“The title was very offensive,” said Victor Wong holding up a copy of the Maclean’s magazine article at a press conference Wednesday.

Wong was referring to the Maclean’s magazine story (since retitled ‘The enrollment controversy’ in the online version) published on November 10 that he characterized as a whole range of negative stereotypes about Asian students: anti-social, bookish, cliquish, forced to be at university by their parents, not participating in student government and ill-prepared for civic leadership.

“Then it goes on to raise questions that there is this kind of dilemma if we have this merit system, we’re going to have this overrepresentation of Asians on-campus,” said Wong, the executive director of the Chinese Canadian National Council (CCNC).

In response, the CCNC held a press conference on November 10 to denounce the article. A few days later, the CCNC met with Maclean’s who offered to give the CCNC an opportunity to argue against the Maclean’s piece in a 300 word letter to the editor.

The CCNC took Maclean’s offer back to their community and submitted a four-point proposal to Maclean’s when they met with them again on November 17.

In their proposal,  the CCNC asked to publish a rebuttal article of similar length to the original Maclean’s article; demanded that Maclean’s, in their November 22 edition, “acknowledge that the original article was offensive and full of stereotypes and offer an unqualified public apology to Canadians”; requested that staff involved with the original article participate in public meetings in response to the article; and demanded that Maclean’s work with Asian university students “to write no less than three additional articles of similar length to the original article on the topics of diversity and racism on university campuses.”

“We had a very good discussion and they agreed to points one, three and four,” said Wong, sitting alone at the boardroom table inside the CCNC office. “But they refused to apologize.”

Wong met again with various community groups as well as the CCNC board of directors who decided that without an apology, they couldn’t proceed with any of the other points agreed to with Maclean’s.

On November 25, Maclean’s produced an editorial where they said, Although the phrase ‘Too Asian?’ was a question and, again, a quotation from an authoritative source, it upset many people. We expected that it would be provocative, but we did not intend to cause offence.”

The CCNC rejected the editorial.

So then Maclean’s changed the title to ‘The enrollment controversy’ in their online version.

“But the printed version is the printed version and you can’t do anything about that,” said Wong, whose family has been in Canada for almost 100 years. “So we rejected that as well.”

Since the original article was published, the CCNC has received support from many groups as well as their analyses of the piece. They created a Face book group called ‘Not Too Asian’ which now has 779 members, over 400 posts and more than 200 articles by a range of authours.

The CCNC has also received support from municipal governments in Vancouver, Victoria, and in Toronto on December 16.

On the same day, the President and CEO of Rogers Publishing (the parent company of Maclean’s magazine) sent a letter to Wong outlining the steps taken by Maclean’s to address the concerns of the CCNC and informing him that a meeting with Rogers Publishing was unnecessary. The CCNC rejected the letter from Rogers Publishing.

“It’s our position that the article is offensive, full of negative stereotypes about Asians,” said Wong. “Maclean’s should offer an unqualified public apology to all Canadians (because) it’s also implicitly insulting to white students who are working really hard at U of T and doing well.”

Wong pointed out that Maclean’s receives a $1.5 million dollar subsidy from the federal government from the Canadian Periodicals Fund.

“One of the criteria (for receiving the subsidy) is that you cannot publish material that is offensive,” said Wong.

Since then, Senator Vivienne Poy, a former Chancellor of the University of Toronto, has written to Heritage Minister James Moore asking him to revoke the federal subsidy. The CCNC has also contacted Moore and hope to meet with him in January.

They’ve also asked the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage to look into the matter and decide whether or not to hold a public hearing.

Several subjects interviewed in the Maclean’s article have already come forward to say that their quotes were taken out of context. One said her research was misrepresented.

“It’s clear to me that there are significant errors in the article,” said Wong. “It really calls into question some of the ethics around putting this article together. I don’t see how a merit editorial or rebuttal article is going to be sufficient.”

“The media has to take responsibility for what it writes.”

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John Bonnar

John Bonnar is an independent journalist producing print, photo, video and audio stories about social justice issues in and around Toronto.