of citizenship” (p. 2) despite the existence of Indigenous populations. The discourses which constructed and defined Chinese immigrants furthered this exclusionary definition of Canadian citizenship (Stanley, 2011). The construction of Chinese as an “undifferentiated category of outsiders who were fundamentally different” and unassimilable placed them “beyond the body of eligible citizenry from the time they entered” Canada (Anderson, 1991, p. 37). As Ward argued, through these exclusions of Chinese and Canadian Indigenous peoples, “British Columbians soon established the basic criteria for full admission to their new community, a major one being Whiteness” (Ward, 2002, p. 31).

This construction of Chinese immigrants as outsiders in Canada was coupled with the construction of male workers in particular as a threat to the wages of White men. Many Chinese labourers were accepting lower wages than White labourers in mines, canneries and various other jobs after the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railroad and were therefore viewed as driving White workers out of their jobs (Ward, 2002). There was also widespread sentiment that the nation would be “completely overrun” (Anderson, 1991, p. 53) by Chinese immigrants in general and that their “population will develop alarmingly and become so great the efforts of the people will be powerless to check it” (Ward, 2002, p. 44). This was expressed in anxieties about immigration and the immigration of women in particular to ensure that Chinese men did not settle. At the time of these debates surrounding Chinese immigration, the Chinese population numbered less than 6% of the population (Ward, 2002). The dominant group’s creation of this imaginary threat was intended to drum up public support for exclusionary policies towards Chinese immigrants, so Canada could maintain its mythos as a White nation.

These discourses manifested themselves in institutional policies designed to eradicate and exclude anyone that posed a threat to this hegemonic Whiteness. The federal government originally imposed a $50 head tax, with the intention of excluding the most amoral and poor Chinese from immigrating to Canada (Ward, 2002). This tax was later raised to $100 then $500 to dissuade further Chinese immigration (Cho, 2004). These taxes were justified by the negative discourses perpetuated about the Chinese group. In 1923, due to the continued construction of Chinese immigrants as unassimilable, the Canadian government passed the Chinese Immigration Act (later changed to Chinese Exclusion Act) whereby migrants from China were excluded altogether from immigrating to Canada. Previous Chinese migrants, including those with Head Tax certificates and those fighting with Canada in the Second World War, did not receive citizenship in Canada until 1947. This widespread discourse describing Chinese immigrants as yellow peril helped to constructed White hegemony in Canada and worked to exclude any threats to this domination.

3.3.2 Model Citizens: Constructing Asian Americans in Opposition to Other Minority Groups

After the Second World War, the view of Chinese Americans and Canadians began to shift to one of a model minority. This view at the time emphasized hard work and determination in overcoming the hardships and discrimination experienced by these groups before the war. The

34 view was first constructed with the intention of demonstrating peace between Japan and the United States after the Second World War and to help Japanese Americans re-integrate smoothly in American society (Wu, 2014). The discourse was originally distributed as propaganda by the War Relocation Authority, a government agency established to handle Japanese internment, in the form of pamphlets, brochures and films about “wholesome, patriotic Japanese workers” and Japanese “success stories” to re-educate receiving communities about their new Japanese American neighbours.

The term “model minority” was coined shortly after by sociologist William Peterson in an article in the New York Times entitled “Success Story: Japanese American Style.” This article recognized the historical racial discrimination of Japanese Americans and praised them for their ability to overcome, citing their cultural values as the explanation (Lee, 2006). This term expanded to include Chinese Americans as “observers increasingly lumped the two together through their descriptions of a categorical not-blackness” (Wu, 2014, p. 243). Together, the representations of the homogenized Asian Americans in the media were used to delegitimize claims of Black Americans and frame their problems as a result of their own negligence (Nagayama, 1988). Media stories emphasized the historical hardships that both Chinese and Japanese Americans went through to undermine the claims of those in the civil rights movement. This view is demonstrated by a US News and World Report from the time that stated “what you would [find] with this remarkable group of Americans is a story of adversity and prejudice that would shock those now complaining about the hardships endured by today’s Negros” (Wu, 2014, p. 208). As argued by Lee (2006), “inherent in their praise was a message chastising African Americans and other minorities for their civil rights activism” (p. 3). The discourse of Asian Americans as “paragons of hard work, strong family values, and respect for authority” were emphasized to explain their “success” which was presented in direct opposition to Black Americans (Lee, 2006, p. 3).

As Yu (2006) argues, the model minority discourse was a device of political control to downplay the structural racism that Asian Americans and other negatively racialized groups faced in society. She reasons that in response to political activism by predominately Black Americans, “the racist power elite realized that simply responding by saying “there is no racism” would not help; it would make more sense to show an example of minority success. Then, they could claim that racism or social injustice is really not an issue because Asians have made it” (p. 327). The

35 supposed success of Asian Americans is offered as proof that meritocracy exists in North America and that negatively racialized groups can succeed if “they conform to the values and the norms of the middle class” (Wong, Lai, Nagasawa & Lin, 1998). The construction of the discourse allowed the maintenance of White hegemony and deflected the conversation away from systemic racism and oppression.

This discourse also delegitimized the claims of Asian American concerns of racism and inequality as it created an assumption that all Asian Americans had achieved great success. Despite this assumption, the attributes and success associated with the model minority discourse have been found to be myth for many Asian American populations. Wong and Halgin (2006), for example, have shown that GPA scores of Asian students on average are not statistically significantly greater than those of other racial groups despite the continued insistence of this by the news and media. Additionally, although average household income has been found to be higher for Chinese and Japanese groups, this does not account for differences in household size. On average, Chinese and Japanese households have more members which inflate their household income statistic (Wu, 2014). This therefore leads to the necessary question of why these representations are still being perpetuated and who benefits from their construction. As argued by Iseke-Barnes (2005), the North American media intentionally “privileges some representations and disadvantages others” to “promote a particular orientation” (p. 156). In the case of the model minority, these representations are used to perpetuate White supremacy and delegitimize experiences of other minority groups. The shifting of the narrative about Asian Americans from yellow peril to model minority served “a larger purpose to maintain the hierarchical race relations” with the main benefactors being the White majority (Yu, 2006, p. 328). Other scholars have explored how some Asian Americans have claimed this semblance of Whiteness despite it’s fragility (Saito, 1998; Bonilla-Silva, 2004; Yu, 2006). As Yu (2006) argued, Asian Americans who embraced this label were accepting a type of “racist love” that inevitably led to their own oppression and the oppression of other negatively racialized groups.

3.3.3 Model, But Still Not Accepted: Discourses of Perpetual Foreigner

Concurrent with the model minority stereotype is the view of Asian Americans as permanent outsiders to the norms of North American culture, which serves to exclude them from the benefits that White Americans receive. This view is reminiscent of the historical discourse of

Chinese migrants as unassimilable and continues to differentiate Chinese Americans from “Americans”. This perpetual foreigner perception is demonstrated by the question “Where are you really from?” that is asked of many Asian Americans. As Lee (2015) argues, “this seemingly innocent question reveals the assumption that Asianness and Americanness are mutually exclusive” (p. 5). This perception keeps Asian Americans as a model minority but does not allow them to ascend to an equal status with the White dominant.

This process is what Kim (1999) refers to as the racial triangulation of Asian Americans. She argues that this triangulation occurs through two simultaneous processes whereby there are

(1) processes of “relative valorization” whereby dominant group A (Whites) valorizes subordinate group B (Asian Americans) relative to subordinate group C (Blacks) on cultural and/or racial groups in order to dominate both groups, but especially the later and

(2) processes of “civic ostracism,” whereby dominant group A (Whites) constructs subordinate group B (Asian Americans) as immutably foreign and unassimilable with Whites on cultural and/or racial grounds in order to ostracize them from the body politic and civic membership (p. 107).

Kim emphasizes that this triangulation protects White privilege by deflecting against demands for racial reform while simultaneously ensuring that “Asian Americans will not actually “outwhite” Whites” (p. 127). These processes are reproduced in the discursive realm through the stereotypes of model minority and perpetual foreigner. The model minority stereotype in media and everyday interactions reinforces this valorization of Asian Americans at the expense of other negatively racialized groups. At the same time, the perpetual foreigner stereotype ascribes a foreign status to Asian Americans and thereby protects the boundary between White Americans and Asian Americans. These discourses have also existed in Canada for similar purposes as Chinese Canadian success is portrayed as evidence of equality and multiculturalist ideals. At the same time, multiculturalism celebrates difference in a superficial celebratory way which masks questions of equity and power-sharing (Dei, 2000). Negatively racialized groups are presumed to be foreign and are expected to assimilate to gain true belonging. White hegemony remains unchallenged and masked through discourses about Asian Canadians which help further beliefs in the myths of multiculturalism and equality.

All three of the prevalent discourses about Asian Canadians/Americans served the same purpose in different times: ensuring that White hegemony is created or maintained. Following this theorizing, one would hypothesize that when there is a threat to this hegemony, the perpetual foreigner discourse would be emphasized. Additionally, due to the increased competition over resources with Asian Americans, there would be a resurgence of the perception of Asian Americans (and specific to this work, Chinese Canadians in Vancouver) as one of yellow peril. As discussed in the literature review, there is some evidence that White students shift their views of Asian Americans and Canadians when they feel threatened by their success. As Kawai (2005) argues, “people of Asian descent become the model minority when they are depicted to do better than other racial minority groups, whereas they become the yellow peril when they are described to outdo White Americans” (p. 115). In Chapter 5, I use critical discourse analysis to analyze the current discourses used by my participants to talk about Chinese students and situate them in this broader discussion of the historical role of these discourses.

3.4 Summary

The combination of critical discourse analysis and critical Whiteness studies allows me to examine how White hegemony is maintained at the university through discourses about Chinese Canadians and those which deny the advantage of White students. Critical Whiteness studies typically focuses more on how White bodies view their Whiteness and privilege, and how this affects their views on racism. Although this analysis can offer insight into how hegemony is maintained, critical discourse analysis allows for additional analysis about how discourses about other groups can contribute to this maintenance. In the case of UBC, Chinese Canadians compose a large group which is perceived to be threatening to the majority group’s hegemony. Through the use of a combination of Whiteness studies and critical discourse analysis, I am able to examine how discourses about this group are shifting to resist this threat. Additionally, both critical Whiteness studies and critical discourse analysis allow me to examine the use of discourses of denial and colour-evasive language and their role in the maintenance of White hegemony. In the next chapter, I outline how these theoretical frameworks have informed my methodology and research methods.

Methodology

This chapter outlines my methodological framework and its roots in my theoretical frameworks. I describe my methods for data collection including details about the interviews, recruitment strategies, my participants and some challenges and limitations. I also outline my methods of data analysis and use of critical discourse analysis. I conclude with a reflection about my researcher positionality.

4.1 Connection to Theoretical Frameworks

The goal of my research is to uncover the ways White bodies perpetuate White supremacy in the university context and how their use of discourses about Chinese Canadians help to achieve this. This is with consistent with the goal of CWS to unmask the mechanisms of Whiteness and White supremacy. Other empirical researchers in Whiteness studies have used in-depth interviews to reveal the ways White supremacy is upheld by White individuals and how this affects their attitudes towards other groups. This focus on Whiteness and White bodies as the objects of this study as opposed to the typical focus on negatively racialized bodies is intentional as it serves to disrupt their invisibility and hegemony. It follows the call of bell hooks (1990) for a “change in direction” in research to encourage “the production of a discourse on race that interrogates whiteness” (p. 56). She argues that “only a persistent, rigorous, and informed critique of whiteness could really determine what forces of denial, fear, and competition are responsible for creating fundamental gaps between professed political commitment to eradicating racism and the participation in the construction of a discourse on race that perpetuate racial domination” (hooks, 1990, p. 56). Through interviewing White students, I aim to unpack these forces which preserve White hegemony.

The results from Bonilla-Silva and Forman’s (2000) study revealed that it is easier to assess participants’ true opinions about race and racism from interviews as opposed to surveys. White participants’ colour-evasive ideology may cause them to support negatively racialized people on paper in a survey, but interviews are needed to ascertain their true intentions (Bonilla-Silva & Forman, 2000). For this reason, in order to gain insight into the mechanisms of White supremacy, interviews are the best method in this research. Some CWS scholars have called for participant observation studies when studying White bodies because their opinions in surveys and interviews may not match their behaviours (Lewis, 2004). For the current study, interviews

39 are preferred for two reasons. Firstly, I am looking to assess how White supremacist views and beliefs factor into their opinions of Chinese Canadians and could not guarantee that these would be clear in observed interactions. Secondly, the university environment is not a controlled environment in the same way elementary and high schools are and it would be difficult to follow White students in all their interactions.

Additionally, the use of interviews allows for an examination of the perceptions of White Canadian students using critical discourse analysis. As outlined by Fairclough, my analysis aims to investigate how discursive practices and events “arise out of and are ideologically shaped by relations of power and struggles over power” (p. 93). As the focus of the research is on how White hegemony is maintained in the White participants’ views, I focused on which discourses the participants were perpetuating in their views, and how these in turn serve to maintain hegemony. Expanding on historical analyses of the role of various discourses of Asian Americans, this study aims to analyze the purpose of current discourses. Due to the limited scope of this investigation, I analyzed how power was implicated in the content of the interview responses but did not focus on the stylistic components.

Furthermore, I analyzed what strategies participants used to conceal their privilege and power. As argued by van Dijk (1993), “a major strategy of the reproduction of dominance is that of denial: there is no dominance, all people in our society are equal, and have equal access to social resources” (p. 263). The use of these discourses of equality and meritocracy allow for the systematic association of negatively racialized minorities with negative cultural discourses and discredit affirmative action programs, therefore maintaining the hegemony and dominance of the dominant. By critically analyzing the use of these strategies by the interview participants, one can unpack how discourses can maintain the existing power relations within the university.

