In 1924, sociologist William Carlson Smith recorded the findings of his interview with Harry Hastings, a middle-aged British Columbian citizen of an upper class, titling the transcript, “Tea with Harry Hastings / The Half Breed Chinese Intellectual of Victoria.”1  The interview transcript, now stored on microfilm, proves extremely hard to read in places.  Some pages dizzy the reader with ghost-like lines of text appearing in the spaces between actual lines, detracting from the clarity and readability of the document.  Examination of the transcript reveals another, more significant, multiplicity:  the opposing voices in the text.  Unlike the faint text between the lines in the document, the multiple voices actually enhance meaning and understanding.

The transcript projects contradictory responses concerning Hastings’ racial liminality; he seems to vacillate between a “cultural bridge”2 and social misfit image.  The multiple voices in the text are due to the authored aspect of Hastings.  William Carlson Smith presents Hastings to illustrate certain ideas about liminal identity, but Hastings’ character proves difficult to control.

Existing scholarly work concerning racial liminality reflects the same contradiction.  While some writers have emphasized the freedom and creativity possible in the spaces between racializations, others have lamented the liminal person’s inability to “belong” to a particular ethnic or racialized group.  The former interpretation accents the agentive aspects of liminal identity; the latter highlights the non-agentive aspects.3  Examination of the historical context of the interview, coupled with a close reading of Hastings’ dialogue and Smith’s responses, reconciles the contradiction, offering a needed understanding of racialized constructions and identity negotiation in the early twentieth-century Pacific Northwest.4  Such scrutiny fosters a representation of liminal persons as complex human beings, wielding available power within constraints imposed by powerful social and political forces like imperialism, racialization and racism.

Scholars, Michael Omi and Howard Winant, have demonstrated the relationship between these powerful forces.  Their work shows that the modern concept of race may be understood as a historical construction, born as a result of contact between Europeans and the peoples of the Western Hemisphere.  During the era of “discovery” Europeans struggled to reconcile their preconceived ideas of origin and identity with the meanings and implications of a “new” world.  During the subsequent period of economic exploitation and colonization, European immigrants legitimized their actions through ideas of race, first structured by religion and later, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, by science.  While the biological basis for race remains unfounded, the concept has survived and with it, the social and political implications.5

The evolution of the concept has been the key to its survival.  Over time race has evolved from a biological into a social concept.6  Further, Omi and Winant argue that today race exists as a “preeminently political phenomenon.”7  Their argument demonstrates how politics currently shape the definition of race, and in turn, the ways in which people use race as a political tool.  Although race is a social construction, that does not make the concept any less “real.”  According to Omi and Winant, race may be best comprehended as both “reality” and “illusion.”8  Accepting the complexity of the concept allows for an understanding of the historically constructed nature of race alongside the significant implications that race has for people’s everyday lives.  After all, while the concept of race may exist apart from any material reality or scientific proof, it is clear that race has certain material consequences, observable as subjugation, discrimination and violence.

Hastings experiences such consequences, yet also finds ways to retain power in his life by navigating his liminal identity.  Despite this, the text ultimately promotes the social misfit perspective.  For example, in the margins of the transcript topical guides such as “Uneasiness of the Half Breed” and “The Eurasian Predicament”9 appear, stressing Hastings’ seeming inability to “belong.”  The historical circumstances that shaped the lives of William Carlson Smith and Harry Hastings provide insight into the causes of the wavering interpretations of liminal identity presented in the text.

Smith was a researcher involved with sociologist Robert E. Park’s “Survey of Race Relations on the Pacific Coast of North America.”10  Examining Park’s life and work speaks to Smith’s research goals at the time of the interview.  From a young age, Park desired to “know human nature, know it widely and intimately.”11  His desire led him from a secondary school teaching position to a job as a newspaper reporter, and finally to a career as a sociologist.  As a reporter, Park wandered the streets of Minneapolis and New York in search of newsworthy stories and became fascinated with the issue of race and its role in society.  In an “autobiographical note,” he states,

I became convinced, finally, that I was observing the historical process by which civilization, not merely here but elsewhere, has evolved, drawing into the circle of its influence an ever widening circle of races and peoples.12

Park searched for “the long-time trends which recorded what is actually going on rather than what, on the surface of things, merely seems to be going on.”13  His early attitudes foreshadowed his later efforts to transform sociology into an “empirical mode of investigation.”14

During the early twentieth century, Park’s interest in race relations developed into a sociological framework that came to be known as the Chicago School.15  One of Park’s most legendary contributions to the field of sociology is his theory of the “marginal man,” the person who “lives on the margin of two cultures.”16  The “marginal man,” Park thought, existed as part of two cultures “without really belonging to either.”17  Those who studied under Park, like William Carlson Smith, came to view society much differently because of the theory.18

In Smith’s interview, Harry Hastings represents the “racial hybrid,” one type of “marginal man.”19  While Park’s theories shaped the topical scope and eventual projected interpretation of Smith’s interview, Hastings’ responses also point to historical circumstances that impacted his life.  Historically situated analysis of Hastings’ dialogue offers clues to the meaning of the multiple voices present in the transcript.

