Racist or funny? 'Chinese driver' decals spark debate in Metro Vancouver

It looks just like the car decals that denote new drivers, but it bears a “C” and the words “Chinese driver” in smaller type beneath.

The drivers donning the stickers around Metro Vancouver are mostly young people of Chinese heritage.

To some, it’s an inside joke; a take-down of an all-too-common racist stereotype. To others, it’s just offensive.

“It’s obviously a joke,” said Hanson Lau, a prominent radio personality and advocate for the Chinese-Canadian community.

“I don’t take it as a joke because I’m aware of the history in B.C.”

That history includes race riots, the 1885 Chinese Head Tax and laws designed to prevent Chinese-Canadians from owning property in certain areas of Vancouver.

From 1923 to 1947, the Chinese Immigration Exclusion Act barred Chinese settlers and Chinese, as well as South Asian and Japanese, Canadians from acquiring citizenship until 1947.

“The people who buy these would appreciate the message it’s trying to send,” said Lau, an advocate for reconciliation over the treatment of Chinese-Canadians in the past.

“They may not be aware of the historical fact of Chinese being discriminated against.”

Media reports about the decals have sparked discussion in Metro Vancouver, a city that boasts it is the most Asian city outside of Asia.

Forty-three per cent of Metro Vancouver residents have an Asian heritage, according to federal statistics.

Many, however, can trace their Canadian heritage back more than a century and just 17 per cent of Vancouver residents usually speak Chinese at home, according to the 2011 census.

In neighbouring Richmond, 49 per cent of the population is of Chinese heritage – more than any other ethnic group and almost six times as many as identified as Canadian in the 2011 National Household Survey.

While Metro Vancouver largely embraces its ethnic diversity, the changing demographics of the region have given rise to tensions.

There is debate about foreign ownership – largely from China – driving up housing prices and complaints about the large number of foreign students at public universities.

Richmond, in particular, has struggled with whether to regulate Chinese-only signs that proliferate on city businesses.

Those tensions have given rise to groups like the “patriot” group Putting Canada First, which espouses limitations on new immigration.

Local media reports about the decals have been shared thousands of times on social media. In the multi-ethnic idyll of Metro Vancouver, they seem to have struck a nerve.

“Of course it is racist. And it doesn’t matter if a Chinese person is offended by it or not… it is still racist,” wrote one reader on a local news website.

Another disagreed.

“It’s funny. Where did our sense of humour go?”

Lau, who came to Canada in 1966, said much has changed in Vancouver but not enough.

But “we have learned to rise above that,” he said.