4.2 Data Collection

This research seeks to examine the experiences and attitudes of White individuals on university campuses in Canada, with the purpose of examining how Whiteness is reproduced. To examine these experiences and attitudes, I used a mixed-methods approach. I conducted interviews with White university students who were Canadian citizens and did supplemental analysis of two online webpages. In order to recruit participants for the interviews, I used convenience sampling and posted flyers across UBC in areas where a mix of students frequent (libraries, Student Union

40 buildings, dormitories). My aim was to recruit a diverse group of students from different faculties as the racial makeups differ in each and therefore their experiences may be different. I placed posters in main buildings of each the arts faculty, science faculty, business faculty and engineering faculty to encourage this diversity. These flyers (Appendix A) indicated the exclusion criteria as well as a brief description of the study. I also posted an online version of the recruitment flyer on the paid participants study list at UBC, as well as on the UBC Subreddit and the Class of ‘18/’19/’20/’21 Facebook pages. Institutional approval was needed for access to some bulletin boards and online sites, which was not given because I was a researcher from outside of UBC.

Interested participants emailed my provided email address and I confirmed if they matched the exclusion criteria. The inclusion factors included identifying as White, being a Canadian citizen and being a student at UBC. As my study aimed to assess how White supremacy is maintained through dominant discourses about Chinese students, I limited my study to White students at the university as they would either hold or be aware of the views of the students on campus. I included the exclusion criteria of domestic student status because White international students may have different beliefs about Chinese international students and Vantage college, which would be interesting to explore but beyond the scope of this investigation.

Five interested participants who were available during my research window emailed me, but one did not meet the exclusion criteria as he did not feel comfortable identifying as White, leaving me with four eligible participants. Three of these participants were recruited through the paid participants webpage and one contacted me after seeing a recruitment poster. Table 1 provides demographic information about the four participants, as provided through introductory demographic questions in the interview. Pseudonyms were used in the table and throughout the paper for privacy reasons. As per the exclusionary criteria, all the students in the convenience sample selected were White and domestic students at UBC. Half of the participants identified as male and half identified as female, creating a gender-balanced sample. Only three of the participants were comfortable disclosing their age and had a small age range of 20 to 22 years old. This is to be expected within a university sample where the majority of students are between the ages of 18 and 22. The participants varied in their year of study, from third year to sixth year, but all were in upper years of their degrees so had extensive knowledge of the campus climate. Two of the participants lived on campus for at least one of their years at the university so

41 experienced the social dynamics of the campus housing. The students varied in their faculty of origin, with two studying in the Arts faculty, one in Kinesiology and one in Engineering. Lastly, two of the participants grew up in the Greater Vancouver area and two moved to attend UBC, one from Manitoba and one from Newfoundland. As recognized by the participants, both Manitoba and Newfoundland have large majority White populations and therefore have different experiences than students who grew up in the more diverse Greater Vancouver.

Table 1: Participant Profile Gender Age Year of Faculty Place of Residence Pseudonym Study Origin Given Male 22 5 Arts Newfoundland No David Female 20 3 Kinesiology Greater Yes Ashley Vancouver Male n/d 6 Engineering Greater Yes Travis Vancouver Female 21 4 Arts Manitoba No Heather

Interviews with all the participants were conducted face-to-face in a private room at the alumni centre on the UBC campus to ensure privacy and comfort for the participants. The interviews took place during the week of January 1st, 2018. One interested student was away during the time I was conducting research. As I wanted to maintain consistency and conduct all the interviews in person, I excluded them from the study. The interviews ranged from 18 minutes to 38 minutes in length. In exchange for their participation, the students were each given a $5 gift card to Starbucks. I provided each participant with the compensation at the beginning of our meeting, so participants would not feel pressured to stay until the end or answer any questions they did not want to. Before starting the interview, I briefly explained my research and went through the consent form with each participant. Participants ensured they understood the terms of the form and consented to being audio recorded. I recorded all the interviews using the voice memos application on my phone, then transferred the recordings to a secure computer.

I started the interview by gathering demographic information about my participants. The main interview questions were semi-structured and focused mainly on White students’ attitudes towards Chinese students as they are the most observed minority group in Vancouver. The interviews aimed to determine the underlying logic behind discourses within this majority group and examine if White supremacist views play a role in shaping their attitudes. Specifically, I asked students to describe their overall experiences at UBC and determine if they felt like they have any challenges or disadvantages. I also asked about Vantage College and the tuition system of international students to gauge their opinions on international students and determine how these views were constructed. Additionally, I asked participants how their experience has been altered by the fact that White students are a numerical minority on campus, with the hope to gain insight into how my participants construct opinions on race. My final question was regarding whether racism exists on the UBC campus with the aim of examining if and how participants would deny the existence of structural racism. As discussed in my theoretical framework section, denial of racism is a tool used by White bodies to resist equity programs and maintain their structural advantage. As a researcher, I acknowledge that racism is endemic in every institution but asked this question to assess the extent to which my White participants acknowledge this. I have attached my full interview guide as an appendix (Appendix B).

Interviewing White participants about their experiences on the UBC campus, opinions of international students, and the presence of racism at UBC aimed to provide insight into how Whiteness impacts their everyday interactions and opinions. Although Whiteness may not be mentioned by the students directly, how they answer these questions was influenced by their White positionality and provides a window into how White supremacy operates systemically within universities. In order to ascertain how these responses reproduced White hegemony, I used various data analysis techniques.

4.3 Data Analysis

I transcribed the interviews and coded them manually by hand in two ways. First, I used what Saldana (2013) labels “Values Coding” to capture and label the subjective perspectives of my participants. I sorted the data based on the strategies participants used when talking about their opinions of Chinese Canadians and Whiteness. The sorting process was based in themes discovered in the literature on Whiteness, such as the presence of colour-evasive views and the

43 denial of privilege. In addition, I coded the interviews for the presence of various discourses about Chinese Canadians which have been cited in the literature or expressed historically. In many of the participants’ responses, they did not talk about their own views but instead talked about the general perception on campus or views that they heard from others. As the goal was to assess the general view of Chinese students on campus and the possible reasons for those views, I also coded these remarks. I was coding for the presence of three main discourses: model minority, yellow peril, and perpetual foreigner. Although these are the three commonly cited historic views, I did not force any responses into these categories if they reflected an additional view. Due to the small sample size, I did not conduct extensive comparative analysis between the participants based on social difference but noted when major differences were present.

Along with the analysis of my interviews, I also performed content analysis of two online web pages: the UBC subreddit and the Facebook group UBC Confessions. The UBC Subreddit is a sub page on Reddit, a media aggregation and discussion site, where UBC students post about news, course issues or social issues going on around campus. Anyone can join the page, and post using a pseudonym username. UBC Confessions is a Facebook group where people can submit their UBC-related confessions anonymously. These two sites are popular online forums used often by students at UBC, with 16,000 and 33,000 followers respectively, and therefore encapsulate a broad subset of the UBC population. Additionally, they were chosen due to their anonymous nature whereby respondents are more likely to be honest without fear of judgement as opposed to in interviews or on public sites. For both sites, I analyzed any posts that contained the word “Chinese” or “Asian” and coded them for the presence of the three discourses about Asian Americans. Due to the volume of posts on UBC Confessions, I only analyzed those posted in 2017.

As discussed at the outset of the chapter, in my analysis of the interviews and online sources, I did not simply code for the presence of discourses but also used critical discourse analysis to focus on the role of discourse in reproducing power relations and dominance (van Dijk, 1993). With a particular focus on Whiteness, I focused on the strategies that the students or people they were referring to used to “legitimate control, or otherwise ‘naturalize’ the social order, and especially relations of inequality” (van Dijk, 1993, p. 254). As my study is on the threat of Chinese Canadians to White hegemony, I focused on the ways the students and the discourses they were using maintained this hegemony. As discussed in the previous chapter, historical

44 analysis of discourses about Chinese Canadians reveal that the previous stereotypes of yellow peril, model minority and perpetual foreigner were used to reproduce White hegemony. The aim of the current study is to analyze if and how these discourses are being used today for the same goal.

4.4 Challenges & Limitations

There were concerns regarding social desirability among the interview participants. Previous studies have found that White people are often not forthcoming about their racist views or views about race in general due to social desirability concerns (Janus, 2010; Krysan & Couper, 2003). I therefore, tried to make the interview questions very neutral and not specifically about race, in order to create a level of comfort where participants revealed their opinions on race candidly. Two of the interviews were shorter than expected, lasting 18 and 19 minutes, as these participants answered many of the questions with very short responses, and even with probing and requests for clarification, did not provide detailed responses. I had conducted a practice interview session with a friend and had anticipated that the interviews would take approximately 45 minutes to an hour, but the actual participants provided less detail. The shorter length of the interviews could be due to White students’ uncomfortability or avoidance of talking about race or their position on campus. Despite the unwillingness of participants to talk at length about race, I examined the instances where they raised the idea of race and how they dealt with the issues surrounding it. This concern over social desirability in the interviews is accounted for in part by the supplemental content analysis of the online sources. Although both of these sites have administrators who remove what they view to be “racist, derogatory, or discriminatory” content, this did not include posts that perpetuate negative stereotypes of Asian groups or subtle forms of racism. Therefore, these sites provide some responses which participants in an interview may be uncomfortable expressing in person but that people posting anonymously online might.

This unwillingness to talk about Whiteness and race may also be the reason for the small number of interested participants in the interview. As discussed above, despite extensive advertising, only six potential participants reached out to me to participate in the study with four being eligible and available. I intended to get a sample of six to eight participants as I felt that a sample consisting of less than six individuals would be unrepresentative while a sample of more than eight would require more time than available for this thesis project. The four participants who

45 participated may be anomalies in their views of Asian Canadians or the ways they construct Whiteness. One way I attempted to circumvent this was by also asking about the general attitudes on campus so despite the individuals’ attitudes, I would get an idea of the larger majority discourses. Additionally, the use of online sources allows for analysis of more perspectives than the four participants.

Additionally, although my study was gender-stratified and diverse in terms of faculty of study and place of origin, the use of convenience sampling meant that it was not necessarily representative of the UBC population. The students who chose to participate were those who checked the paid research website or who were looking for posters about studies. Those who are willing to participate in research, especially about race and Whiteness, may not be representative of the larger population of White students. These views also may not necessarily be representative of other university populations. The responses are specific to the locale that they were conducted in as students at the University of British Columbia have unique concerns about Chinese students which occur as part of the larger climate of Vancouver. But as Chesler, Peet & Sevig (2010) argue in their study of White students, although the interviews with these students are “not geographically or temporally, or in terms of cohort, representative of other White students’ racial consciousness, they are useful windows into the ways in which racial process become visible and are expressed” (p. 216). The intention of this research was not to generalize these results to every student or other contexts, but instead show the existence and mechanisms of these processes of maintaining White supremacy.

As per anti-racist tradition, I had no intention to be preoccupied by the false claims of objective truth to any of my research questions but instead share the perspectives from the participants’ particular vantage points and readings on the issues. Consistent with the tradition of critical discourse analysis, I treated the participants as “models” of the larger social order. This allowed me to “link the personal with the social, and hence individual actions and (other) discourses, as well as their interpretations, with the social order, and personal opinions and experiences with group attitudes and group relations, including those of power and dominance” (van Dijk, 1993, p. 258). I analyzed the interviews to assess how these individual models reproduce or challenge the existing White supremacist social order.

4.5 Researcher Positionality

Although my White identity and appearance proved to have some utility in this study as I had an insider position with the participants, it also comes with its limitations and biases. As Gordon (2005) argues, there is a potential for White researchers to sustain White privilege in their work through selective attribution of race, Whitewashing of results, and avoidance of race talk. She argues that often White researchers “make the determination of whose racial identity will be acknowledged” and avoid difficult conversations about race with White participants which serve to sustain White advantage. To avoid this, I heeded her advice that “White researchers need to be more overtly aware of race when developing research questions and most particularly in developing interview and observation protocols” (p. 300). In developing my interview questions, I wanted a balance of questions about my participants’ general experiences to assess the ways they incorporated race into those views, and questions specifically about their own positionality and racism on campus. I analyzed all the participants’ responses specifically for the mentions of race or privilege and deconstructed the ways this functions to maintain White privilege.

My positionality as a researcher also gave me power to interpret and represent participants’ responses and choose what is reported in the final thesis. Kincheloe and McLaren (2005) remind us that “in qualitative research, there is only interpretation, no matter how vociferously many researchers argue that the facts speak for themselves” (p. 311). With this interpretation comes a responsibility to portray the participants as accurately as possible. To do so, I make it clear when participants were talking about their own views or views/beliefs they have heard on campus and provide the context with which the quote was provided. Additionally, I made an effort to report the views that were contradictory to previous research in critical Whiteness studies or those which disrupted the hegemony of Whiteness at the university. The use of critical discourse analysis to analyze the ways the students talked about Chinese participants was also subject to interpretation by me. As critics of critical discourse analysis point out, “meaning is never fixed and everything is always open to interpretation and negotiation” (Mogashoa, 2014, p. 111). My interpretation of the interview results is based in historical analysis on how these discourses operate to maintain power. In providing this interpretative framework, I am making no claims to objective truth or disregarding other interpretations.

In addition to the power to choose what is reported, I also recognize that there is power in the way things are reported. I needed to ensure that in doing this research and reporting on the harmful stereotypes about Asian Canadians that I do not reproduce the stereotypes but instead disrupt them. Despite the existence of these views by participants and other students on campus, these views hold no truth about Asian Canadians. By using critical discourses analysis, I aim to unpack the ways these representations have served to maintain White hegemony historically and presently, with the intention of discrediting their validity.

