Jobs and Justice: Fighting Discrimination in Wartime Canada, 1939–1945 by Carmela Patrias (review)

A critical theme in any history of human rights is the role of organized labour and left political movements in mobilizing for social change. Carmela Patrias’ wonderfully written account of racial discrimination and resistance in Canada during World War II is well timed. The author is among an emerging cohort of historians in Canada, as well as a growing number of scholars internationally, who have begun to develop a scholarship on the history of human rights. Canadians’ fascination with human rights has led to the creation of a new national museum – the Canadian Museum for Human Rights – that will open soon in Winnipeg.

In Jobs and Justice, Patrias documents the nature and extent of racial discrimination in employment. There was an acute labour shortage during the war and yet many employers refused to hire racial minorities. In fact, the experience of war intensified racism. Patrias explores the social construction of race to demonstrate the fluidity of racial classifications, for example the way eastern Europeans were defined as racial minorities. Her study places a particular emphasis on Jews, African Canadians, Asians, and Aboriginal peoples.

Patrias’ account of the role of the state is especially fascinating. The federal government officially banned racial discrimination in employment while simultaneously colluding with employers to marginalize racial minorities. State officials did so believing that it would contribute to social peace and prevent a disruption in the economy. And yet the state could not completely ignore the plight of racial minorities, who constituted an indispensable labour pool at a time in history when they were badly needed.

Rather than portraying racial minorities as victims, Patrias examines how they used the labour shortage and the state’s wartime rhetoric to advance human rights. Jobs and Justice is not only about how people experienced discrimination, but also how they mobilized in opposition. Eastern Europeans, for instance, placed a great deal of faith in the labour movement and in the principle of reorganizing society along socialist principles. They understood racism as a product of class divisions, and overcoming racism was essential to creating a more egalitarian society. Organized labour became one of the principal advocates for human rights during the war. Their activism, among other things, made visible the contradictions and inconsistencies in racial discourse.

The book is essential reading for any historian interested in the study of labour and working class history, human rights, anti-discrimination law, social movements and race in Canada. Several chapters are dedicated to specific racial groups in an attempt to highlight the contradictions in constructing racial categories. Another chapter makes a significant contribution to the study of discrimination and resistance by Aboriginal peoples, which is an issue that requires further study. One chapter, written in the form of an intellectual history of racism, is dedicated to a series of biographies of notable social conservatives. Given the dearth of studies on social movement history in Canada, Patrias’ book fills an important gap in the scholarship on mobilization and collective action. Another critical contribution, albeit not addressed directly in the book, is to reinforce recent studies in human rights history that date the emergence of the modern human rights movement before the creation of the United Nations and the postwar settlement. The failure of movements in the 1930s and during the war to secure substantive changes in state policy often obscures the significance of these movements, and has led far too many historians to presume that the human rights movement emerged after the war.

One of the central arguments in the book is that Jews, as well as organized labour and the political left (including Communists), were among the most influential proponents of state policy to ban discrimination. This is entirely accurate. Although they would be overshadowed beginning in the 1960s by newly emerging social movements, during the war they were among the few collective voices advocating tolerance towards racial minorities. Still, the author’s critique of these activists is muted, and too easily obscures the contradictions...