Chinese-Canadians Enter The Professions In The 1950s

Chinese-Canadians Enter The Professions In The 1950s

Chinese Canadians in the 1950s

This is another news report, entitled “Chinese-Canadians enter the professions in the 1950s”, of archived content from the CBC and reporter Bill Cunningham, originally aired in 1957. Now sufficiently distanced from 1945, the end of the Second World War, the place and impact of the Chinese in Canada are becoming more pronounced and visible to the border public. This includes access to enfranchisements, with some Chinese Canadians even becoming members of parliament. This particular clip emphasizes something else however, that is the ways in which stereotypical attitudes and prejudices still guide the narratives of Canadian society. Cunningham presents, much like Keppler’s cartoon, two contrasting ideals, that of the Westernized and domestically born Chinese Canadian living in suburbia, and that of the old and shattered Chinese immigrant living in a decrepit Chinatown. It's a verbose condemnation of these community hubs as havens of criminality in which even fellow Chinese find abhorrent and unsanitary. Cunningham argues for a perspective which views the only acceptable and respectable Chinese Canadian as one who is seen as embracing assimilation.

Bill Cunningham

This clip (3:32 - 5:27) is from this following video:

Cunningham, Bill. “Chinese-Canadians enter the professions in the 1950s.” CBC Archive, July 14, 1957. Video, 6 min., 19 seconds. https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/1.3595636.

CBC News

1957

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English

Moving Image