Research Findings: Perceptions of Chinese Students

In this chapter, I will discuss the perceptions of Chinese students that were expressed or alluded to in my data collection at UBC. Specifically, I analyze responses to my first and second research questions: (1) What are the current views of Chinese students held by White Canadian students at the University of British Columbia? How do these compare to previous views cited in the literature? and (2) What factors influence these views about Chinese students at the University of British Columbia? I analyze the main views expressed by the students I interviewed and those which were present on the online sites and coded these views as belonging to various historical discourses about Chinese Canadians. I then situate these perceptions in previous literature and discuss the role of the views in upholding White hegemony at the university.

5.1 Interview Findings

To elicit responses to these research questions in my interviews, I asked students about their experiences on campus, their perception of internationalization and the existence of racism on campus. I also specifically asked students if they felt like there was a different perception of Chinese students as compared to other negatively racialized students on campus, and why this may be. I analyzed any references students made to Chinese students or the perception of Chinese students on campus and coded them into the various existing discourses about Chinese Canadians.

The three main views expressed by the students were those consistent with the historical literature on perceptions of Asian Americans: model minority, yellow peril and perpetual foreigner. Table 2 provides an overview of the instances of each view, with a brief description of how it was coded in my analysis. The number of references refers to the amount of separate references students made to each topic or theme throughout the interviews. If the students referenced the same view multiple times as a response to the same question or as a continuous flow of conversation, I counted it only once in the data. I divided each view into sub-themes based on the range of responses. In both the model minority and yellow peril view, perceptions about academics and finance were not always linked in the students’ responses and I therefore separated them as distinct categories. Regarding the perpetual foreigner discourse, the perception of students being foreign and segregated were connected but had important differences in their intentions.

Table 2: Perceptions of Chinese Students

View Description Number of references

Model Minority Academic competence 2

Financial accomplishment 2

Yellow Peril Academic threat to domestic students 1

Threat to domestic students/ population 3

Perpetual Foreigner Foreign/not belonging 3

Segregated 1

Perceptions which were consistent with the model minority discourse were expressed four times in the interviews, twice regarding academic competence and twice regarding financial accomplishment. This competence was often accompanied by a negative connotation or linked to the yellow peril discourse. One student mentioned the academic threat of Chinese students, and three students described the number of Chinese students as threatening. This threatening position was reinforced by the perception of Chinese students as perpetually foreign. Three students referred to perceptions which characterized Chinese students as foreign or not belonging, and one student emphasized the segregation of Chinese students. These views were not mutually exclusive in the students’ responses and all of the participants expressed or alluded to more than one view throughout the interviews.

5.1.1 Model Minority

The model minority discourse, as described in social science literature, is categorized by a belief that East Asian students are intelligent, academically successful, hard-working and achievement motivated (Wong, Lai, Nagasawa & Lin, 1998). When students spoke about or alluded to the general view of Chinese students as academically or financially successful, I coded it as contributing to this discourse. I separated the financial success from academic success because the academic success was typically expressed positively, and the financial success was expressed more negatively.

Two students I interviewed expressed the view of Chinese students as academically successful when asked about the existence of racism on UBC campus. Both students who cited this view spoke about it as a general stereotype they had heard expressed on campus Travis, a sixth-year engineering student, when asked about the presence of stereotypes on campus stated:

Okay, so take like Asian students, like Chinese students for instance, you should be very good academically. There also tends to be a stereotype that like they’re more conservative. What other stereotypes? That’s the one that stands out to me.

Ashley, a third-year kinesiology student, also acknowledged the existence of this stereotype on campus and stated “well I’m certainly aware of the stereotypes about [Chinese students] which is that they do well in math, sciences etc.” Despite acknowledging the existence of this stereotype, she argued that

although those are the stereotypes, I don’t really think they are true from my personal experiences because there is just such a wide variety of people that it’s really hard to pin that down, especially because there are so many Asian students at UBC.

The academic model minority stereotype was not believed to be completely accurate of Chinese students at UBC but was still mentioned or held by half of the participants.

The other side of the model minority stereotype that was expressed among the interviewed students was the financial success of international Chinese students in particular. Two students expressed this view in the interviews, but largely viewed it as a negative attribute. Both emphasized the belief that international students come with a lot of money and therefore do not have to work as hard as other students. David, a fifth-year Arts student, noted that international students do not care as much because they have the advantage of money:

there’s definitely a wide perception of like just these rich kids coming here, they don’t speak English, they’ve got enough money so they are just throwing it out and going to get their degree, I don’t really give a s*** about anything I’m just doing it because I can afford it.

The perception is that because of their financial status, Chinese students are not going to care or contribute as much as students with less financial means. Another Arts student, Heather, echoed these sentiments and felt that students who come with money would not be autonomous members of Canadian society:

People that have like $50,000 to send their kids here no problem and then a lot of those kids continue on post-residence and their parents pay their rent and like that kind of thing, so it leads to a lot of people who aren’t self-sustaining which like from a personal perspective, I really disagree with.

This negative perception of financially privileged students was only expressed about international students and in conversation about Chinese students. There were no negative perceptions of domestic students who came with money or were having their tuition paid for. Three of the students I interviewed brought up their own financial privilege or the fact that their parents were paying their tuition, yet the same stereotypes were not applied to wealthy White domestic students. The once model characteristic of being financially well-off was perceived negatively among my participants specifically when it was associated with Chinese students. This financial success was perceived as a potential threat to the domestic population which may have caused it to be viewed negatively.

5.1.2 Yellow Peril

The yellow peril discourse is characterized by the perception of Chinese students as a threat in some way to White domestic students or the White Canadian population at large. Statements which used language relating to peril such as “taking over”, “squeezing out” or feeling “threatened” were coded as belonging to this discourse. I separated the responses between academic threat and a general threat (including financial threat) because they were discussed separately by the students. The general threat was expressed in concerns about Chinese students or immigrants becoming a majority. For example, Heather, who moved from Manitoba to Vancouver to attend UBC noted:

it’s tricky because I think generally in Vancouver there is like a huge issue with racism towards especially like Chinese immigrants as being like, I think people view them as like taking over Canada in some sort of terrible way.

She followed this up by providing an anecdote about a customer of hers noting that “they didn’t need to go on vacation to Asia because they’re already here.” Inherent in these classifications is the belief that there are too many Chinese students and people at the university and in Vancouver in general.

All the students who spoke about the yellow peril view emphasized the number of Chinese students or immigrants as the catalyst. David particularly mentioned how the number of Chinese immigrants lead to this group being blamed for inflated housing costs in real estate. He argues,

I mean there’s the money thing…I think that’s quite an issue. You’ve got people who’ve grown up here for 20 years, and now they are unable to live because cost of living is going up. Hypothetically contributed to by you know, you’ve got a lot of money coming into the country from predominantly China. A lot of money coming out of that country into here, investing in properties, driving up cost. There’s a lot of other reasons too, I think that’s the easiest scapegoat to look at.

He expanded on this by relating it specifically to the number of Chinese students and immigrants perceived to be in Vancouver:

There’s a perceived threat of like, there’s so many of them, there’s more of them than us, and they’re pushing us out of our home, regardless of who it is, people are going to find a scapegoat for it…I think they create a correlation between there’s a lot of them and we’re facing all these problems and it’s probably them.

This perception of a financial threat from Chinese immigrants driving up the cost of housing for Vancouver residents could explain the negative reactions to the financial success aspect of the model minority stereotype.

A similar sentiment was expressed about the academic success of Chinese students at UBC, where academic ability was viewed as a model characteristic until it could be threatening. As mentioned in my introduction, faculty and students alike at the university are arguing that “foreign students are squeezing out domestic students” (Todd, 2017). Travis asserts that Chinese international students make the university more competitive and could threaten the position of low-performing domestic students:

Just because I perform like quite well academically, so like it’s not, it’s I don’t see what I’m really losing out on. Whereas if I was like on the edge of everything and feeling really insecure about my position then I might be like quite threatened actually.

He emphasized that “it would be threatening like any big group coming in”, and that the combination of the academic success and the number of Chinese students causes a threat to White domestic students. Travis was the only one interviewed who explicitly stated or alluded to the perception of Chinese students as an academic threat, and one student, David, maintained that he believed:

the university has a good grasp on what the levels of international versus domestic and how many international versus domestic we should have…I think UBC is really trying to make an effort to ensure that they don’t cross that line of too many international students versus domestic students.

Implicit in this view though is that although the numbers are acceptable right now, there is a line that would be “too many” and would create a problem. When probed about this, he said he thinks that over 50% would be allowing too many international students. There exists a sentiment amongst the students interviewed that Chinese international students (and Chinese immigrants in general) pose a threat to the domestic population academically and financially if the numbers reach a certain level. This sentiment was particularly expressed about Chinese students and not other White or negatively racialized groups.

5.1.3 Perpetual Foreigner

The perpetual foreigner view is identified by the belief that Asian students, whether domestic or international, are inherently foreign and unable to assimilate into Canadian society. When participants referred to Chinese students as foreign or differentiated Chinese students from “Canadian” students more broadly, I coded them as part of this discourse. Within the interviews, this perception was particularly applied to international students at the university due to their perceived foreign status. As Heather notes,

I think it probably has to do with the idea of the international student generally within academia being viewed as like a temporary long term visitor to wherever you study like you live here but you don’t. Like will you move here? Will you go back? There’s sort of this like liminal space of not being somewhere and being somewhere at the same time, this limbo of like where are you and what is your relationship to this space.

Although she personally thinks that students’ international status shouldn’t matter, she argues that it does matter to a lot of White students and faculty at the university. This perception of international students as guests may explain the outsider status of international students on campus. She argues that people, and especially White people, “are obsessed with classification and categorization as a way, or as a means, to understanding relationships and the world” and therefore “classifying people as an immigrant versus someone who is born in Canada really matters to their perception of that person.” This classification constructs a binary between immigrants and residents of Canada, which is used to grant belonging to some bodies and not others.

Importantly, this perception of non-belonging is applied more readily to negatively racialized international students than White international students at the university. As discussed above, Travis noted that “it would be threatening like any big group coming in” with regards to the threat of Chinese students. When I questioned him further on this, he revealed that it was particularly threatening because of the perceived foreignness of the Chinese group:

E: Do you think that any international student from any location would differ? Like international students from Europe for example would be the same threat as Asian students?

T: Ummm, probably it would be different. It would be a bit different coming from Asia because it seems more like a different group than here

E: In what way? Like foreign almost?

T: Yeah. Yeah, foreign exactly, yeah. Whereas like with Europe it’s I think so closely tied to our culture.

As can be seen in Travis’ description, Chinese students are perceived as more foreign to Canadian culture than European students, thus are less readily accepted. Although the other participants did not state this view openly, all three jumped immediately to talking about international students when I asked about the view of Chinese students generally. This demonstrates that oftentimes foreign or international status is ascribed to all Chinese students at UBC, whether they are domestic or international.

Although Canada claims to be multicultural and accepting of all cultures, certain cultures are accepted as Canadian more easily if they line up with Eurocentric standards. Heather drew this conclusion and argued that

multiculturalism was invented by the first Trudeau as a form of essentially propaganda, and like as much as Canadians sort of tout themselves as like this mosaic multicultural system…we treat people of colour or immigrants or permanent residents as sort of like joining the community as opposed to being part of the community, like they’re an addition to Canada as opposed to just like being part of Canada. I think probably people view, like White Canadians probably view Chinese students as like guests or like Others at UBC as opposed to just like being students like themselves.

She also notes that “people in Canada assume that everyone around them will be like White or White-passing or like able to speak English fluently” and are prejudiced to those who do not fit into this category.

As Chinese students are not White-passing, and many can speak a language other than English, a perception is created that Chinese students are segregated and not a part of the larger university culture. This view was expressed at length by Travis when asked about why the perception of Chinese students may differ from that of other negatively racialized groups:

There’s this kind of feeling like you know people for instance that speak Mandarin like as their primary language and they are in groups of Mandarin speakers, within this university. It’s kind of seen as like oh they’re not being part of the bigger group. Right? Like they’re kind of in their own like inclusive world and like they’re not reaching out towards like people who are like primarily English speakers and such…And I think language is really the means people get to know each other and interact with each other so it’s a big deal like which language you’re speaking and who you are speaking to. So I think the perception that people tend to get into, not everybody of course, but for sure I’ve heard friends talk about oh you know they’re just speaking mandarin or something like that, not in a nice way sometimes.

He links this back to the number of Chinese students on campus and argues that this doesn’t happen with other groups “because like for instance, okay take another group like Japanese students, like nobody would think about Japanese students I think at UBC getting together in the same way and just speaking Japanese with each other.” The perception of Chinese students as foreign and segregated, combined with the perceived number of Chinese students on campus, cause them to be viewed more negatively on campus than other groups.

5.2 Social Media Findings

The existence of all three of these discourses was also seen on the two online sites I analyzed: UBC Confessions and the UBC Subreddit. Both of these sites are anonymous and therefore students are more candid with their beliefs about Chinese Canadians than they would be in interviews.

5.2.1 UBC Confessions

Most of the postings on UBC Confessions which contained the word Chinese or Asian were about individual Asian people such as somebody they saw on the bus or in one of their classes and was specific to that person. Of the thirteen posts in 2017 that were about the general view of Chinese students, two expressed the model minority stereotype, five conveyed the yellow peril perspective, and six perpetuated the perpetual foreigner discourse. As these posts are

56 anonymous, the authors’ race or ethnicity could not be controlled for in the same way it was in the interviews. Despite this, the posts provide insight into the views being expressed on campus.

Both posts which I coded as belonging to the model minority discourse referred to Asian students as smart, one from an Asian himself who felt he did not live up to the stereotype. The other criticized Asian students for being overachievers who “study all day and all night” and argued that they “don’t know how to peel an orange, crack open an egg or even order food by themselves at a restaurant”, equating high academic performance with poor social skills (UBC Confessions, 2017). This is consistent with the perception cited by Fiske et al (2002) of Asian Americans as high competence and low warmth, where they have high academic competence but low social skills.

