A Wandering Mind – The Spread of Racism
Raymond Li – September 25th, 2014
Can Interpretative Communities extend beyond education?
A couple days ago, I was doing research on the Komagata Maru incident that happened a century ago.The Komagata Maru incident happened at the doorstep of Vancouver, the Burrard Inlet. On May 23rd, 1914 the Komagata Maru (a Japanese ship filled with South Asian passengers) arrived in Vancouver, but was not allowed to anchor due to tight anti-asian immigration laws.Two months after floating in the Inlet, the Komagata Maru was forced to leave (http://www.vancouverhistory.ca/archives_komagatamaru.htm). Many passengers died in this incident, resulting in passionate south asian freedom movements in India (http://komagatamarujourney.ca/intro).
Passengers from the Komagata Maru incident (http://content.lib.sfu.ca/utils/ajaxhelper/?CISOROOT=/km_2&CISOPTR=15397&action=2&DMSCALE=65&DMWIDTH=650&DMHEIGHT=466)
In my research, I was specifically focusing on an interview of Communications Strategist Manjot Bains and how she (as an indian canadian) connected with the incident. She dealt with racism as both a child, and an adult. She also finds that textbook information about culture in Canada does not reflect the proportionate population. With all the mentions of textbooks and cultures, my mind wandered off to think of the term “interpretative communities” found in Shahzad’s paper, “The Role of Interpretative Communities in Remembering and Learning,” that we read during our english class. This specialized term refers to how the way we learn “involve a collectivity of significant ‘others’..” (Shahzad 2010). While my mind was wandering, I began questioning: does “learning with others” simply constitute education, or can it extend towards experience or feelings (such as hate and racism). In the case of Manjot Bains, she first felt the hate of racism in grade four (http://komagatamarujourney.ca/node/4790). She gained a new experience (racism) through her community (in this case, Canada) which all related back to the history of Canada. I extend my thoughts further to think that the racism that Manjot Bains experienced also came from interpretative communities. The certain inhabitants of Vancouver back a century ago during the Komagata Maru event retained and collectively remembered the feeling of resentment towards South Asians resulting in their future generation to “learn” the hate that was given to Manjot. In that case, the “previous generation” was the interpretative community to the “future generation” where hate and resentment towards South Asians was the knowledge that was passed on. This causes my mind to wander even more: is racism a product of interpretative communities? I think we can help reduce or eliminate discrimination if more research is done on the link between interpretative communities and racism.
Raymond Li