Before the Age of the Donald - Part Fourteen by Dave Jaffe

    Before the Age of the Donald - Part Fourteen


        Some U.S. presidents change their country or the world after becoming president. Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Lyndon Baines Johnson and Ronald Reagan, fit into this category. Others like James Earl Carter, or 'Jimmy Carter' as he called himself, tried to change the world in office and after they'd left the Oval Office. Then there's Donald Trump who may be changing things now even before he's taken power.
    Frances which isn't her real name is a Canadian of Chinese descent. A few days ago she was walking down a Vancouver street on the west side of town. A man approached her. "Go back to where you came from," this young man shouted at her.
    "Excuse me," Frances answered back. "I was born here, right in the Vancouver General Hospital. I'm a Canadian."
    The man disagreed. "We're going to send you straight back where you came from. The Donald's in power now and you people are out of here."
      Donald Trump has promised  to deport over 11 million illegal Mexican immigrants back to Mexico. The 45th president of the United States of America may well do this. During the 2016 U.S. presidential election Trump demonized Mexicans and Moslems. Now no one can prove that Donald Trump is inciting racists in Metro Vancouver . Yet Frances has been insulted at least twice since Trump won the election.
    "I've spoken to the police about two of these incidents," Frances says. "We'll see what they dso."
     I must be fair here. Long before Donald Trump appeared on the scene, B.C. racists unleashed hate on immigrants from Asia. Let's review a little of this history here and it doesn't make for pleasant reading.
     Anti-Asian racism emerged in British Columbia in the 19th century. As historian and writer George Woodcock pointed out in his history called 'British Columbia', white working men became virulent racists in the 1880's and later as Chinese immigrants filtered into British Columbia.. The Chinese men were used as strikebreakers or scabs by their rich bosses in forestry, fishing and mining strikes. The more wealthy British Columbians also hired Chinese people as servants and workers and admired their strong work ethic. Yet that didn't mean that they liked them.