This post was the only one which mentioned the high academic ability of Chinese students, and none of the posts coded as yellow peril spoke of an academic threat. The posts which expressed the yellow peril discourse instead emphasized the number of students from China and the financial threat which these students posed to White residents in Vancouver. One such post starts with:

For the past three years or so at UBC, I'll confess I've done my share of bashing the (largely Chinese) influx of foreign real estate buyers. I've unleashed my discontentment at how they're crowding out families who have been in Vancouver for generations, making the search for housing here nearly impossible, and sometimes even using homes as nothing more than an investment tool. How DARE they leave us commoners to fend for ourselves! This country needs protection for its working class! (UBC Confessions, 2017).

The author continues on to say that his opinion has changed now that his European grandfather has left him a property worth over $7 million CAD and his family is therefore now able to afford real estate in Vancouver. This post reveals that White residents have negative feelings towards foreign investment when it is done by Chinese immigrants and it poses a direct threat to them but are fine with it when it is their own group who is investing.

The other posts which employ the yellow peril perspective mostly focus on the number of Chinese students at the university. One facetious entry asked: “Are Chinese universities so bad that half of the country had to come to UBC?” (UBC Confessions, 2017). Other posts express concern over the influence that Chinese students have because of their vast number. One such

57 post specifically takes issue with Chinese immigrants and students and makes a clear demarcation between Canadian and Chinese culture:

Why is everyone from China? I am an international student too so I’m pro immigration, but literally everyone around here is from China. I came to study CANADA not CHINA. My roommates are from China, and besides being utterly disgusting they exclude me and talk in their language between them when I ask something to them :( I don’t like being racist but this is too much. (UBC Confessions, 2017).

A similar sentiment is expressed by an author who enjoys the diversity of Canada but does not want this diversity to include too many Chinese people:

I just want to clarify that asking why Vancouver has many people from China doesn't make one racist. First of all, many students come from abroad looking for diversity in Canada. Canada is well known for having people all around the world and being so inclusive. That is what originally made me apply to UBC. However, Chinese people are a huge majority here and it is ironic as they are the ones not being inclusive. Many times they close themselves and just talk to people from their own ethnicity, many times I have been excluded while conversations change to their according language, many times i have felt like I was out of place because they make me feel that way. I am an international student that believes that every minority is as important as any other. I am forced to think I'm not being inclusive when THEY are the ones who are not. This is CANADA. Why are there parts of Richmond with signs only in Mandarin? Canada's official languages are ENGLISH and FRENCH. How is this tolerable? Why has this not been fixed? I once tried applying to a job in Richmond Centre.... and one of the requisites was speaking Mandarin? I BET THIS POST WILL GET HATE FROM PEOPLE FROM CHINA AND GUESS WHAT U ARE ALL HATING BECAUSE YOU KNOW IT IS TRUE! (UBC Confessions, 2017).

These posts demonstrate the overlap between the yellow peril view and the perpetual foreigner view. The perception of Chinese students as foreign to Canada leads to the perception that there are “too many” of this group.

Common in these responses is the concern with the number of Chinese students on campus, but also the demarcation of Chinese students as segregated. Similar to Travis’ sentiment about how Chinese students just speak Mandarin with each other and do not include White students, many of the posts on UBC Confessions criticized Chinese students for their language use. One such author was frustrated by this behaviour specifically in the UBC business school, Sauder:

Nowhere is the moniker of 'University of a Billion Chinese' more recognizable than in Sauder, where over half the students only speak Chinese to and between each other, especially in group projects. It's infuriating. (UBC Confessions, 2017).

Other posts describing Chinese students make generalizations about the entire group and comment on habits they think Chinese students possess, such as causing “most of the problems on our floor”, being “disgusting” or having a contagious disease (because they wear masks) (UBC Confessions, 2017).

There is also a common sentiment in a few posts that White students make assumptions that all Asian students are Chinese even though they speak another language or only English. This demonstrates the perception by some White students that all Asian-appearing students on campus are recent Chinese immigrants, reinforcing their foreign status. One post by an Asian student demonstrates the existence and effects of the perpetual foreigner perspective:

I honestly dislike these racist bigots who assume I am not Canadian and ask where are you from, or even worse, where are you from originally? I was born and raised here just because I am ethnically Asian does not mean I am not from here nor can I be from Canada. What do you mean by “originally”? My family has been in North America for more than 50+ years. Also, I seriously have no answer other than Canada; I hold zero legal ties with any other countries or assets outside Canada. Seriously what is with their minds? Why don’t you get some courage and just say it upfront that you enjoy stereotyping people instead of racist small talking (UBC Confessions, 2017).

The homogenization of all Asian students on campus and the notion that they are all foreign allows for the justification of the belief that this group threatens Canadian values and students. In the UBC Confessions posts, there is significant overlap between the perpetual foreigner view and the yellow peril view. Many students seem enraged that UBC and Canada as a whole are becoming too Chinese.

5.2.2 UBC Subreddit

On the UBC Subreddit, similar sentiments were expressed in the three threads that referenced the general view of Chinese students on campus. The majority of the other threads which contained the word Asian or Chinese regarded questions about the Asian studies major or about Chinese food/grocery stores near campus. Of the threads relating to discourses of Chinese students, two of them exhibit the yellow peril perspective and comment on the size of the Chinese population at UBC. One entitled “why are there so many students from China” inquires about the possible

59 reasons that such a large population of Chinese students want to study at the university. The other thread exhibiting this view questions the influence of Chinese students on the campus climate. The commenter is a prospective UBC student who queries: “Does the fact that Asians are the largest student ethnicity on campus have any bearing on the culture of the university in comparison to that of other Canadian universities? Do Asian values dominate at UBC? What’s it like being a non-Asian at UBC?” (prospectiveubc, 2016). Most of the responses to this post were in jest but there is one response that is worth quoting at length which speaks to the reasons why domestic students may be unwelcoming to a large Chinese population. The respondent replies:

I'm going to answer this question as if you had said Chinese instead of Asian, because I think that's what many people are too uncomfortable to say, and I doubt that you're asking about Thai and Pakistani students' presence at UBC. With that being said, yes, Chinese culture undoubtedly has an influence on UBC's campus. UBC is primarily a Canadian school with strong international linkages/representations, where Chinese influences are the strongest… I think many people find this threatening or are unwelcome to it, due to A) the language barrier, B) the separation of student bodies, C) the visible wealth of some Chinese students and D) the effect Chinese investment has had on the Vancouver housing market. (deleted, 2016).

Evident in this post is the belief that the wealth and investment of Chinese immigrants and students is threatening to some domestic students. By placing Chinese influences outside of the “primarily Canadian” climate of UBC, it presumes that these two things are mutually exclusive and Chinese students are not included in the Canadian narrative. Another respondent agrees with the characterization of some Chinese students as segregated, but differentiates between his perceptions of domestic and international students, noting:

There are people who are second/third/forth generation Asian immigrants who have completely North American cultural values and are completely fluent in English, these are the vast majority of Asians at UBC. There is also a large group of Asians that barely speak English (so I have no idea how they got in to UBC at all). These people generally don't interact with people outside their own small groups and are the same people who are nightmares in group projects. [sic] (rbmt, 2016).

This post similarly reinforces the idea that there exists a large number of Asian students who do not speak English and do not interact with other students. The response also implies that Chinese students should be assimilating to “North American cultural values” to be accepted. In so doing, it also reflects the desire for immigrants to fit into the existing system and become more Canadian, or be viewed as foreign.

This perpetual foreigner view can also be seen in the third thread regarding Chinese students entitled “Is the “Asian bubble” a thing at UBC?”. In this post, the author is concerned that the “self-segregation” of Asian students will negatively affect his university experience. He notes “it would be a shame if half of the student population didn’t want anything to do with me because I’m not Asian” (spongedudesqaure, 2016). The respondents to this post mainly agree that Chinese international students in particular exhibit this self-segregation but are split on whether this is a negative thing. One Chinese Canadian respondent points out the hypocrisy in asking this question and states:

I think it's natural. As a Chinese-Canadian, I'm tired of hearing the whole "why do Asians only hang with Asians" argument all the time. From my perspective, White people also mostly hang with White people and no one's complaining about that (vampirefeminist, 2016).

The fact that students are taking issue with Asians only hanging out with other Asians, but not White students hanging out with one another reflects the perception that Asians should integrate but White students do not need to. Overall, these threads question the number of Asian students on UBC campus, criticize the idea that they stick together, and frame them as unable or unwilling to speak English.

5.3 Discussion

As seen in both the online sites and the interviews, there were ambivalent discourses about Chinese Canadians. There is evidence that students at UBC held multiple stereotypes of Chinese students simultaneously, as consistent with the literature on perceptions of Asian Americans. The students who described Asians as academically successful also linked it to a lack of practical skills or sociability and perceived them as segregated at times. This is consistent with Ho & Jackson’s findings that “individuals who believed that Asian Americans possessed the model- minority characteristics were also likely to believe that they possessed negative stereotypic traits such as being anti-social, nerdy or deceitful” (p. 1565). Additionally, the same students who described Chinese students as “very good academically” or well-off financially also viewed them as a threat to their academic and financial position. In my results, there was a connection between positive perceptions of Asian students and the discourse of threat, but more so with regards to financial means.

The results of this study therefore support the notion that there is a “thin line between the model minority stereotype and the previous stereotype of Asians as yellow peril” as theorized by Wang (2008). When Asian Americans are perceived as outdoing White bodies at the university, it appears that the prevalent discourse shifts away from model minority to one of yellow peril. Except for minor references to the model minority stereotype, none of the posts or students interviewed described Chinese students solely as hard-working or intelligent without a negative connotation attached. Within the results, there is little evidence of the valorization of Asian Canadians compared to other groups as hypothesized by Kim (1999). When participants were asked about how the perception of Asian Canadians differed from other negatively racialized groups, most of the students emphasized how the views of Chinese Canadians were more negative and pointed to the existence of more stereotypes for this group than others. This may be due to the small populations of other negatively racialized groups at UBC (1% Black, 2% Latin American, 6% South Asian of first-year direct entry students) as compared to first-year direct entry Chinese students (36%) (Planning and Institutional Research Office, 2013). The posts on the online sources about Chinese students were also mostly negative and did not demonstrate valorization of this group.

As discussed above, critical discourse analysis explores how written and spoken language sustain relations of power and reproduce hegemony. The participants’ descriptions and views of Chinese Canadians contribute to existing negative discourses about this group, which serve a larger purpose in maintaining White hegemony. Although the discourse of model minority was previously used to discredit the systemic barriers facing negatively racialized groups, when this minority success is threatening to White students and citizens in Canada, in the form of academic and financial threat, the discourse must shift in order to preserve the hegemony. The lack of the model minority discourse in the results (both interviews and online) may signal a desire to discredit this success. When the wealth of Chinese students was brought up by students in both the interviews and online posts, it was predominately framed negatively. This financial success in previously cited variations of the model minority stereotype was perceived positively by the majority group and was “offered as proof that the American dream of equal opportunity is valid for those who conform and who are willing to work hard” (Wong, Lai, Nagasawa & Lin, 1998). The model minority stereotype implied that Asian Americans worked their way from the bottom and did not come with wealth. Many Asian American immigrants since 1967 though came to

Canada under the points system, and therefore arrived with money, education and work qualifications (Brearton, 2016). Although Chinese immigrants have come with education and money for decades, it was attributed to hard work in order to criticize other negatively racialized groups and blame them for their own failures (Lee, 2006). In my results, the economic success of Chinese students and immigrants is perceived as affecting White domestic students and is therefore framed negatively.

The model minority view is no longer productive in preserving White hegemony, and in my results, there appears to be shift to a discourse of threat. By describing Asian students as “taking over” or emphasizing their financial prowess and threat, it affects the way they are viewed on campus and increases anti-international student sentiment. As predicted by Coloma (2013), Asian Canadians are now viewed as threatening and unwanted in Canada because they are perceived as taking away resources from White Canadians. He argues that “during periods of financial boom and stability, the presence of Asians in Canada was tolerated and drew minimal attention from the general White populace”, however now that there is concern over housing affordability and spots in universities, contemporary anti-immigration sentiments are emerging (Coloma, 2013).

The perceived threat of Chinese students, or the yellow peril discourse, manifested itself in many ways in the interview responses and online posts. The results show some support for the hypothesis in previous literature that competition with Asian students leads to negative views of this group. Both the interview responses and online posts emphasized the concern over the academic and financial threat of Chinese students and immigrants. Students had specific concerns regarding the affordability of the housing market in Vancouver and blamed Chinese foreign investment. There is a perception that domestic students and others who grew up in Vancouver are being pushed out unfairly by Chinese international students and immigrants, providing evidence that competition over housing led to negative perceptions. The academic threat, on the other hand, was only mentioned by two students in the interviews and was not raised in the online sources. The lack of this sentiment in the results may be due to the fact that my interview participants were students at the university and performed well academically. As argued by Nguyen (2002), the positionality of the respondents as already admitted into the university made them less concerned about competing with Asian students for spots. The perception of Chinese students as a threat may be stronger for students who were denied access

63 to the university or who were performing poorly. As Travis argued, although he did not feel the threat directly himself, he would if “he was on the edge of everything.”

The study conducted by Samson (2013) also found that a scenario with a large proportion of Asian students led to students decreasing the importance placed on GPA in admissions (Samson, 2013). Despite not directly testing this theory, there is also some evidence of this shift occurring in my results. One of my participants, David, noted that the admissions requirements of “you speak English, and you’re good at these academic things and that’s who we’re going to let into UBC” was not very comprehensive or wholesome. He was in favour of giving international students who may not meet the English proficiency requirement an opportunity to attend Vantage college, but only if they had more to offer the university than money. When probed further about what he felt should be included in the requirements for admission, he argued that the application should not just be ticking off boxes and emphasized the importance of leadership skills and “core values” which aligned with those of the university. Although this was not as a direct response to a question about the proportion of Asian students, he did express a desire for other criteria other than academics to factor into admissions decisions. Similar to the Samson (2013) study, at a university with a large proportion of Asians, David minimized the importance of academic factors and used coded racial language that emphasized traits typically associated with Whiteness.

