Photograph of graffiti that has appeared recently in a Chinese shopping mall in B.C.

The news that a group of white teens have vandalized the Empire Centre in Richmond, B.C., has shocked the Asian community in the city that lies in the suburbs of Vancouver. The graffiti includes swastikas, hatred directed at the Chinese, and messages such as “if you are Chinese, don’t come back.”

The graffiti has been popping up almost every day on a blank wall in the parkade of the Empire Centre, and based on surveillance tapes, they believe it’s the work of four young males and a young female. According to the Richmond RCMP, two suspects have arrested with vandalism. The first is an 18-year-old, while a 16-year-old was arrested yesterday at a Sky Train station.

The timing of this graffiti comes just as three white men were convicted for a racially motivated attack on a black man in Courtenay on Vancouver Island. In an incident captured on video and posted to YouTube last July, Adam David Huber, Robert William Roy Rodgers and David Samuel White accosted passerby Jay Phillips, who is black, as they passed him on the road.

When Mr.Phillips fought back, the three ganged up on him and briefly swarmed him before witnesses warned them off. The attackers hurled the word “nigger” several times in the tape, and threatened to murder his family.

But while both incidents seem to be based on similar motivations of racial hatred, I still believe they are markedly different. Here’s why:

As of the Canada 2006 Census, there are 21,940 people living in the city of Courtenay, of whom 93.9% of the population are listed as being “white”. 4.9% of the city is listed as coming from Asian descent, while a slightly smaller number, 4.0%, are listed as aboriginal. “Black” residents of the city are listed as comprising half of one percentage point, or roughly 110 people. With a city area of 26.68 square kilometres, there are 822 people for every square kilometre. Of those 822 people you might find in a given kilometre of space, only four might be black.

In other words, the city of Courtenay has so few black Canadians, that any racism that does exist, is likely based more on ignorance and prejudice, than any real life confrontations with them.

The city of Richmond, however, is an entirely different story. It is British Columbia’s fourth largest city, and has an immigrant population of 59%, the highest in the entire country. More than half of the population is Asian, and of those, most of them are from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and mainland China, who arrived mainly in the past twenty years.

The city of Richmond is perhaps the first multicultural experiment in Canada that has been less about “many cultures”, and more about the rapid transformation of a homogenous white population to one that is mainly ethnically Chinese. Because of this sudden change, there appears to be some backlash from what is now the “white minority.”

I emailed a local Vancouver Chinese-Canadian I know — or a CBC as he calls himself [Canadian-born Chinese] — to ask him about his thoughts on the situation.

David started a blog called “The Ugly Chinese Canadian” four years ago, based upon his experiences as a “banana”; a term he says some Chinese refer to themselves by balancing a Canadian identity with an Asian heritage. He said that there is an ugly side to the Chinese culture, as there is with any culture, that often does not get discussed because people are afraid of being called racists.

Though David is quick to condemn the racist graffiti, he says it’s important to find out whether there is a reason why these kids are making public statements. “Could it be a manifestation of frustration of non-Asians to the insular nature and entitlement attitudes some Chinese are showing?” he asks rhetorically.

“People don’t just publicly display/vent their thoughts for no reason. Racism has a beginning… it’s taught and/or learned… or expressed after being made to feel left out.”

I suggested that perhaps the growing pains of a city adjusting to such a rapid transformation of the demography could be making these kids feel like minorities in their country. The Empire Centre, for instance, is a mainly Asian mall with few English signs and fewer white Canadians shopping there.

David suggests that to see these sorts of feelings expressed in a city like Richmond, where the Chinese are the majority, means there may be more beneath the surface of the vandalism. Though acts of racism need to condemned, looking beyond the act in order to find out the source of the anger could be what’s required most here.