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Originally Posted by Capsicum
Chinese were pretty much the largest group of Asian Canadians through the entire history of Asian immigration to Canada, from the late 1800s to today right?
And they were probably a majority of Asian Canadians up until the liberalization of immigration policy in the 1960s.
In the US, Chinese Americans dropped to 50% or less of Asian Americans in the early 20th century (after which Japanese became the majority of Asian Americans for a while, with the addition of a small Filipino and Korean population, which Canada lacked in any significant number until the 1960s or later), decades pretty soon after the Chinese exclusion act. However, unlike in the US, Canada's way of excluding Chinese immigrants, the head tax, did not stop a rise in Chinese population at the time, until a 1920s ban lowered the Chinese population for a few decades.
I still remember that thread in city discussions a while back about whether "Pan-Asian identity" existed in the US or Canada, and how Canada has very little Pan-Asian identity, which makes sense if Asian more or less meant majority Chinese throughout the majority of the country's history. |
In the US it feels like the existence of a pan-Asian identity depends on whether the subgroups have sufficient numbers to perform certain functions. For example, in a metropolitan area like Denver which has few Asians, you tend to find South Asians, Southeast Asians and East Asians represented in groups like the Asian American Chamber of Commerce, the Asia-Pacific American Law Students Association, the Asia-Pacific American Bar Association, and in organized events on places like meetup.com. In those cases, there appears to be some sort of Pan-Asian identity.
Conversely, places like the San Francisco Bay Area tend to have large enough South Asian, Southeast Asian and East Asian populations that they have thriving subgroups, including for example the South Asian Law Students Association (separate from the Asia-Pacific Law Students Association, which is mostly East Asians). I think in places like that a Pan-Asian identity is weaker.