Other students who posted on UBC Confessions were more explicit about their discontent with the number of Asian students, and directly stated they wanted fewer Asian students at the university. The students in this study therefore not only had more negative views towards Chinese students due to their proportionality at the University but expressed direct desire for less Chinese enrollment. The previous empirical studies mentioned were conducted in experimental hypothetical scenarios, whereas the students in this study were responding to their actual experiences. The results indicate that similar sentiments are held amongst White students at UBC who have become the minority.

The students in this study also emphasized the number of Chinese students as the reason for their perception of threat. The competence and money became threatening because it was coming from a large group. Consistent with Outten, Shmitt, Miller and Garcia’s (2012) study at Simon Fraser University, White students in my study felt threatened by East Asian students in response

64 to becoming a minority on campus. In both the online and interview sources, students expressed the sentiment that Chinese students were “taking over” or that there were too many Chinese students on campus. The results from this study provide partial support for group threat theory, whereby the larger the minority group, the more threatened the dominant group becomes. However, this theory does not account for the effects of Whiteness, as the Chinese student group is viewed as particularly threatening due to their perceived foreign status. This perpetual foreigner discourse which was present in the views constructs an Us/Them division between Chinese students and White students, and creates opposition to anything that falls outside of “Us”. Especially present on UBC Confessions and the UBC SubReddit was the concern by White domestic students that Chinese students had too much influence, as evidenced by the sentiment that this was “CANADA not CHINA” (UBC Confessions, 2017). The distinction of China from Canada implies Whiteness as the norm and places Chinese students outside of the definition of Canada.

The combination of the yellow peril discourse with the perpetual foreigner discourse made it clear that White students were concerned about a threat to White hegemony at the university. The concern over the number of international students was only expressed about Chinese students, and as Travis argued, was due to the fact that this group is perceived to be more foreign than European groups are. The description of Chinese students as segregated and speaking with one another in Chinese is expressed very negatively in many of the online posts and interviews. These descriptions emphasize that Chinese students act exclusionary and make domestic students feel “out of place” at UBC. This perception that Chinese students are not assimilating and instead exerting influence on UBC and Vancouver as a whole, by having signs just in Mandarin or needing to speak Mandarin to get a job, is viewed as threatening by the participants and students who posted. The imposition of Chinese culture on “Canadian” culture is viewed as a threat by White domestic Canadians because it threatens the ability of White Canadians to control and naturalize the cultural and ideological domains of the university.

This emphasis of the foreignness and segregation of Chinese students on campus serves a similar purpose to the discourses of unassimilability applied to early Chinese immigrants in Canada. It places them “beyond the body of eligible citizenry” (Anderson, 1991, p.37) in order to make claims about them taking over. These fears reflect the “locally established discourse of Anglo- European Canadian entitlement to space” which “places Asian Canadians in an abject, outsider

65 space” (Deer, 2006, p. 20). Chinese students in Canada are viewed as literally invading the space which is “rightfully owned” by European Canadians. If they were considered part of Canadian culture and not foreign to it, discourses of yellow peril could not be constructed. In order to ensure that the definition of “Canadian” stays synonymous with Whiteness, the foreign status of other negatively racialized groups is emphasized. As argued by Kim (1999), “White opinionmakers continue to police the boundary between Whites and Asian Americans by imputing permanent foreignness to the latter” (p. 126). Through increased civic ostracism of Chinese students, whether international or domestic, Chinese students are excluded from full membership in the body politic and thereby White hegemony is maintained. The creation of the perpetual foreigner discourse allows for the construction of Chinese students as a threat to the “Canadianness” of the university.

Despite the large proportion of White students in Canadian universities, similar complaints about universities being “too White” or grievances about the overrepresentation of White students are not raised by the dominant group. As Wise (2011) argues, “I never heard anyone lament the overrepresentation of the cerebrally challenged White elite at Tulane, and I doubt anyone is challenging the latest round of similarly mediocre members of the ruling class now. That’s what it means to be privileged: wherever you are, it’s taken for granted that you must deserve to be there” (p. 49). As soon as another group who is perceived to be foreign enrolls in the university in large numbers, the discourse about them changes to one of yellow peril. Implicit in this discourse of threat is the desire to protect White hegemony. By constructing Chinese students as foreign and threatening, it drums up public support for their exclusion and secures the dominance of White bodies and ideology.

These exclusionary views of Chinese Canadians show the non-performativity of multiculturalism and diversity policies at Canadian universities and in Canada as a whole. These discourses of equality and diversity claim to support differences but in reality, serve to mask the maintenance of hegemony. The White dominant group supports difference when it is in the form of celebration and food but opposes it when it causes a threat to the Eurocentricity of Canada. As Relke (1998) argues of Canadian universities, “the University has nothing whatsoever against diversity, as long as it doesn’t interfere with the White masculine status quo. Or, to put it another way, the University has nothing against multiculturalism, as long as it remains peripheral to monoculturalism” (as cited in Henry & Tator, 2009, p. 16). The interviewed students similarly

66 held positive perceptions of multiculturalism, as long as it didn’t cause a threat to them and their position.

When they were asked about internationalization generally, all four students praised the diversity of UBC and the ability to interact with people from different cultural backgrounds. David, for example, noted that “being at a school with so many international students I think it’s an advantage” and remarked:

I think it’s definitely made me more, like growing up in Newfoundland where there’s like no, everyone’s White, there’s no foreigners anywhere, it’s definitely more tolerant or accepting or interested or worldly, I don’t know, it’s a very vague term but definitely I feel more prepared for the world in general, for any job prospects or anything I want to do afterwards.

Travis echoes this sentiment and supports the diversity of UBC:

I just really like the idea of diversity and stuff. And just meeting people from abroad, like from exchange or people who like move here to do their degrees from elsewhere. I don’t know, it’s just been interesting to see the differences and similarities of people from like for instance, China. I knew some people who are from China and it’s just interesting to see their experiences and maybe like their views on China and how they compare to like ours…Or, to mine I’ll just say.

Heather also describes this as an “eye opening experience” getting to “meet people who have really different cultures and stuff”. These responses emphasized the benefits of this diversity for domestic students and shows that these students are okay with the diversity when it is benefitting them and their learning experiences. Most of these same students though had issues with the number of international students at the university and believed that negative views of Chinese students stemmed from the proportional number of Chinese students on campus.

This is what Warikoo (2016) terms the “diversity bargain” whereby “White students seem to implicitly view affirmative action as a trade-off, which they support as long as it benefits themselves” (p. 104). In her study, White students support the addition of negatively racialized students, even those who may have lower SATs or GPAs, as long as it enhances their learning experiences. As part of this bargain, Warikoo argues that White students believe negatively racialized students should assimilate into the student population and not segregate themselves. Students begin to oppose diversity at the university when negatively racialized students impose their cultural beliefs or when it becomes a threat to them. She provides an example of Craig, who

“supports considerations of race so that racial diversity will enrich him and his peers, but he is ambivalent about affirmative action when he feels it does not benefit him—that is, when he perceives minority peers as having an easier time with competitions like job and internship applications” (Warikoo, 2016, p. 103). Many White students therefore support diversity and other cultures if their hegemony can be maintained. Students in my study similarly supported the diverse environment at UBC but are opposed to Chinese students being the majority or having influence on the campus culture.

5.4 Summary

The majority of the interview results and online posts show a decline in the prevalence of the model minority discourse about Chinese Canadians, and instead show the pervasiveness of discourses of perpetual foreigner and yellow peril on campus. Contrary to the hypotheses of many of the sociological studies, the results of this study show that this perception of threat comes more from financial status and influence than academic threat. Many White students, especially in the online posts, express direct opposition to the number of Chinese students on campus. This yellow peril discourse serves to create an Us/Them division and fuels opposition to anything that falls outside of the White Canadian norms. The results show that White students are in favour of diversity when it benefits them and does not interfere with their experience or privilege but oppose it when it begins to threaten their position and hegemony. In the next chapter, I will explore how this perception about the influence of Chinese international students leads White students to believe they no longer have privilege at UBC.

Research Findings: Maintenance of White Hegemony

In the previous chapter, I explored how shifting discourses about Chinese Canadians at UBC reflect a desire to maintain White hegemony at the university and in Canada. In this chapter, I will explore how my participants evoked other strategies to maintain this hegemony and compare these views to previous literature. I analyze responses relating to my third research question: Are White Canadian university students continuing to perpetuate White hegemony in their views? If so, how? Specifically, I will examine how my participants frame discussions of race and privilege in general, and how discourses about Chinese international students allow for a belief that White students are no longer advantaged in the university.

6.1 Results

I identified three interconnected themes in the interviews relating to the maintenance of White hegemony amongst the White students: individualized definition of racism, denial of privilege, and perception of international student privilege.

6.1.1 Individualized Definition of Racism

During my interviews, I asked my participants if they thought there was racism on campus in order to gain insight into whether they acknowledged its existence and how they defined it. Unlike previous literature on White university students, none of my participants explicitly denied the existence of racism at the university. David for example, when asked if racism existed, responded “100% definitely. There’s definitely a lot of racism” and noted that this racism was specifically directed at Asian students. When probed further about whether this racism was extended to other negatively racialized groups, he stated:

D: Well definitely, I think because a lot of people are unable to distinguish between like are you from Vietnam? are you from China? Are you from like South Korea? Like, it’s just like all Asian people.

E: Mostly Asian people?

D: I wouldn’t say there’s too much racism against, there’s definitely probably some racism against Muslim students but it doesn’t seem as predominant again. It doesn’t seem, I don’t know how it actually is. And same with students from Africa, or anyone who’s like clearly darker skinned cuz again I don’t see that many like especially in Vancouver as a whole.

In these views, David defines racism as individual bigotry towards a member of a negatively racialized group rather than a pervasive system, and therefore believes that there is not too much racism against “darker skinned” students because there is not a large population. It is evident in these views that David equates the predominance of racism faced by a group with the quantity of instances of individual racism on campus, and therefore, does not examine systemic or institutional forms of racism. Additionally, although David acknowledged the existence of racism on campus, he minimized it compared to racism in the United States:

The racism in Canada is not as aggressive as it is in the US, I would say that it still exists and I think it is kind of still wrong to push that aside. People are definitely a lot more lowkey about it.

This is a common strategy used by Canadians to minimize and deflect attention away from racism in Canada by comparing it to the perceived worse conditions in the United States.

Two other participants shared this sentiment and argued that although there is racism at UBC, it is limited. Ashley, when asked about the presence of racism, responded:

A: Ummm I would say yes [inflection like a question]. But more so in the sort of area that there’s a lot of stereotypes.

E: So you think it’s mostly limited to stereotyping?

A: Yeah, and I think that students tend to kind of like perpetuate it I guess.

Similarly, Travis, when asked for examples of racism on campus, responded “just like a lot of stereotyping I guess” and noted “I don’t think that many people believe that they’re true. I just think that it is talked about sometimes in a joking way.” He added that although this joking is not harmless per se, he doesn’t think it is done with malicious intent.

Consistent with Cabrera’s (2014) study, these three participants used an individualized definition of racism instead of viewing it systemically. When students were asked to give examples of racism on campus, they provided examples of individual instances of racism such as stereotyping. Ashley and Travis noted that students joked about or perpetuated these stereotypes but did not link the use of these stereotypes to larger structural racism. By defining racism in an individual way and reducing it to stereotyping, the students trivialize the consequences of racism at the university for all groups. Additionally, this individualized definition of racism allows for the construction of arguments about “reverse racism” where White students feel like they also

70 face discrimination. Ashley, for example, when asked about the existence of racism on campus, noted:

it’s hard for me to tell because I’m White so I don’t really experience racism towards me to be totally honest, like there’s certainly people talk about like reverse racism and I’ve seen people do that as well.

By constructing racism as stereotyping or negative comments, it ignores the questions of power and White supremacy thus allowing White bodies to claim that racism can also be directed at them.

These individualist constructions of race are reflective of colour-evasive perspectives where participants refuse to acknowledge the realities of racism. When asked about the existence of racism on campus, Travis stated that “people can see differences between race” and thinks this is indicative of racism. This definition of racism ignores the ways, historically and presently, that systems benefit White bodies over negatively racialized bodies. It instead frames racism as an individual act of creating difference and encourages people to look beyond difference and treat everyone equally. As argued by Annamma, Jackson and Morrison (2017), this view “positions the act of ignoring race as the solution to racism” which “coerces individuals to ignore the racialized contours of institutions” (p. 157).

Only one student, Heather, recognized the systemic racism at the university, and acknowledged how negatively racialized students are affected:

Yeah, I think 1000 percent that UBC is a racist institution in the sense that like we don’t give reparations to Indigenous students, like we don’t have enough diversity here. Yeah, I don’t think we make enough accommodations for people of colour or like include them in our community the same way that we do White domestic students.

Warikoo (2016) terms this the “power analysis frame” for viewing race and defines it as “one that views the significance of race in society according to unequal power relations between groups” (p. 54). In her study, only four of forty-six White students at Ivy league universities in the United States employed this frame, which is consistent with my low number in this study. Although all the students in this study acknowledged racism on campus, with the exception of Heather, none of them linked it to larger power relations or systemic racism.

6.1.2 Denial of privilege

The colour-evasive framework was also used by most of the participants when discussing their privilege at the university. When the students were asked if they felt they had any advantages due to their status as a White domestic student, many denied the existence of White privilege and instead emphasized other factors. Travis, for example, responded:

T: I don’t know if I really think that my race, like my Whiteness, necessarily gives me social advantages.

E: Do you think it gives you any academic advantage?

