David Brett: Hypocritical lefties won't consider the racists amongst their heroes
Credit to Author: Gordon Clark| Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2019 01:00:24 +0000
Are left-wing, activist, statue-removing city councils like New Westminster (Judge Matthew Begbie, 2019) and Victoria (Sir John A. Macdonald, 2018) being hypocritical and partisan, ignoring racist luminaries of the political left?
Apparently, yes.
No better example of this double standard is the enthusiastic promoter of British whiteness, ardent eugenicist and NDP forefather James Shaver Woodsworth (1874-1942), whose biographies are largely scrubbed clean of his overtly racist and xenophobic teachings.
The University of Toronto’s Woodsworth College boasts that it “was named after J.S. Woodsworth, who was an advocate for social justice, a member of parliament and a founder of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), the forerunner of the New Democratic Party (NDP).”
Simon Fraser University’s left-leaning Institute for the Humanities has an academic chair named in Woodsworth’s honour, gushing that he “devoted himself to action in the world around issues of social justice, peace, and equality.”
The Ontario NDP, who have a human rights award in his name, brag “Woodsworth fought against racial and religious discrimination in Canada and stood up for the right of all Canadians to vote, regardless of skin colour or socioeconomic status.”
All this adulation ignores Woodsworth’s stunningly racist, classist and xenophobic beliefs that he published in his 1909 book Strangers Within Our Gates, Coming Canadians, a 331-page primer for average Canadians on how to decide who to let into Canada and who to keep out.
Strangers, replete with dozens of statistical tables, lays out a hierarchy of races and countries of origin as a crude ranking system for immigration desirability, analyzing such traits as physical stature, intelligence, social habits, moral character, criminality, religion, ambition, industriousness and propensity to assimilate.
Top of the immigrant heap for Woodsworth are the English: “We need more of our own blood to assist us to maintain in Canada our British traditions and to mould the incoming armies of foreigners into loyal British subjects.”
But not the English poor: “We sympathise with these poor people, but we are glad that the Canadian Government is taking steps to prevent the ‘dumping’ of these unfortunates into Canada … we must express the fear that any large immigration of this class will lead to the degeneration of our Canadian people.”
Indigenous people barely warrant a mention in Strangers, as Woodsworth lumps them into a four-page section called “The Negro and the Indian,” wherein Woodsworth promotes Christian proselytization, education and assimilation as the only hope for these “savages”: “Many are devout Christians leading exemplary lives, but there are still 10,202 Indians in our Dominion, as grossly pagan as their ancestors, or still more wretched, half-civilized, only to be debauched.” Woodsworth mused, “the Indian of today is very much nearer to the civilized white than to his pagan ancestor,” which assumed progress he warns has been hampered by “the mistaken kindness of the State.”
Woodsworth dedicates an entire chapter of Strangers to firing up Christians in the work of transforming Canada’s “savages” and other less “desirable” inhabitants into “Canadians.” In the chapter “A Challenge to the Church,” Woodsworth decries the failures of earlier missionary work “among the native tribes” because “there are whole tribes who are living in the densest, grossest heathenism.”
Of Blacks? Besides numerous dreadful, racist generalizations, Woodsworth gloats, “we may be thankful that we have no ‘negro problem’ in Canada.”
Strangers, which paints Northern Europeans as more desirable than Southern Europeans, also stokes anti-Semitic bigotry. Of the Jews, Woodsworth marvels, “They are not strong physically, but the death rate among them is low.” Woodsworth also promoted dangerous Jewish stereotypes and conspiracy theories: “It is a far cry from the Jewish pedlars or sweatshop tailors to the money-barons who control the world’s finances, yet the same keen business instincts are common to both.”
Woodworth’s position on “Oriental” immigration is stark. They should be “vigorously excluded.” Why? Mainly due to a perceived threat to white labour.
“Perhaps, for some time, a limited number of Orientals may be advantageous. But it does seem that the exclusionists are right in their contention that laborers working and living as Orientals do, will displace European laborers.” Woodsworth describes Orientals as “essentially non-assimilable elements” that “are clearly detrimental to our highest national development.”
“British Columbia has an immigration problem particularly its own, and a perplexing problem it is — the Oriental question,” wrote Woodsworth. Careful not to single out the Chinese, Woodsworth noted, “It was when the Japanese and Hindus started pouring into British Columbia that the trouble arose.”
Woodsworth was also pro-colonial, describing “the old colonial days” glowingly: “These colonists were some of England’s noblest sons and daughters” who “came to an unexplored wilderness inhabited only by savages. They had to create a civilization.”
Here’s my point: Racism is not a partisan problem. It’s a human problem. The progressive left needs to look at its own racist roots and stop the fingerpointing.
David Brett, MBA, is a 25-year resident of New Westminster, community volunteer, entrepreneur and commentator.
Letters to the editor should be sent to sunletters@vancouversun.com. The editorial pages editor is Gordon Clark, who can be reached at gclark@postmedia.com.
CLICK HERE to report a typo.
Is there more to this story? We’d like to hear from you about this or any other stories you think we should know about. Email vantips@postmedia.com.