Smith offers a brief account of Hastings’ life.  According to Smith, Hastings’ father was “a British officer,” his mother “a Chinese woman of good family.”20  Hastings left home before he was ten years old and attended school in England and China.  He traveled widely and lived in Canton and Honolulu before moving to Victoria, where he had resided for twelve years by the time of the interview.  Other Victoria citizens knew Hastings as a merchant, a lawyer, or both.  Hastings family included a wife, a son and a daughter.  All Smith offers regarding Hastings’ family is that “[t]he girl looks quite European and the boy quite Chinese.  His wife is refered [sic] to as Caucasian.”21  The family lived with Hastings’ sister, her “Englishman” husband and their children who seemed to Smith, “entirely European in appearance.”22  Hastings tells Smith about his identity, his travels, and his community. 

Throughout the interview, Hastings seems to paint himself as simultaneously tortured and charmed by his ambiguous status as a “Eurasian.”[23]  Hastings says to Smith,

I knew a woman once in Europe, she was very brilliant and very well connected too.  She said to me one time, “After all Mr. Hastings, you who belong to two civilizations, are more fortunate than the rest of us.  You combine within yourself the metaphysics of the East and the praticality [sic] of the West.”24 

This woman portrays Hastings as a strange but wondrous embodiment of two peoples.  Within this framework, Hastings is peace, he has the power to link hemispheres and the ancient ways (“metaphysics”) with progressive ways (“practicality.”)25

Hastings follows up with another story:

I was in Africa one time.  We were sitting out on the porch after dinner, a friend of mine, and a physician and I.  This physician didn’t [know] who I was and he talked, as such people will talk, about the Eurasian, who combines within himself the vices of both parent races.  I listened, I let him talk.  Then I said, “Any child of mixed parentage should have the legal right to shoot his father and his mother and himself if he cares to when he is twenty-one.”26

This quotation reveals an unfortunate side of liminal identity.  Here, Hastings is not embodying the best of “two civilizations,” but the worst.27

On the heels of this story, comes another.  Hastings details the life of a friend in Canton who, apparently feeling irreconcilably trapped between Chinese and European worlds, “took raw opium and killed himself.”28  Smith reports that Hastings finished his story with a laugh, “as though he had told . . . a delightful joke.”29 Hastings’ laugh could be read as one of bitter irony and futile absurdity.  His testimony reveals that the public regarded liminal persons more as overtly virtuous or debauched oddities than as complex human beings.  Hastings did not take the uneasy dichotomy lightly as a youth.  Before the age of twenty, he had considered committing suicide.  He states, “From the time I was nine, until now, until this very minute, I have been tormented by the situation in which I found myself.”30

A closer look at the racial climate of 1920s British Columbia aids in an analysis of Hastings’ “tormented” state.31  Strong anti-Chinese sentiment had existed in British Columbia since the mid-1800s.32  After 1885, the Chinese Immigration Act imposed a sizable tax on each new immigrant from China and limited the number of immigrants allowed to arrive on any one ship.  The act did not have the halting effect on Chinese immigration that many citizens had hoped for, and anti-Chinese sentiment remained rampant.  In fact, an anti-Chinese riot occurred two years after the enactment of the Chinese Immigration Act.33  During the year prior to Smith’s interview with Harry Hastings, a federal Chinese Immigration Act was also passed, which required all Canadian citizens of Chinese descent to register with the Canadian government and obtain permission to remain in the country.34  Competitiveness between the cities of Vancouver and Victoria interacted with the anti-Chinese climate, as Vancouver threatened Chinese Canadian citizens in an effort to encourage their migration to Victoria.35  Such extensive efforts to oppress and manipulate the Chinese Canadian population undoubtedly played a major role in the misery that Hastings speaks of during the interview.