T: Academic advantage? No. No, I don’t think so. Because everything is by the numbers right… I think maybe my race has given me advantages that have maybe led to like better essay writing but like they don’t like, when you hand in an essay, nobody sees you. Like I guess they might, no they just see your student number and they’re not going to be influenced by that, I don’t think.

His statement that “everything is by the numbers” is representative of a colour-evasive view, where Travis denies that privilege plays a role in academic success at the university. By denying his privileges, he strategically ignores the structural advantages that have gotten him to the university and the Eurocentricity and White supremacist systems that still benefit him.

Travis also emphasized other aspects of his privilege, while denying he had any advantages because of his race. When asked about academic privilege, he notes, “I mean, yeah, the language. It is good to have English as your first language if you’re doing like an arts course, or engineering, any of them...I don’t think that my race has given me an advantage.” He emphasizes that this language ability also gave him privileges socially, but these are not influenced by race. Likewise, when Ashley was asked about her privilege, she avoided the discussion of privilege based on her Whiteness and instead emphasized other privileges she holds:

Oh definitely, yeah. I feel like, I’ve grown up privileged so I don’t have to stress too much about, is my tuition going to be paid? Are my living expenses going to be paid? And stuff like that…so I definitely feel like that’s a huge advantage. And obviously having English as my first language, because English is the language that we are taught in here definitely gives me an advantage especially in more arts-based classes.

The emphasis on language and financial privileges are used to justify these students’ privileged positions in the university, while denying the structural privileges that come from being White.

David similarly argues that he has advantages due to being a native English speaker and extends this to larger structural forces:

the fact that I’ve grown up and know the culture myself, the fact that I speak English perfectly, the fact that I’m male like I think of like on the surface, that’s why I am a lot more privileged than a lot of other people.

He also acknowledged that he has privileges because of his cultural position as a “Canadian” within the current system:

Even a Canadian passport like generally I would say that there is a very like good opinion of Canadians and Canada as a whole in comparison to like I don’t know Somalia. If you’re coming from Somalia, chances are like you’re going to have a hell of a lot harder of a time like to succeed. You’ve got different cultural ideas of what success is and what it means to go to a university and like where to look for mental health support and things like that. So by growing up in the culture, and being like, I guess like the normal person or like the majority, I definitely have a lot more privileges like any other group of people that’s coming here. Like even if you’re domestic and not White, yeah.

In this statement, he recognizes that White Canadians are treated as the “norm” and that his position as a White body within that system gives him some advantages. In so doing, he links his positionality more to structural advantages which benefit those who are consistent with the Eurocentric cultural norms but also does not problematize the fact that Whiteness is the norm. Even when he is trying to acknowledge privilege, he still reinforces White supremacist beliefs about members of negatively racialized groups, such as Somalians.

Heather instead interrogated her privileged position as a White body and linked it to larger systemic forces which benefit White Canadians over other groups. When asked if she felt she had any advantages at the university, she responded:

Yes, like yes. Pretty much in every way I can think of, White people have more privilege and to a degree, advantage over underrepresented people of like race or gender or whatever it may be. It’s hard for me to like elucidate exactly what those advantages would be, but I know 1000 percent that as a White person I have privilege over those of colour.

Additionally, when asked if being a numerical minority had altered her experience on campus, she again argued:

No. Like no matter how you slice it, like ongoing colonialism and like violence with regards to land and space and history and the way we like only speak English like as a

main language on campus, no matter how you slice it, White people have privilege and like that doesn’t change based on like the majority of folks being people of colour.

In so doing, Heather recognizes the historical and ongoing systemic aspects of racism and connects this to privileges held by White bodies regardless of the changing demographics at UBC. Importantly, Heather and David are both studying in Arts programs, which may have caused them to have a more critical analysis of race. Additionally, both students acknowledged that they are from predominantly White areas (Newfoundland and Manitoba) and came to the more diverse city of Vancouver, which may have helped them acknowledge their privilege more readily that someone who grew up in Vancouver.

6.1.3 Perceptions of International Student Privilege

With the shifting demographics at the university and the high percentage of international students, there was a perception by most students in my study that international students were favoured over domestic students on campus. This was raised specifically by the students in response to questions about their perceptions of internationalization, international student tuition, and Vantage College. Many of the White students believed that UBC is prioritizing international student needs over those of domestic students. Heather for example, shared a commonly held belief that it was easier for international students to get in than domestic students:

A lot of my friends are international students and they tell me all the time that for Canadians it is difficult to get into UBC which is why I was so proud of myself when I did it, but for international students its like dead easy. Like for example one of my friends was in IB in high school and you had to like barely pass the IB and UBC would accept you.

She links this to concerns about the financial motivations of the university and the desire for international student money. She argues that international students are accepted more easily because “tuition is so high and you have to live in residence and like it’s just this huge cash cow system of of course we’ll accept international students because they will pay for the new aquatic centre, right?”. She holds a belief that UBC prioritizes a specific group of people who have money, and are willing to pay international tuition rates:

On the other hand, aside from a handful of like scholarship or student aid students, it definitely does prioritize rich people…like it’s tricky to say I would want more Canadians here without it sounding like coming from a place of exclusion of international

students, I think more of a push should be made towards making it as accessible as possible especially from a financial point of view especially for international students.

Not only does Heather believe this prioritizes rich international students, but also that it means a specific group of students come to UBC:

I think that’s pretty non-contestable that UBC does make it easier for international students to get in because they are bankrolling a lot of the university, I don’t know that it’s necessarily a question of fairness. I think it’s more of a question of what is like the priority here and what is most important to UBC, and that type of action really demonstrates that money is more important than like the well-rounded student or caliber of student.

She implies that what we are sacrificing is a “well-rounded student or caliber of student” by prioritizing international students. Although Heather raises some concerns over the neo- liberalization of UBC, she also makes racially coded remarks about the type of student that is coming to the university and who is desired.

The belief that there is a prioritization of international students is also used to make claims that “worthy” domestic students are not getting in. The interviewed students believe that they are being pushed out by international students, and that they must work much harder to receive the same education. This belief can be seen in the negative responses towards Vantage College, where all the students interviewed felt it prioritized international students. Ashley, for example, argues that “Vantage college gives a bit of an easy route in some cases” and emphasized that she’s “worked really hard to get here.” David has a contradictory view where he recognizes the benefits and his hesitations regarding Vantage College, whereby he notes:

I can see the opportunity for, okay well you’ve got a really smart student, they’re not able to speak English but they’re still smart in other ways. I think it’s a really good opportunity to kind of allow them to get that really high quality education if they learn English first. At the same time, I can definitely see the flip side and it’s just kind of like, a place where rich people can kind of say oh yeah, get my UBC degree. Pay enough money if my English is terrible.

David’s belief therefore is similar to Heather’s where he has issues with the prioritization of international students for their money if it means a compromise in quality and standards of UBC.

These views are coupled with a belief that domestic students should also be offered similar programming and that it is not fair for it to just be offered to international students. When asked if domestic students should be offered a similar program to Vantage College, Ashley responded

I think so, yeah. I know one of the main goals of Vantage College is to help international students with their English before they get started on their studies. But there are similarly a lot of domestic students who have maybe been in Canada for a couple years who made need the same kind of help and they don’t have that because they are domestic students.

Travis, similarly argued that “everyone who is having the same kind of troubles if we are being fair should get access to the same resources” and notes “I guess it’s not fair, it’s not equal to everybody.” In these views, you can see the presence of colour-evasive views whereby differential access and needs are not taken into account. This is consistent with the findings of Chesler, Peet and Sevig (2003) who found that their participants want to move away from the concept of race to emphasize humanness or equality in order to justify negative views of affirmative action type programs.

In the case of UBC, this concept of equality was also applied to the question of tuition and domestic student prioritization because UBC is a publicly funded institution. Several domestic students justified their significantly lower tuition because of their tax contributions in Canada. David, for example, argued:

I understand I am a tax payer and will be a tax payer, I will be paying tax for the rest of my life whereas that might not be able to be said for international students, you know, they have not been here, they haven’t been contributing to the tax base.

Ashley echoed this sentiment and noted “well I understand why they pay a lot more because they haven’t been here with their families paying tax all their lives like domestic students have” but also recognized that “paying whatever they pay, 40,000 a year is kind of excessive and it makes Canadian universities kind of inaccessible for foreign students that are not super wealthy”. The interviewed students are conflicted on their views of international student tuition where they think it should be more than domestic students but still accessible.

Many students in the interviews and on the online sites also brought up public funding to defend their claims that domestic students should be prioritized in other ways. David for example, argued:

You know you also have to think that this is a publicly funded institution as well so if you’ve got like 90% of your population international and it’s publicly funded and it’s coming from domestic taxpayers, I can see people having an issue with that. And I might personally have an issue with that like it is our taxes that are going towards that so that’s kinda fair. And yes I would imagine international people are paying taxes when they’re buying GST, like when they’re buying goods and things, but I think in reality public institutions do have an, they do have to sort of prioritize you know serving their own country as a whole.

David’s argument ignores the fact that international students are not funded by the public, hence their heightened tuition, and reflects an in-group bias towards Canadian students.

This belief that UBC is unfairly prioritizing international students over domestic students was also expressed in posts on the UBC Subreddit. In one thread asking students’ opinion on the international student tuition hike, students are split about the decision. Many of those in favour argue that they would “rather see more money per international student than international students displacing domestic students” (deleted, 2015). They make a similar argument to the interviewed students that “the majority of Canadian families have paid tax for generations to build the universities of Canada” and that “Canada has to look after Canadians” (deleted, 2015). They emphasize that the increased number of international students has displaced domestic students. This is countered by other students who point out that the number of domestic students is not affected by the number of international students and is instead based on the number the government is willing to fund. The UBC vice-provost Pamela Ratner, argued that “it is a myth that international students displace domestic students” and that the student applications are adjudicated in separate pools and therefore have no effect on one another (Todd, 2017).

Despite this, there are various threads that ask similar questions about the prioritization of international students, including one entitled “Canadian students: How do you guys feel about the lower standards for international students” and another entitled “Is UBC neglecting domestic students?” The main argument of these threads is that the increased competitiveness for domestic students is affected by the increased number of international students, and that it should not be easier for international students to get in than domestic students. Again, these students raise a similar argument that domestic students should be prioritized because UBC is a public institution and they have been paying taxes in Canada. As expressed on one thread about Vantage College students getting preferential treatment, one commenter noted:

What I don’t understand is why Vantage College students get smaller classes and better instructors… UBC is STILL a publicly funded institution, Canadian students heavily subsidized by the government and UBC was built and maintained through the years by taxpayers’ money. So: why is there a deferential treatment based on national origin and social status? And why are privileged people given an even greater chance at success in a public institution [sic] (linearmic, 2016).

This commenter refers to rich international students as “privileged people”, while at the same time ignoring White domestic privilege. Additionally, he believes there is preferential treatment based on national origin, with White Canadians being treated more poorly. The perceived high number of international students and the ‘unfairness’ of Vantage College allow White domestic students to feel that they are at a disadvantage.

These arguments about the prioritization of international students, both by the reddit commenters and in my interviews, use coded racial language. Many commenters in the reddit posts make direct references to the international students as Asian such as commenting how “high school in Asia is” (keel_bright, 2014) and how “Canada doesn't need any more scientists, so we've stopped training our own smart people and started selling training to rich Chinese” (TritiumBonus, 2014). Additionally, as discussed in the previous chapter, the reference to the financial status of the international students coupled with references to wanting more “well-rounded” and “independent” students implicate Chinese international students in particular. White domestic students feel as though non-White international students are being prioritizing over ‘Canadians’. As demonstrated in the previous chapter, many White students on campus view Chinese Canadians particularly as a financial threat, and therefore, show opposition to programs which they view as unfairly benefiting them.

6.2 Discussion

The three main themes found in the results; individualized definition of racism, denial of privilege, and perceptions of international student privilege; are all reflective of colour-evasive beliefs. Through the majority of the White students’ denial of their privilege, they legitimate their own position in the university and do not acknowledge their advantages. As Cabrera (2014) argues, White students often highlight their own hard work when talking about racism or privilege to reinforce meritocratic principles and justify inequality. By using an individualized definition of racism and limiting racism to stereotyping, the broader power implications and existence of historical and systemic privilege are purposefully ignored. Therefore, although these

78 colour-evasive beliefs are at an individual level, they serve to legitimate the status quo of Whiteness in the university. By evading the discussion about the existence of structural racism and the privileges that White bodies hold at the university and beyond, it serves to uphold these systems. All the interviewed students except Heather minimized the effects of racism on campus and denied the extent of their White privilege. As argued by Doane (2013) the “strategic avoidance of race” and its effects is an “effective strategy to maintain White hegemony” (p. 13).

Framing racism as an individual action, as was done by the majority of the students in the study, allows for a discourse about White victimization. As argued by Doane (2013), if “racism is reduced to the actions of prejudiced individuals, then it is possible to claim that “minority racism” exists alongside white racism and that whites are equally or even more likely to be a target” (p. 16). As seen in my results, Ashley claimed to have witnessed “reverse racism” and other students were upset that signs were only in Chinese or that Mandarin was a requirement for a job. In doing so, White students are framed as victims at UBC and in Vancouver as a whole because they are no longer the numerical majority. The denial of structural privileges by White students allows them to justify the belief that they could be disadvantaged. This process is reflective of what Bonilla-Silva terms abstract liberalism, whereby White bodies support the concepts of equality and meritocracy when it serves them, while simultaneously ignoring historical and institutionalized racism.

