Dear Editor,
Re: “Racist flyer shocks Steveston residents,” News, Nov. 18.
Last week, a flyer was dropped on doorsteps in the Steveston area of Richmond. Its message is aimed at the community’s “marginalized” white people.
I’m white. This is my hometown. And the flyer is bull.
My parents are from Montreal, and their parents are from Europe. My mom and dad moved to Richmond in the late 1970s — into a house in the South Arm area where my sister and I grew up and they still live.
Across the street from us lived a family of Chinese descent who had been in the country since the early 1900s. Next door was a family who had recently immigrated from Hong Kong. Both had boys about my age who were among my best friends. I never felt the street, the neighbourhood, the city or the country belonged to me more than them.
Recall that Coast Salish peoples were the original stewards of what we now call Richmond. In fact, Steveston was once the site of a Musqueam village. Later, it thrived as a fishing community, largely populated by people from Japan. Then the Second World War happened, and all people of Japanese origin were sent to internment camps; their property was confiscated and auctioned off.
The flyer asks whether or not being “marginalized in the community your forefathers built” is what “you” (Whitey) “signed up for.” But this question begs another: To whom does Richmond belong?
To me, the answer is all of us and none of us. All of us because it’s never been the sole claim of white people. (Nor should it ever be.) And none of us because, regardless of who lives here now or who lived here 50 years ago or 100 years ago, we’re all guests on unceded Coast Salish territory.
None of this is to say that housing affordability (also brought up in the flyer) is not an important issue. But I would argue that it’s not productive — or ethical — to pin unaffordability on one group. People of all stripes have benefited from a housing system that rewards speculation and treats homes not as shelter but as a commodity. If we don’t like it, let’s advocate to change the system.
Let’s make access to adequate housing a right and support policy that curbs speculation.
In the meantime, for those of us who call this place home, and especially for those of us who have been here slightly longer than others, it’s our duty to foster an inclusive community — to lead by example and ensure everyone feels they belong.
“Whitelash,” xenophobia and racism have no place here. They harken not to an era gone by, but to an era that never was and never should be.
William Dunn
Richmond
