By Camilla Lade

I am writing in response to Dr. Matt Hern’s article and his concerns of racism as an impetus for Andy Yan’s study.

I think he obscured the point of Andy’s study, who is himself of Chinese descent and certainly does not want to espouse racist ideologues of historical colonial policies towards his own peoples.

I think we can all agree at this point in time no one wants to implement a head tax or curb immigration towards specific countries. At the current state of diversity, this notion would be absurd. Most reasonable people in our diverse cities come to them for the diversity and opportunities that our globalized world offer and most of us come in contact with diverse cultures and ethnicities every day of our urban and even rural lives.

There is some hysteria about naming the factors in the housing market crisis we see today in this province, and they are being obscured by fears of racism and xenophobia rather than the true injustice of global facets shaping our urban economy.

I agree with Dr. Hern, ethnicity is not the problem, and I would like to take this notion a step further. I think Andy agrees with this notion too. Are we racist? This question is the wrong question to be asking at this stage in the global market game, and it is actually a waste of time. This question is actually distracting and actually feeding the flames of racism and xenophobia by not addressing the core issue.

By not naming the root of the issue which is unfettered global capital forces not being kept under checks and balances by our economic powers—namely our provincial and federal governments and banking systems—we are allowing our cities to grow more divided. We have tools and by not using them, working classes who are confronted by their lack of housing and by the growing unaffordability of housing and transit (see the loss of our last transit referendum presumably because the public does not trust the government to spend our tax money wisely) start to become afraid and they want to blame someone not knowing what to name or how to identify the core issue, the root cause of this growing inequities.

But who can blame them when the truth is obscured? We have seen it time and time again throughout history—when people become marginalized they start to scapegoat. A gross and glaring example of this is Europeans pre-World War Two with Jewish populations throughout Europe. The perceived notion that easily stoked the imagination of the masses that these identifiable groups were somehow hoarding wealth from the common “working classes” of ordinary folks by lending money and charging interest (to simplify part of a complex issue).

But we know now in a mixed and diverse modern society that we can no longer identify inequities by ethnicity or religion. If we have learned anything by that atrocity, it is that there are larger mechanisms like world banks and lending and austerity that create disparities and global divide between north and south, between nation and nation (Germany and Greece), between rich and poor, and it is with overarching mechanisms that we can address these disparities. Like Dr. Hern, I agree we need to look at the larger picture.

Why are there ballooning costs of housing in major cities throughout the world where it is desirable to invest one’s money? Because those with money—and we know those with it can always make more easily—can and will invest their money where it is profitable and secure to do so.

So why then don’t provincial or state governments or national governments create further mechanisms to capitalize and redistribute this wealth? Perhaps because the public is kept busy pitted against each other in bickering over allegations of racism and xenophobia, therefore obscuring the issues of social inequality and the true injustice of market capitalism. Or perhaps we think we are all potential millionaires that just don’t want to pay taxes and fund infrastructure, so we don’t want put checks and balances on those who already are?

Other states have implemented ways of allowing these huge global capital investments to fund housing for regular, working class people. Why are we wasting our time accusing each other of racism and thereby immobilizing politicians into inaction? Instead of pointing fingers, we should be addressing creating fair, equitable policies and laws that benefit our ethnically diverse and unequal class system. Places like Hong Kong, Sydney, and Singapore have all done it. It is time we stopped pointing fingers and allowing wealthy developers to capitalize on our inaction.

It is time to put checks and balances that benefit the greater good and allow each and every one of us to prosper no matter what our country of origin is.