Many students used the language of equality and fairness when discussing the perception that it is easier for international students to get acceptance to UBC or Vantage College, noting that UBC should instead prioritize Canadian students. When programs are offered to international students but not domestic students, there is a perception of unfairness by many domestic students and there are calls for equality. This was demonstrated by Travis’ view that Vantage College wasn’t fair because “it’s not equal for everybody.”. This perspective denies the systemic advantages that White domestic students already hold. As Bonilla-Silva (2003) argues, the stance of “supporting equal opportunity for everyone without a concern for the savage racial inequalities between Whites and minorities…safeguards White privilege (p. 276). By focusing on the supposed advantages that international students hold on campus, it ignores the systemic factors which privilege Whiteness at the university and in Canadian society as a whole. Although Heather and David had a more critical analysis of their privilege on campus, they too held views about international students and Vantage College which reflected a belief that domestic students

79 should be prioritized. The use of a colour-evasive framing of race and the belief that there was prioritization of international students have led some students at UBC to believe they are now a minority in need of protection.

This belief is combined with the fear as discussed in the previous chapter of Chinese students “taking over”. The discourse of “yellow peril” is used to justify the belief that White students are threatened or at some kind of disadvantage. Many White students do not desire to have more international students because they feel like they are taking the places of the ‘rightful’ White domestic students. As stated in a UBC Confessions post, this “is CANADA, not CHINA”, with the implication being that White Canadians should be prioritized over those deemed not belonging (UBC Confessions, 2017). There is paradox within the students’ views whereby most of the students support internationalization due to the increased diversity but also hold negative views of international students when they come into the space. International students are desired for their ability to improve the experiences and worldliness of domestic students but are simultaneously resented when programs are made to improve their experiences. This reflects the desire of many White students to preserve the advantages and hegemony of White bodies at the university, which is threatened by increased numbers and the wealth of international students and programming such as Vantage College.

This victimization discourse is demonstrated by the existence of the White Student Union at UBC, a group whose self-proclaimed mission is to “provide a positive forum for discussing about White identity” (Young, 2016). They call for “Whiteness to be treated with the same respect as other ethnicities” (Young, 2016). Although this club is not officially sanctioned by the university, it has almost a thousand followers on Facebook and it points to the existence of this type of thinking on campus. The posts on their page include advertisements for “free speech” events, opposition to conversations of privilege and power, and promotion of a pro-White agenda. These include support for an “it’s okay to be White campaign” on campus and a description of why the White Student Union is necessary:

Given that whites are rapidly becoming a minority in Canada and are no longer a majority at UBC, we believe it’s necessary to form institutions to develop our identity and represent our interests (UBC White Student Union, 2015).

The implication in these posts is that it isn’t okay to be White at UBC and therefore White students need to defend themselves. The calls for institutions to “represent our interests” denies

80 the Eurocentricity and privilege White students hold in the university and negates the fact that the institution has always and continues to defend the interest of White students. The question of whether the group is necessary has also been discussed on a thread on the UBC reddit, where one commenter defending the group makes a comparison between this and the existence of a Black student union at UBC and throughout North America. Another commenter notes:

I see no problem with this as long as they are not promoting racism and/or xenophobia. It seems like every argument against this group stems completely from an emotional place. I have yet to see a well-reasoned argument for why this group is fundamentally different from something like Chinese Varsity Club, and arguing semantics about the meanings of race and ethnicity is silly. (deleted, 2015).

These commenters make false equivalences between a White Student Union and other cultural or racial unions/clubs, thus ignoring the role of power and privilege. White students’ interests are reflected in the Eurocentric curriculum and privileged by the White supremacist system, and therefore do not need a student union in the same way other groups do (Henry & Tator, 2009).

This denial of privilege not only contributes to the maintenance of the status quo, but also justifies the existence of anti-immigrant and anti-diversity sentiment by these students, because they argue they are being victimized. The White Student Union Facebook shares links to articles about foreign students squeezing out domestic students and the harmful effects of Chinese foreign investment. Additionally, they shared a poster with the slogan ““Diversity” means fewer White people.” By framing White students as the victims of diversity initiatives and international student enrollment, this group is intentionally resisting against needed diversity programming at the university, with the desire to preserve their position. By making false claims that White students are no longer privileged, and in fact at some type of disadvantage, it allows for the continuation of hegemonic Whiteness at the university.

6.3 Summary

Despite none of the students denying the existence of racism at UBC, the majority of the interviewed students used individualized definitions of racism and minimized the effects of the racism they had witnessed. Additionally, most of the students I interviewed denied the extent of their White privilege, and instead emphasized other factors such as their financial status, linguistic privilege and hard work. The exception, Heather, recognized the systemic racism at the university and acknowledged that she has privilege because of it. Despite this, she still opposed

81 the privileging of international university students over domestic students and held stereotypical views of this group. All of the interviewed students, along with many commenters on the UBC Subreddit, took issue with the perceived privileging of international students at the expense of domestic students. They falsely claim that preferential treatment is given to international students in the form of easier admission and special programming, which they believe is unfair at a publicly funded institution. As discussed in the previous chapter, many students took issue with the number of Chinese students on campus and the influence they have, and much of this opposition to the number of international students is likely linked to a similar desire to preserve hegemony. The perception that White students are no longer being privileged on campus is shared by the White Student Union, who claim White students need a space and institution that represent their interests. The next chapter explores the broader implications of this line of thinking and discusses the policy and educational considerations.

Conclusion

This study explores how White students at UBC preserve White hegemony at the university through their use of a colour-evasive framing of race and their views about Chinese students. To do so, I conducted four interviews with White domestic students at the university and analyzed posts from the UBC Subreddit and the UBC Confessions page. This chapter will summarize the results of the study and situate it in existing scholarly debates. Additionally, I will position this work in the current social and political climate and discuss the implications of the results for Chinese Canadian students and diversity programming. I will propose some suggestions for educators and policy makers to disrupt the Eurocentric White hegemony on campus and beyond. I will conclude with some limitations of this work and directions for future research.

7.1 Summary of Results/Gaps in the Literature

Previous literature in Whiteness studies has explored how White hegemony was maintained amongst White university students through colour-evasive beliefs, denial of racism and minimization of privilege. This study found similar results amongst three of the four interviewed White students. These students used an individualized definition of racism and defined it simply as stereotyping as opposed to a systemic or institutionalized process. Concurrent with this, the students also minimized the existence of White privilege on campus and instead emphasized their linguistic and financial privilege to justify their positions. These students ignored the power component of privilege and emphasized that “everything is by the numbers” to deny that they had benefited from a White supremacist system. In contrast to the other participants, Heather acknowledged the systemic and institutionalized racism on campus, and the privileges she was afforded because of this. Her and David, the only other student who acknowledged the Eurocentricity on campus, were both pursuing Arts degrees which may have made their views on race more critical than the other students.

The current study aimed to expand the existing research on Whiteness to account for some of the contextual differences in Canada. As touched on in the literature review, Canadian universities practice “education equity” on a smaller scale predominately for Indigenous students instead of the broader affirmative action programs offered in the United States. Because of this, the results of my study did not show opposition to these programs in the same way that American studies have found. However, in the case of UBC, participant responses and posts from the analyzed

83 online sources show that there is opposition to special programming offered for international students and to the number of international students admitted. Specifically, the students expressed disapproval that Vantage College was giving international students preferential treatment and an “easy route” instead of prioritizing domestic taxpayers. Similarly to the cited opposition to affirmative action in the United States, the denial of White students’ privilege caused them to feel like other students were being unfairly privileged over them.

Also specific to the Vancouver context was the combination of multiculturalism and the anti- Chinese sentiment which is brewing in the city. All four of the White students praised the diversity of UBC and the ability to learn from people from different cultural backgrounds, showing the existence of multiculturalist discourses on campus. However, most of these students also held negative views of the number of Chinese students and international students on campus and felt threatened by their presence. Other literature in the field has looked at the role of multiculturalist discourse, but the examination of the role that discourses about Chinese Canadians has in maintaining White hegemony is a point of departure from previous research. Looking at the views White students hold about Chinese Canadians helps unpack the ways these contribute to discourses which uphold White supremacist systems.

My findings reveal that the predominant discourses which exist on campus about Chinese Canadians are those of yellow peril and perpetual foreigner. Unlike results from previous literature in sociology, there was little evidence of the model minority stereotype amongst the interviewed students and online posts. Previous research on why views towards Chinese students were shifting theorized that it was due to academic competence and competition. In this study, academic threat was only a direct concern of one student, Travis, but the lack of positive views about the academic success of Chinese Canadians, as compared to previous research, may signal a shift in the perception of this success. The academic model minority stereotype seems to be replaced with a perception of international Chinese students in particular as coming with financial privilege and getting an unearned advantage. The financial success of Chinese students was typically framed negatively and perceived as a threat to White Canadians. The number of Chinese students, coupled with this success, was viewed as threatening due to its perceived influence over campus and ‘Canadian’ culture.

Additionally, participant responses show that the opposition to the number of Chinese students on campus relates to their perceived status as ‘foreigners’ on campus. As noted by Travis, the perception of international students coming from Europe would “be a bit different…because it seems more like a different group than here.” The combination of the discourses of foreignness and threat imposed on Chinese Canadian students is reflective of the desire to preserve White hegemony on campus. Therefore, although the number of Chinese students factors into the negative views, the findings show that the opposition is greater because they are a non-White group and threaten the existing hegemony of White students. Previous sociological research did not specifically examine the role of Whiteness in these views, however this study has shown that much of the opposition to Chinese students comes from this perceived threat. Many students, especially on the online sites, stated direct opposition to how many Chinese students there were and commented that there wasn’t enough diversity. They commented that “this is CANADA” (UBC Confessions, 2017) and therefore there should not be signs only in Mandarin or students speaking Mandarin to one another. These views show that Chinese students are placed outside of what is considered Canadian or what is desired here and reflect an exclusionary attitude towards non-White bodies. As argued by Fairclough, discourse can also be a sphere of cultural hegemony and can help to sustain it. By perpetuating discourses of Chinese students as foreign and threatening, it shifts the public perception of this group and can increase public support for anti- international student and anti-immigrant sentiment.

7.2 Implications for Chinese Students

The direct victims of these negative discourses are Chinese Canadians and those who are lumped into the homogenized Asian Canadian group. The perpetuation of the perpetual foreigner discourse makes Chinese Canadians feel as though they do not belong in Canada. As noted in the UBC Confessions post by one Asian student, “just because I am ethnically Asian does not mean I am not from here nor can I be from Canada”. The continuation of this stereotype therefore reinforces the idea that Asian Canadians are outside of the norm in Canada and can never fully belong in the current Eurocentric system. The perpetual foreigner discourse can lead to identity crises within members of these groups because they are not fully accepted into the university or Canadian society. Huynh, Devos & Smalarz (2011) found that students who perceive they do not belong due to this discourse report greater tension between their ethnic and national identity, which often leads to difficulty forming a cohesive sense of self. The perpetual foreigner

85 stereotype has also been shown to be associated with feelings of inferiority, discomfort and isolation from other peers (Sue, Bucceri, Lin, Nadal, & Torino, 2007). The resurgence of the yellow peril discourse also has similar consequences for Chinese students as they are made to feel excluded and unwanted on campus. Previous studies have found that racism and microaggressions directed at Asian American students have decreased well-being (Lee, 2003) and been linked to anxiety, depression, psychological distress, and suicidal ideation for members of this group (Hwang & Goto, 2008).

Furthermore, the minimization of racism against Chinese Canadians to being “just stereotypes” makes it harder for Chinese students to make claims of racism. As found by Sue, Bucceri, Lin, Nadal and Torino (2009), Asian Americans often minimize the instances of discrimination due to the denial of their racial reality, which makes them feel invalidated and frustrated. Additionally, the denial of structural racism makes it difficult to discuss the systemic and institutional barriers facing all negatively racialized groups. As argued by Wise (2010), “by discouraging discussions of racial matters and presuming that the best practice is to ignore the realities of racism, it makes it more difficult to challenge those biases, and thus increases the likelihood of discrimination” (p. 18). These perceptions also have broader policy implications which affect both Chinese Canadians and other negatively racialized groups.

7.3 Policy Implications

The perception of Chinese students and immigrants as threatening has led to increased pushback against international students and immigration. For example, in British Columbia, there is a rise in popularity of the Cultural Action party who aims to “adjust Canada’s high volume immigration levels to reflect appropriate economic, social and cultural needs” and restrict foreign investment (Cultural Action Party, 2018). This sentiment has already manifested itself in exclusionary policies such as the foreign buyers tax in Vancouver. Although this tax does not only target Chinese immigrants, as Yu (2016) argues “for those who are railing against Chinese buyers from overseas, the word "foreign" pointed the finger without naming them. There had been no public outcry about wealthy British migrants or American actors buying vacation homes” (par. 3). Therefore, the resurgence and perpetuation of the yellow peril discourse on campus can lead to increased support for these exclusionary policies.

Additionally, the results show that there is some perception of academic threat and an opposition to the perceived influence of Chinese students at the university. This has been an ongoing issue in many of the Ivy League universities in the United States and has led to reported discrimination against Asian students. As reported by Espenshade, Radford and Chung (2009), Asian American students need to have SAT scores that are approximately one hundred and forty points higher than White students to be accepted into Ivy League universities. This disparity has been explained by the argument that Asian students are “slightly less strong on extracurricular criteria” (Mounk, 2014, par. 5). Unz (2012) hypothesizes these universities are downplaying other factors such as academics and emphasizing “leadership qualities” to preserve Whiteness in the institution. He cites a study that found that excelling in certain types of high school activities reduced the student’s admissions chances by over 60 percent and argues that these activities were viewed unfavorably because they were “cultural markers” (p. 37). As described by Cui and Kelly (2013), changing admissions requirements “reflects the interests of a dominant group who has power to impose requirements for credentials on those who do not in order to maintain their dominant social status and privilege to access various social resources” (p. 171). For example, when Samson (2013) exposed White participants to an Asian overrepresentation condition, students wanted to reduce the importance GPA plays in applications and focus instead on other factors. This was also shown in my results, with David emphasizing that we need to test for “core values” and Heather arguing that we need to ensure we have “well-rounded students”. In recent years, UBC has made shifts towards the use of supplemental applications for admissions to many of their programs. Although this could in theory help students with other skills and experiences receive admission, we need to ensure that it is not being used to control for a specific type of applicant deemed acceptable within a White institution or used to preserve White hegemony.

