Race, Employment Discrimination, and State Complicity in Wartime Canada, 1939-1945

The study that the crisis of war reinforced pre-existing social and economic inequality based on racist views and practices. War-induced anxieties intensified suspicion of “foreigners” — a term which encompassed large numbers of Canadian-born and naturalized people of Japanese, central, eastern, and southern European descent and Jews — as unpatriotic, disloyal, radical, and incapable of becoming truly Canadian. The war also brought sharply into focus and even intensified racist assumptions that African Canadians, eastern and southern Europeans, and Native people were suitable only for menial jobs; that Jewish, Chinese, and Japanese Canadians were economically aggressive; and that Jews in particular were given to shady practices. Such racist stereotypes in turn legitimized the ongoing marginalization of these minorities in the workforce. The state colluded in racist practices. To be sure not all state officials or all Canadians were racist, but the pragmatism that informed official complicity with employment discrimination underscores the pervasiveness of racism in wartime Canada. State officials — some of whom held racist ideas — were willing to accept employers’ and workers’ racist preferences because they believed that to do otherwise would create social unrest and disrupt war industries. Moreover, officials found that the relegation of minority groups such as Chinese Canadians, Japanese Canadians, and Native people to menial work offered the important benefit of filling jobs that Canadians with wider options avoided. Resume L’etude montre que la crise entrainee par la guerre a renforce l’inegalite sociale et economique existante basee sur les opinions et les pratiques racistes. Les anxietes provoquees par la guerre ont en effet intensifie la suspicion des « etrangers » — un terme qui englobe un grand nombre de personnes nees au Canada ou naturalisees, d’origine japonaise, europeenne (du centre, de l’est ou du sud) et juive. Ces indidious ont ete percus comme peu patriotiques, deloyaux, radicaux et incapables de devenir de vrais Canadiens. La guerre a brusquement ravive et meme intensifie les prejuges racistes que les Canadiens d’origine africaine, europeenne (de l’est et du sud) et les Autochtones ne convenaient pas aux travaux manuels; que lesCanadiens d’origine juive, chinoise et japonaise etaient economiquement agressifs; et que les juifs en particulier s’adonnaient aux pratiques louches. De tels stereotypes racistes, a leur tour, ont rendu legitime la marginalisation permanente de ces minorites dans le monde du travail. L’Etat a contribue aux pratiques racistes. Il est certain que tous les representants de l’Etat et tous les Canadiens n’etaient pas racistes. Mais la discrimination en matiere d’emploi et la complicite des autorites a cet effet soulignent l’omnipresence du racisme au Canada pendant la guerre. Les representants de l’Etat — certains d’entre eux avaient des idees racistes — etaient prets a accepter les preferences racistes des employeurs et des travailleurs car ils avaient peur de provoquer des troubles sociaux et d’interrompre la production des industries de guerre. De plus, les representants se sont rendus compte que la relegation aux travaux manuels des groupes minoritaires, tels que les Canadiens d’origine chinoise et japonaise et les Autochtones, offrirait l’important avantage de combler les emplois que les Canadiens evitaient parce qu’ils avaient plus d’options.

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