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2 I WRITING RACIAL BARRIERS INTO LAW Upholding B.C.'s Denial of the Vote to Its Japanese Canadian Citizens, Homma v. Cunningham, 1902 ANDREA GEIGER-ADAMS During the last decades of the nineteenth century, the province of BritishColumbiawas a rapidlygrowing. predominantlyimmigrant societythat wasincreasinglyfractured along racial lines.' Although its white citizens shared many of the same anti-Asian prejudices as their neighbors south of the U.S.-Canada border, Canada-unlike the United States-did not bar Japanese immigrants from becoming naturalized citizens . Canadianlawand policythus appeared more inclusive than U.S.law.1The1902 decision in Homma v. Cunningham. which upheld British Columbia 'sdenialofthe franchise to naturalizedAsian immigrantsand theirCanadian -born children, revealed, however. the equalabilityofCanadianlawto deny its citizens the rights ofcitizenship on racial grounds. Notwithstandingdifferences intheconstitutionalstructureoftheUnitedStatesand Canada it otherwise regarded as important, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council inLondon,final arbiterofthecase, reachedsouthacross the CanadaU .S. border for doctrine to justifY its reversal of existing case law.3 British Columbia's pursuit ofthat result, and its acceptance ofthe Privy Council's reasoning. suggestshowpermeablethe boundarybetween the United States and Canada was when it came both to racist attitudes and to justifYing the expression of those attitudes in law. Homma v. Cunningham, which fixed RCo's denial of the franchise to citizens of Japanese, Chinese, Native, and East Indian ancestryin the lawfor the next halfcentury, standsas an example of the tendency for citizen and subject alike to become ever more thoroughly racialized categories in early twentieth-century North America. As the debate surrounding this case reflects, the rationale advanced byBritish Columbia officials to justifY the Province's position invoked the politics of gender as well as race. WRITING RACIAL BARRIERS INTO LAW 21 Even before British Columbia joined Confederation in 1871, its residents sought to exclude Chinese immigrants from votingin local elections.4 Once it became a province, B.C. legislators, focused on crafting a society that was both white and essentially British, acted qukldy to fix those barriers in provinciallaw.5 Invoking the same kind ofanti-Asian rhetoric relied on by nativists in California and elsewhere along the Pacific coast, B.C.legislators amended British Columbia's voters' legislation in 1875 to bar Chinese and Native residents of B.c. from voting in provincial elections.6 Because there were virtually no Japanese immigrants in B.C. at the time, they were not included in the initial proscription. In 1895, however, the B.C. legislature added Japanese immigrants to those already excluded from the franchise, even though its own records reflected that there were fewer than 130 naturalized Japanese immigrants in the province at that time} The attorneygeneral of B.C. later suggested that the legislature acted in that year in part because it was aware that growing numbers of Japanese laborers were takingadvantage ofopportunities to find work abroad, in thewake ofthe Japanese government's 1885 removal of the bar it had maintained on labor emigration.s As amended, the Provincial Voters Act provided that "no Chinaman, Japanese, or Indian shall have his name placed on the Register ofVoters for any Electoral District." The term "Japanese," as used in the statute, referred not just to anyone who was a "native ofthe Japanese Empire or its dependencies not born of British parents," but also to "any person ofthe Japanese race, naturalized ornot."9 Becauseit applied notjustto Japanese immigrants, but to anyone born in B.C. who was of Japanese descent, the issue became one not just of national origin but of race. The legislature ensured that its proscription would be enforced by imposing a fifty-dollar fine and up to one month's imprisonment on any collector ofvoters who violated the act by adding the name of someone of Asian descent to the voters list.1o On October 19, 1900, Tomekichi Homma, a naturalized British subject born in Japan, applied to Thomas Cunningham, collectorofvoters for Vancouver , B.c., to have his name added to the voters list for that electoral district .l1 Homma's request was a deliberate challenge to the Provincial Voters Act. As Homma anticipated, Cunningham refused to place his name on the voterslist for Vancouver, B.C.ll Within a week, Homma filed a lawsuit challenging Cunningham's refusal and the 1895 amendment to the Provincial Voters Act on which he relied.13 Homma did not act alone in mounting his challenge. His attempt to register to vote was part of a larger, coordinated effort by naturalized Japanese immigrants in British Columbia to challenge [18.191.46.36] Project MUSE (2024...

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