Furthermore, the perception that international students are being unfairly prioritized over White domestic students has led to opposition to programs designed to help international students and other diversity initiatives. This could lead to opposition to the expansion of the limited educational equity programs which are in existence in Canada. In the United States for example, in order to preserve Whiteness in higher education institutions, moves have been made to repeal the use of race in admissions policies. The department of justice under Trump stresses the need for “race-neutral” admissions which would cut out many of the affirmative action policies set up

87 by the Obama administration (Anderson & Balingit, 2018). These policies deliberately deny the historic and ongoing racism against negatively racialized groups and will serve to maintain the status quo of White privilege. By ignoring the systemic racism that has benefitted White Americans, these politicians are willfully ignoring the experiences of negatively racialized Americans to preserve their own privilege. The framing of White victimization as expressed by the students in this thesis contributes to this narrative and can lead to widespread opposition to affirmative action programs for all negatively racialized groups.

7.4 Broader Implications

Overall, this thesis has aimed to show the complex ways which Whiteness operates to maintain its hegemony, and therefore the results of this work are relevant to other universities and contexts. These views are not just held at UBC but are linked to and exacerbated by a broader rise of White nationalist sentiments in North America and other parts of the Western world. The denial of racism, resistance to diversity initiatives, and perception of White victimization have been shown at other universities across North America. Similar groups to the White Student Union at UBC have cropped up across Canada, such as the “Students for Western Civilisation” at the University of Toronto. Similarly, they have the goals of advancing the interests of European peoples and to “promote and celebrate Western civilisation” (Students for Western Civilisation, 2018). They aim to provide a “forum which, unlike our universities, does not exclude rightist, conservative or Eurocentric perspectives” (Students for Western Civilisation, 2018). This implication that Eurocentric perspectives are excluded is intended to further instate the hegemony of Whiteness within these institutions. The effect of this rise of White nationalism on campuses is the normalization of White supremacist perspectives and further marginalization of perspectives outside of the Eurocentric norms. The widespread existence of these groups and perspectives on university campuses points to the pervasive denial of White privilege and desire to preserve White hegemony.

This desire also spreads beyond educational settings, as shown by the rise of White nationalist groups and political leaders. In Ontario, the recent election of Doug Ford was celebrated by White supremacist groups such as the “This Hour has 88 Minutes” podcast and “Proud Boys Canada” who believe he will “electrify the White working class and give blue-collar people permission to be racist” (Mastracci, 2018). He also has cut summer curriculum sessions relating

88 to Indigenous education and truth and reconciliation across Ontario, signalling a desire to reduce conversations about racism and privilege in Canada (Alphonso, 2018). More broadly, the success of Donald Trump in the United States has legitimized the views of various White supremacist and White nationalist groups who preach for the need to defend White interests. One alt-right group, led by Jason Kessler, plan to lead a “White civil rights rally” in Washington in August to protest civil rights abuse in Charlottesville and demand better treatment for White people (Doubek, 2018). Although these groups represent the extremist view, they are linked to a broader perception that White people are facing discrimination in North America.

According to a poll conducted by the NPR, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 55 percent of White Americans surveyed believe that there is discrimination against White people in America today (Gonyea, 2017). Respondents who believed this pointed to affirmative action policies that they believe unfairly benefit negatively racialized people and the assumption that “because you’re White, you’re automatically thrown into that group as being a bigot and a racist” (Gonyea, 2017). These beliefs are based in the denial or minimization of racism faced by negatively racialized groups and evasion of discussions of privilege, in order to continue the hegemony of White bodies. We, as anti-racist researchers and activists, must resist against this narrative of White victimization, and continue to push for institutional change to disrupt White hegemony in universities and beyond.

7.5 Policy Suggestions

The result of the denial of White privilege and belief in White victimization is increased opposition to affirmative action programs in the United States, and educational equity and international student programming in Canada. To counter this opposition, we need to ensure that these programs are protected and expanded. Vantage College and similar transitional programs should be supported, while ensuring that they are accessible for all international students. International student tuition also increased by almost 50% over the past three years, and measures need to be taken to ensure that this does not continue to increase (Warburton, 2015). We cannot allow the false exclusionary argument that White domestic students are being displaced by international students to affect tuition costs and programming for international students. Therefore, we need to resist against these exclusionary views at an individual level and ensure they do not become institutionalized.

Additionally, we need to ensure that existing educational equity programs are sustained and expanded. Canadian Supreme Court rulings supporting the justification of educational equity for “ameliorating the conditions of disadvantaged groups and redressing historical group-based disadvantages in society” have lead to the introduction of programs to increase enrollment of Indigenous students (Kuspinar, 2016). Although these are important, there is also a need for educational equity programs for Black students and other negatively racialized groups who face barriers in the current Eurocentric educational system. Currently, over sixty universities in Canada do not collect race-based data so cannot see which groups are underrepresented. As justification for why they do not collect data, they argue that this could be seen as discriminatory and want the admissions processes to be colour-blind (McDonald and Ward, 2017). We need to demand universities to collect this race-based data, because this data would provide insight into the systemic racism in universities across Canada and allow policy-makers to see which groups should be included in educational equity programs.

In Canada, there is a current push towards diversity and equity in higher education, but many times this is stated without action. As Ahmed (2006) argues, “institution speech acts that declare organisations as being diverse and as committed to racial equality” are “non-performatives; they do not bring about the effects that they name” (p. 1). Many times, they are used to give the appearance of inclusivity and diversity while doing very little to mandate these principles. Oftentimes, diversity work becomes self-congratulatory whereby because there is a commitment or a strategy, many in the administration feel like work has been done. As she notes, “for a commitment to do something, you must do something “with it”” (Ahmed, 2013, p. 12). In order to do true diversity work, the presumption of colour blindness at the university needs to be lifted and institutional racism needs to be examined. Many times, when universities are told that they are perceived as being White, “the task becomes changing the perception of Whiteness rather than changing the Whiteness of the organization” (p. 184). In order to create meaningful change, the pervasive White hegemony of the university needs to be acknowledged and unpacked. The results of this research show that there is a denial by students about the Eurocentricity and systemic racism in the university and in Canada, and we need to ensure this is disrupted at both the personal and institutional level.

The diversity plan at UBC, “Valuing Difference: A Strategy for Advancing Equity and Diversity at UBC”, includes a strategic commitment to diversity with many of the action items being

90 developing strategies, forming committees and conducting research (University of British Columbia, 2010). Although these are important steps towards diversity and equity, these need to be followed up with real action and have consequences if the metrics are not met. Additionally, many of the proposed policies scratch the surface of equity work where they deal with issues like classroom climate and barriers for negatively racialized groups, instead of addressing deeper systemic issues. For example, the proposed action for student recruitment include identifying barriers that prevent qualified applicants from disadvantaged groups from admission and investigate ways to broaden the criteria used for admission. These are both important steps, but do not acknowledge the systemic racism and barriers these groups face before the application phase. Instead, educational equity programs need to be offered to account for the historic and ongoing racism faced by negatively racialized students.

7.6 Other Suggestions for Practice: Educational Futurity

In addition to admissions policy changes to resist against the consequences of colour-evasive views and White victimization, there needs to be a broader effort to educate about the ways race and racism manifest themselves in manifest forms. The interviewed students’ use of individualized definitions of racism and perpetuation of colour-evasive views show how the current education system is inadequate in educating on and addressing these issues. At the higher education level, students need more exposure and education to issues of race and racism in order to facilitate discussion and counter racist narratives on campus. As Simpson (2003) argues, “over time, persistent inattention—in my cases, over the entire educational life of college undergraduates—to issues of racial representation and institutional control has resulted in a lack of familiarity with and strong opposition to discussions that examine racial inequality (p. 164). Many universities and colleges, including UBC, hold educational workshops on racism, including the topics of microaggressions, inclusive language, intersectionality and critical reflection. Though important, typically these workshops will be attended by those who already have an interest in anti-racism and therefore do not do enough in educating on these issues. Instead, mandatory education should be implemented for all UBC students on issues of racism, colour-evasive attitudes, privilege and anti-racism. An example of this type of programming is the Signature Learning Experience at Centennial College in Toronto. As part of this program, all students enrolled in a program at the college must take a mandatory course on topics such as critical race theory, feminism, social justice and privilege. Additionally, students need to meet

91 global citizenship and equity outcomes in any course they take which ensures they are integrating this knowledge into practice (Centennial College, 2018). Through this experience, students gain a critical understanding of race and privilege which will challenge colour-evasive attitudes amongst students, with the goal to disrupt White hegemony in the institution. Similar mandatory programming should be implemented at UBC and other universities for students in all departments to give them a more critical understanding of race and privilege.

Additionally, it is important to disrupt Eurocentricity in higher education so negatively racialized students and faculty can feel included without the expense of their cultural identity and marginalization from other students. In this study, many White students take issue with Chinese students who do not conform to the Eurocentric standards, but instead space should be given to these students to embrace their identity. As argued by Simpson (2003), “cross-racial dialogue and change requires that teachers be committed to creating classrooms that are open to knowledge about race, that can accommodate conflicting experiences and emotions, and that do not consistently normalize European attitudes and realities” (p. 156). She emphasizes that instructors need to “mark Whiteness and open up the classroom to multiple levels of knowledge” in order to disrupt the power of Whiteness in the classroom (Simpson, 2003, p. 157). Despite the claims of the White Student Union and some students in this study, White interests and European knowledges are still being prioritized at the university. Universities need to diversify their course offerings in order to reflect the diverse knowledge of the students, and not just reflect Eurocentric knowledge and values.

Importantly, these views do not originate at the university level and are indicative of a broader societal issue, and therefore need to be tackled on a broader scale. Education about race and privilege need to be mandated starting as early as elementary school to ensure that students get a complex understanding of their positionality. As outlined by Dei (1995), a key tenet of anti- racism education is acknowledging the saliency and effects of race. As shown in this study, there is a prevalence of colour-evasive attitudes and individualized definitions of racism, which need to be challenged in the educational system. Questions of power and privilege therefore need to be central to the discussion of race, and students need to examine “how historically constituted relations of domination and subordination are embedded in institutional structures of society” (Dei, 1995, p. 27). Educators need to question institutionalized Whiteness and why Eurocentric knowledge is privileged in schools, the capitalist system and other societal institutions. In so-

92 doing, anti-racist educators need to engage multiple ways of knowing and ensure that marginalized voices are heard. By unpacking questions of identity, multiple knowledges, and the systemic nature of privilege, students will gain a deeper understanding of racism and be able to challenge Eurocentricity and Whiteness within their schools, in university and beyond.

7.7 Future Research

There remain some issues about the effects of Whiteness in higher education that need further analysis. This investigation attempted to provide insight into how White hegemony is reproduced within the views of White students at UBC. However, an investigation of this size cannot provide the full picture about how this is done. Further research needs to be done which examines this topic with more participants across a range of faculties and places of origin to allow for a deeper understanding and possibility for further comparative analysis. Additionally, this research needs to be extended to other universities in Canada to see if the results are similar or if the discourses about Chinese Canadians differ. Because UBC is a university with a large percentage of Chinese students but low percentages of other negatively racialized groups, further research needs to be done in a context with more diversity to see if similar views exist. Comparative analysis should be conducted across various universities to determine if the percentage of Chinese students at the university influences perceptions. Although this study provided some evidence for group threat theory, with a specific threat to Whiteness, comparative research could test this theory further.

Additionally, as a White researcher, I used my point of access to interview White students but cannot speak to the experience of Asian Canadians who are affected by these discourses and racism. Future research needs to examine the perceptions of racism on campus by Chinese Canadians who are affected by the stereotypes and discourses. Previous studies in the United States have shown that stereotyping has adverse mental health effects for Asian Americans, and this research needs to be extended to the Canadian context due to the prevalence of negative stereotypes about this group. An in-depth analysis of how these discourses about Chinese Canadians affect their experience at the university may help to bring greater insight into how these processes maintain White hegemony and dominance at the university.

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Appendices

Appendix A: Recruitment Flyer

Participants Needed for Research about Experiences of White University Students

Are you a White student at the University of British Columbia? Are you a Canadian citizen?

We are looking for participants to take part in a study about experiences of UBC students. You would be asked about your experiences and opinions about the current and changing UBC campus.

Your participation would involve a one-hour interview. In appreciation for your time, you will receive a $5 Starbucks gift card.

For more information about this study, or to volunteer, please contact:

Elisabeth Dennis

University of Toronto OISE

[email protected]

108 109

Appendix B: Interview Guide

1. Overall, how would you describe your academic experiences at the University of British Columbia? a. What are some challenges you may have faced, if any? 2. How would you describe your social experiences? a. What are some challenges you may have faced, if any?

3. What do you think about UBC tuition? 4. Are you aware of the tuition system used for international students? a. If so, what are your thoughts on the way it is set up? b. If not, are you interested in learning about it?

5. What is your perception of Vantage College? a. Information if required: The Vantage One Program is a 11-month first-year transition program which helps international students adjust to university life. It combines one year of academic degree credits with intensive academic English preparation, which helps with many of the language barriers cited by international students (Vantage College, 2017). b. Do you think domestic students should be offered access to similar resources to help their adjustment to university? 6. What are your thoughts on the internationalization movement in higher education?

7. As a White domestic student, do you feel like you have any advantages at the university? a. Socially? b. Academically? 8. According to a voluntary study of students in 2012, visible minorities make up 65% of all UBC students. How do you think this has altered your experience as a White body on this campus?

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9. Do you think there’s a different perception of Chinese students as compared to other students of colour on campus?

10. Do you think there is racism at UBC?