Despite the alleged misery, Hastings took an active role in the Chinese Community in Victoria.  During a year-long “strike of Chinese school children,” Hastings played the “bridge” role.  Being a well respected citizen within the Chinese Canadian community, Hastings agreed to intervene on behalf of the students and their parents who were fighting discrimination within the public school system.  He used his legal knowledge and negotiating skills to defend the rights of the students.  In this way, Hastings used the idea of liminal persons as the bond between peoples to his advantage.  While helping the Chinese Canadian community, he also gained status as a local diplomat, a peacemaker.36

The strike that Hastings speaks of began in the fall of 1922 as a response to exclusion of Chinese Canadian students from their regular public school classrooms.37  This exclusion was a culmination of decades of discriminatory practices directed against students of Chinese descent in the Victoria public school system.38  Apparently paraphrasing Hastings’ dialogue, Smith cites disease, low morals, and a lack of English speaking ability as the causes for exclusion, stressing the last reason as the one “nearer to hitting the real issue.”39  Even nearer, however, may have been the issue of white fear, not of incompatibility between European Canadian and Chinese Canadian students, but of likeness between the two groups.  In fact, of the more than 100 students set apart, many were born in Victoria and were successful in their studies.40  This fear of Asian humanity and, further, competency, which would have challenged accepted notions of white supremacy, is in accord with historian Patricia E. Roy’s assertion that as the nineteenth century turned to the twentieth, a growing “fear of Asian superiority” overshadowed European Canadian belief in Asian “inferiority.”41

Hastings’ role as mediator in the school strike is evidence that, though Hastings referred to himself as a “Eurasian” and a “half-breed” during the interview, he at times acted in accord with Chinese custom.42  In his article, “Schooling, White Supremacy, and the Formation of a Chinese Merchant Public in British Columbia,” historian Timothy J. Stanley demonstrates how Chinese Canadians drew upon Chinese custom to create a space for themselves in British Columbia.43  He states, “In late imperial China, a class of scholar/landlords often called the gentry, were the chief underpinnings of the state.”44

The trend continued in Canada.  The Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association of Victoria and the Chinese Benevolent Association of Vancouver, established in the late 1800s by citizens of the merchant class, worked to help and protect citizens of Chinese descent neglected by the provincial and federal governments.45  While it is unclear whether Hastings was a member of any such association, the evidence suggests that his intervention may have been at least partly inspired by his sense of Chinese custom as well as his sense of being a “cultural bridge.”

Hastings was well-educated and well-respected within his community.  Smith writes,

With one exception everyone whom I met or talked with in Vancouver or Victoria is impressed with Mr. Hastings.  He is considered the best writer of newspaper letters in town.  One man said there were only a half dozen men in the city who knew as much international law as Mr. Hastings.46

In addition, Hastings describes his “situation” as a liminal person as being “better than most Eurasians, because I belong to a somewhat different class.”47  Being educated and of an upper class, Hastings would have fit the description of the “gentry” that Stanley describes.48  This is important as it shows Hastings playing a Chinese role despite his liminality.  It suggests that in public life, Hastings was considered Chinese Canadian rather than European Canadian or “mixed race.”  In fact, according to Smith,

Mr. Hastings said that Victoria did not know what to make of his family and his sister’s.  He says they speak of him as a Chinese because he has taken the part of the Chinese so openly.  He says he has told the Chinese community that from now on they must stand on their own feet, not depend on him anymore.49

Since he could not be “white” in a Canadian society vehemently opposed to its citizens of Chinese descent, Hastings played the role of the altruistic Chinese gentleman in public affairs.  At the same time, he clung to his liminal status to claim a link to the more privileged European Canadian society and to project the idea that he offered objective guidance in public affairs like the school strike.

During a later portion of the interview, Hastings plays the go-between role again.  He discusses the “conflict between the East and the West,” which he believed to be “inevitable.”50  He proceeds to offer his predictions regarding the approaching conflict, explaining how the “Oriental” thinks and reacts.51  In this way, Hastings suggests that he feels a duty not only to bridge local gaps, but international differences, as well.  His words give the impression that he understands both continents and the mentalities of both peoples.  This expert perch on which Hastings places himself is a position of power.  Hastings plays the “bridge” of peace rather than the purposeless misfit.

At the end of the interview, when Smith seems unsure of the tact of his half-completed statement, Hastings assures him that he will not offend.  He says, “Speak frankly, I’m not Chinese, I’m not British, I’m an internationalist.”52  Hastings consistently uses his liminal identity to gain and display power during the interview and, more importantly, in his life.  By playing the “bridge” role, he can portray himself as a well-respected member of both the European and Chinese Canadian communities.

