Examines minority rights issues central to the concerns of Canada's three major ethnic constituencies: self-determination of aboriginal peoples; anti-racism strategies and multiculturalism; and the national sovereignty of the Quebecois. Analyses and evaluates the comparative strength of legal protection for the human rights of ethnic groups. Includes texts of the following documents: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the Declaration of the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities; the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Constitution Act, 1982, Part I); and the Rights of the Aboriginal Peoples of Canada (Constitution Act, 1982, Part II).

This book examines key issues surrounding ethnicity and human rights in Canada. It reveals the ways in which human rights violations, by way of discrimination on the bases of race and ethnicity, create and sustain the marginalized status of diverse racial ethnic groups in Canada.

Immigration, Racial and Ethnic Studies in 150 Years of Canada: Retrospects and Prospects provides a wide-ranging overview of immigration and contested racial and ethnic relations in Canada since confederation with a core theme being one of enduring racial and ethnic conflict.

Historically Canadians have considered themselves to be more or less free of racial prejudice. Although this conception has been challenged in recent years, it has not been completely dispelled. In Colour-Coded, Constance Backhouse illustrates the tenacious hold that white supremacy had on our legal system in the first half of this century, and underscores the damaging legacy of inequality that continues today. Backhouse presents detailed narratives of six court cases, each giving evidence of blatant racism created and enforced through law. The cases focus on Aboriginal, Inuit, Chinese-Canadian, and African-Canadian individuals, taking us from the criminal prosecution of traditional Aboriginal dance to the trial of members of the 'Ku Klux Klan of Kanada.' From thousands of possibilities, Backhouse has selected studies that constitute central moments in the legal history of race in Canada. Her selection also considers a wide range of legal forums, including administrative rulings by municipal councils, criminal trials before police magistrates, and criminal and civil cases heard by the highest courts in the provinces and by the Supreme Court of Canada. The extensive and detailed documentation presented here leaves no doubt that the Canadian legal system played a dominant role in creating and preserving racial discrimination. A central message of this book is that racism is deeply embedded in Canadian history despite Canada's reputation as a raceless society. Winner of the Joseph Brant Award, presented by the Ontario Historical Society

"This book is designed to address some of the contemporary trends in the public discourse on racial profiling and to stimulate a broad-based and holistic understanding of the complexities of racial profiling in the Canadian context."--

Colony to nation? Isolationism to internationalism? WASP society to a multicultural Canada? Focusing on imperial conflicts in the Pacific, Orienting Canada disrupts these familiar narratives in Canadian history by tracing the relationship between racism and Canadian foreign policy. Grounded in transnationalism and anti-racist theory, this book reassesses critical transpacific incidents, including Vancouver's riots of 1907, the Chinese head tax, the wars in the pacific from 1937 to 1945, the internment of Japanese-Canadians, and Canada’s significant role in consolidating the US anti-communist empire in postwar Asia. Shocking revelations about the effects of racism and war into the 1960s are tempered by stories of community resilience and transformation. As a transpacific lens on the past, Orienting Canada deflects Canada’s European gaze back onto itself to reveal images that both provoke and unsettle.