Year: 2006
Type: paratext
Abstract: Racism is a hot and handy target.We recoil when accused of it, whether at the expense of Aboriginals, Jews, immigrants or Blacks, or in its more cultural anti-French, anti-English forms in Canada.Virtually no Canadian openly condones such beliefs or any acts based on them.Yet, we live in a country whose history remains full of words and deeds rooted in presumptions of racial superiority-inferiority.If we are to avoid leading unexamined lives, then the need for a definition of racism, in legal and in popular parlance, becomes all the more urgent.That is why James Walker 's cool, complex, vivacious reconstruction of these four case histories, analyzed within their well-documented social contexts, demands our full attention.And that is also why Wilfrid Laurier University Press and The Osgoode Society deserve Canada's gratitude for courageously publishing what some may think is an examination of our legal-judicial culture that is best left unacknowledged.Each case came before the Supreme Court of Canada and was resolved there.The two that could have been appealed further to England's Judicial Committee of the Privy Council were not.Each dramatically illustrated Canadian racism in action.Two plaintiffs challenged legislated racism, in 1912 and 1955; and two cases arose out of custom-based civil actions of private discrimination, in a public establishment (1939) and in a restrictive, private property covenant (1950).If the issue in each case had been put to a referendum, Walker 's evidence leaves little doubt that a majority of Canadian voters at each case's time would have allowed the racism.The juridical path proved equally accommodating, because in each case Canada's highest court effectively left racism where legislation and common practice placed it.
Author: James W. ST. G. Walker
Language: English
Subfield: Law
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4391863597
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