Although Hastings insists on internationalism, he clearly understands that he is more accepted within the Chinese Canadian community than within “white” society.  For example, United States Immigration employees categorized Hastings as Chinese.  Hastings recalls an attempt to enter the country: 

They asked me questions, I said I was a British sublect [sic], a merchant, my father was British, my mother was Chinese.  They told me I must go to the Chinese Immigration Department.53

To the immigration officials, Hastings’ European ancestry does not matter.  Having a Chinese mother makes him Chinese.  During another portion of the interview he states,

Sometimes I wonder whether I should not return to China and live with the Chinese, but if I did that I would have to fight my father’s people, and perhaps, who knows, bring nearer the inevitable conflict, between the East and West, and I don’t want to do that.54

Hastings’ statement shows that he believes he might have an easier life as a liminal person in China than he experienced in Canada.  Assuming his belief was well-founded, the statement also points toward a different understanding of ancestry and race in China than existed in Canada.  While it remains unclear whether he would be perceived as Chinese, European, or racially “mixed” in China, it is apparent that he believes whatever the label, or lack thereof, he would be more readily accepted on the other side of the Pacific Ocean.

Hastings could not be “white” in Canadian society, but touting his Chinese ancestry was socially dangerous, thus, his claim to internationalism at the end of the interview.  Despite the choices made in his private life, historical circumstances were a strong determining factor in who he could be in relation to the dominant European Canadian society.  In addition, though Hastings often projects agentive ability to negotiate his identity and his world, Smith proceeds to interpret Hastings’ liminality as dysfunction.  The before-mentioned topical headings in the transcript margins, like “Uneasiness of the Half Breed” and “The Eurasian Predicament” are illustrative.55

Hastings illustrates the ineffectiveness of Robert Park’s “marginal man” theory in explaining liminal experiences.  The text is saturated with references to Park’s thesis.  The following statement made by Park in Race and Culture, points to the reasons why Smith, as a Survey of Race Relations researcher, was interested in interviewing and recording information about Hastings:

The marginal man migrates to the city because he finds there an opportunity to play the role for which, if he is a mixed blood, his racial origin has predestined him, namely, the role of an intermediary and interpreter between the two races and the two cultures, represented so often in his own person.56

Park goes on to state that education is what draws the “marginal man” to the city.  He thought education to be a “prime necessity” if the person “is to continue to enjoy” liminality.57  Otherwise, Park believed, the “marginal man” would be tormented by “the anomalous position of a man born in a country of which he is never quite a native nor yet a citizen.”58 

Clearly, the interview transcript reflects such ideas.  Widely accepted as the “marginal man” thesis was during the 1920s, Hastings was probably well-acquainted with it as an educated person.  He even appears to act in accord with the theory at times, for example, by mediating the school strike.  The differing element, however, between a “marginal man” reading of Hastings’ actions and a “bridge” view of those actions, is free and deliberate choice.  The “marginal man” thesis would stress the “force of circumstance, not the freedom of the situation” as the impetus to identity reflection and cultural mediation.59  Seeing that Hastings acted in accord with Chinese custom to settle a Canadian dispute depicts a “bridge“-like agency rather a forced, non-agentive response to the situation.  Immersed as Smith was, however, in “marginal man” rhetoric, he structured the interview and interpreted Hastings responses within the learned theoretical framework, ultimately characterizing Hastings as socially dysfunctional.  Confronted with such ideas, perhaps Hastings doubted his own impulses and actions; theories like Park’s are powerful forces.  Hastings’ dialogue often suggests his subscription to the theory, though his actions points to a more agentive “bridge” interpretation.

Examining the multiple voices within the Hastings interview transcript illuminates some of the ways that individuals in the 1920s Pacific Northwest wrestled with the concept of race.  As the biological notion of race began, ever so slightly, to give way to a social view of the concept, people struggled to understand themselves and others.  People like Hastings, who occupied liminal spaces between racializations, offered a challenge to prevailing racial thought that had been ingrained into society by centuries of imperialism.60  Sociologists like Smith and Park, in response, attempted to codify social phenomena within a scientific framework.61

In retrospect, it is clear that Park’s theory explained very little about liminal identities.  Peering into William Carlson Smith’s text and reaching back in time to contextualize his work and Hastings’ life allows economic, political, and social forces to emerge as the best explanations for Hastings’ words and actions.  In other words, the agentive and non-agentive aspects of his identity were largely historically situated, but within that situation, Hastings made significant choices that helped him define himself and shape his world.  Omi and Winant’s argument for race as a “preeminently political phenomenon” suddenly seems ever so slightly more tangible.62  Ultimately, Hastings shows race to be a multi-dimensional concept, adhering to neither an essentialist nor a “color-blind” model.63  Further investigation,  extending across time and across regions, into the lives of other individuals occupying the liminal spaces between racializations promises to unravel the confusion that currently characterizes discussions of race, revealing clearer solutions to current ideological struggles and policy debates.