The UBC Fonds house a collection of letters and newspaper articles praising Joy Kogawa on her novel “Obasan”. Public reception of the novel appears to have been overwhelmingly and immediately quite positive, and many critics expressed sentiments regarding the importance of widespread public recognition of the hardships experienced by Japanese Canadians at that particular point in history. The responses to the novel, while quite positive, very much possessed a sort of distance to them. Racist realities in Canada were being viewed as a negative part of history that has since been rectified. I believe the way in which Kogawa’s novel is talked about represents a widespread view of racism in Canada as a historical issue rather than a pervasive and modern one. By viewing these realities as a thing of the past many people are therefore able to read the novel and effectively detach Canada from its potentially racist reality, and to distance themselves from issues of systemic racism through the belief that they themselves are immune to the same kind of internalized prejudice that was once prevalent.
People often believe that they would have been untouched by a society’s widespread racism. Preconceived notions of heightened morality are not new concepts. Human nature is often overly generous in self-perception, an idea known as the “self-serving bias”[1]. Following WWII and many of the horrific acts by the Nazi party, social psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted a study to test whether or not American society was as immune to the same kind of actions as they believed themselves to be. He wanted to examine the defence presented by many Nazi soldiers that stated they were simply “following orders”. Is a person inclined to heightened inhumanity under strong authority? For his experiment, he set up a (fake) question and answer scenario wherein the subject was instructed to administer shocks to their “student” at increasing voltages for every incorrect answer. As the experiment progressed, the “student”, who was in on the experiment and not actually being shocked began to cry out in pain and complain of heart troubles at increasing levels until eventually becoming unresponsive[2]. Milgram found that the majority of subjects continued to administer shocks at lethal levels even to an unresponsive subject. Milgram’s findings demonstrate a general capacity (and tendency) for people to inflict a great deal of pain on another for the sake of obedience.
Although people may believe themselves to be inclined to act on morality rather than to blindly follow authority, studies such as Milgram’s have proven this not to be the case. Systemic racism within society is often times perpetuated through authority structures. In the case of Japanese internment, prominent governmental figures were enacting legislature that was both discriminatory and detrimental to the Japanese-Canadian population, and the general public was then internalizing these prejudices for the sake of law-boundedness. Societal racism, in many cases, has to do with a natural human inclination, therefore it is not necessarily accurate to assume a heightened morality because of an awareness of the negative implications of racism.
It can also be argued that the novel itself in many ways presents a simplified perspective of the history of racism in Canada. English scholar Lauren Davis argues that the novel presents a very inaccurate depiction of the nation’s shift towards multiculturalism, as it presents inclusivity as something that suddenly existed. She believes that the Multiculturalism Act and the Canadian constitution were not the be-all-end-all for banishing racism in Canada, but rather that tolerance is a process toward which we are slowly working[3].
To this day, Canada is far from a perfectly equal society. For example, the aboriginal population has a much higher percentage of poverty, unemployment, and incarceration rates, and face high levels of discrimination within society.[4] In her article, Davis also points out that Joy Kogawa’s house is in fact the only one publically recognized by the Canadian government as having been seized and unreturned, raising another potentially problematic societal reality. As well, recent Conservative leadership hopeful Kellie Leitch came forward with a platform of screening potential immigrants on the basis of whether or not they possessed the proper “Canadian values”.[5] Arguably a thinly veiled attempt at blatant racist discrimination, this demonstrates how Canada is still far from complete acceptance and inclusivity.
It is possible that Canadians are often broadly unaware of our racist realities, and that we tend to view ourselves as more overwhelmingly accepting than we are. Canadian ethnic studies authors Henry and Taylor argue that “in spite of the historical and contemporary evidence of racism as a pervasive and intractable reality in Canada… Citizens and institutions function in a state of collective denial”.[6] They claim that another potential reason for this moral distancing could simply be a tendency for societal institutions to not address problems, and to focus only on the ways in which Canada behaves positively towards diversity.
The public reaction to Obasan demonstrates a removal from one’s own potential for prejudice that is universally prominent. Society tends to address racism as a historical problem, and ignore many pressing realities in our country today. People like to believe that they have strong morality and would not behave in discriminatory or harmful ways towards another. Looking at realities both historically and currently, many of these problematic tendencies are ingrained both within us and within society, therefore we are by no means correct in distancing ourselves from mass discrimination and racist tendencies within society.
[1] “Http://Ljournal.ru/Wp-Content/Uploads/2017/03/a-2017-023.Pdf.” Is There a Universal Positivity Bias in Attributions? A Meta-Analytic Review of Individual, Developmental, and Cultural Differences in the Self-Serving Attributional Bias, 5 Nov. 2004, doi:10.18411/a-2017-023.
[2] Burger, Jerry M. “Situational Features in Milgram’s Experiment That Kept His Participants Shocking.” Journal of Social Issues, 4 Sept. 2014, onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/josi.12073/full.
[3] Davis, L. K. (2012). Joy kogawa’s obasan: Canadian multiculturalism and japanese-canadian internment. British Journal of Canadian Studies, 25(1), 57-76,149. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/docview/1011059731?accountid=14656
[4] “Prejudices Against Aboriginal Peoples.” ENSEMBLE for the respect of diversity, www.ensemble-rd.com/en/learn-about-discrimination/discrimination-in-canada/aboriginal-peoples/prejudices-against-aboriginal-peoples.
[5] Ubelacker, Sheryl. “Is Donald Trump’s immigration policy fuelling racism in Canada?” CTVNews, 9 Feb. 2017, www.ctvnews.ca/canada/is-donald-trump-s-immigration-policy-fuelling-racism-in-canada-1.3278102.
[6] Frances Henry – THE COLOUR OF DEMOCRACY: RACISM IN CANADIAN SOCIETY, www.yorku.ca/fhenry/colourofdemocracy.htm.