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| An important journey into ethnic America |
I wanted to
say something about this Administration’s attack on Ethnic Studies classes and
programs, especially after so many universities and school districts around the
nation have introduced various classes on the subject, going back to the 1970s. Then, I remembered. I did write an essay back in 2021 on the
topic, and it pretty much said what I had wanted to say, so I thought I’d polish
it up and repost it.
*****
As I walked
down the street, I saw a cardboard box filled with books in front of an apartment
building. Most of the books were throwaways. Then, I noticed a familiar book
cover. I picked it up. It was Ron Takaki’s book, A Different Mirror: A
History of Multicultural America (1993). It was practically new, which meant
someone had taken really good care of it or had hardly taken time to crack it open.
Me, I can’t even read a newspaper without a pen in hand to mark it up with my
comments and ideas.
Dr. Ronald Takaki,
a Japanese Californian, by way of Hawaii, died in 2009. He was a preeminent
scholar in the field of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. I’d read his book, Strangers
from a Different Shore (1998), where he records the stories of Chinese,
Japanese, Hmong and other Asian groups in the U.S., a topic few Americans,
including myself, knew much about and I grew up on the West Coast, home to most Asian
Americans in the U.S.
After the publication of Strangers from a Different Shore, I heard Professor Takaki speak to a gymnasium filled with faculty at Santa
Monica College, where I was teaching at the time. Takaki talked like he wrote, his
words and ideas accessible to the public, whether scholars or everyday people, as if he was just another guy telling a story. Those
who study pedagogy, the study of teaching, say students, especially African Americans and Latinos, learn best when teachers present information in narratives, rather
than lecture in abstract, often vague facts and ideas couched in oblique
academic language, like professors do in many university classes.
Dr. Takaki
started his presentation by asking, “How many of you know about Ellis Island.?” Every
hand in the auditorium shot up, of course. “Good,” Takaki said, and laughed, something
of a cackle, followed by deep breaths. He then asked, “How many of you have
heard of Angel Island?” Slowly, as if needing to think about it, only a smattering
of hands rose. The majority of educators sat silently, hands at their sides.
Professor
Takaki went on to explain Angel Island, adjacent to San Francisco, was the West
Coast Port of Entry for Asian immigrants, mostly Chinese and Japanese, strangers
from a different shore. He then said, “As educators, we should know about Ellis
Island. We should also know about Angel Island, about the Middle Passage from
Africa, and about El Paso del Norte, and so should our students.”
In his presentation, he talked about stories he had uncovered in his research of
Asians who had come to settle in the U.S. He
told stories about their work, the living conditions, families, religion, and their culture characteristics, like
the Hmong who had a difficult time settling into the cold Wisconsin winters, so
different than the tropical weather of Southeast Asia. One would think students
in Wisconsin or in Fresno, CA, where many Hmong settled, would benefit
from a class about these new strangers living among them.
During a short
Q& A period at the end of Dr. Takaki's presentation, one teacher, though he didn’t explicitly say it, suggested Takaki’s degree and
work in Ethnic Studies weren’t legitimate, even if he couldn’t explain why. Many
of us in the audience took it as straight-up racism, or biased, to give him
benefit of the doubt, definitely ignorance.
The man's comment,
I think, took Takaki by surprise, but I’m sure it wasn’t the first time he’d
been faced with such criticism. Using his sharp wit, he told the man he’d
received his doctorate in American History from the University a California,
Berkeley, and as an historian, the more he taught American History, the more he
felt obligated to teach the true history of America and not just the history of
those who came from England and found their way to Plymouth.
Takaki took us back to the 1970’s and the intense
debates at Berkeley, when faculty decided students needed to take a course in Ethnic Studies to receive a degree in History. Takaki told us, at the time, one faculty member stood, obstinately, and asked, “What if a
student chooses not to take a course in Ethnic Studies?”
Takaki said he responded, “Then the student can choose not to graduate with a
degree in history from the University of California at Berkeley.” He said he recalled hearing
a low murmur run through the crowd, so he answered, “If university students don’t know
the real history of the U.S., they are not worthy of a degree in history.”
In the late
1980s, early 1990s, “American Ethnic Studies,” as a discipline, was just taking
hold in the academy, introducing students to classes like Chicano, Black, Asian,
and Women’s Studies. The study of world cultures wasn’t’ new in the academy. In
Anthropology, Archeology, Sociology, Literature, and Music teachers had been
researching ancient cultures, teaching such courses as Ethnomusicology, Folklore,
and Mythology for decades.
Noted mythologist
Joseph Campbell first taught Mythology at Sara Lawrence College in 1938, introducing
his students to storytelling from nearly every corner of the world, as
documented in his bestselling book, A Hero with a Thousand Faces, which
made such an impression on filmmaker George Lucas, the filmmaker followed Campbell’s
research on the hero’s journey in his movie Star Wars.
Educators
like John Dewey, Howard Zinn, Edward Said, Bell Hooks, Noam Chomsky, Cornel
West, Gloria Anzaldua, and others had begun looking at U.S. history beyond our
mythical borders. Somehow, the study of American ethnic groups threatened many
traditional faculty. Some, outright, said they didn’t want to study or teach
about other U.S. cultures and to leave that to the Foreign Language departments.
After I
finished Takaki’s book, I wished I had read it earlier, when I started teaching
U.S. Ethnic Literature. Professor Takaki follows an interesting pattern and style of writing. His book is an engaging read, storytelling based on historical research, moving from
the early days of the United States, starting with the relationship between the
colonists and indigenous inhabitants, citing journals and early writings, and
moving on to Irish and indentured servitude then shifting to early slavery,
before it was even institutionalized, explaining why and how it became an
institution and affected the future of labor in the United States.
In the
early chapters, Takaki focuses on the Founding Fathers, from a different
perspective. He’s always respectful, but he doesn’t hold back regarding their
“real” views of slavery and forced labor, or their treatment of the Indians, especially
from men, like Thomas Jefferson, who suffered a moral dilemma, introducing laws
to abolish slavery, yet, at the same, time, building his fortune on the backs
of African labor, on native American lands.
I’ve read many
historians of the Founding Fathers. I noticed Takaki includes what many
historians choose to evade, or completely, ignore, especially harsh language
leading to the detriment of those the Founders and early Americans considered
outsiders, like the French, Germans, and Irish, but, understanding, the
outsiders were here to stay, a complex part of the fabric that would become
America.
In the last
chapters, Takaki moves on to Mexican and Asian immigrants and how they became
American, and the unique challenges they faced. Where Irish and Africans were
often forced, or coerced, to come to America to work, often under hellish
conditions, many Mexicans were already here or, when nearly half of the United
States belonged to Mexico. In the early 1900s, after the Treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo, hundreds of thousands crossed the border to flee violence and
starvation, much like the Chinese and Japanese who emigrated out of
desperation.
As a former
teacher of American, Mexican, Latino, and Ethnic literature, I’ve read much
American and ethnic history. I’ve always
known about Takaki’s, A Different Mirror, but never took the time to
read the book, until now. I’ve been working my way through biographies of the
Founding Fathers, to get a better grasp of this country’s foundation and the
way these men thought and behaved. I hear so many people say, “Well according
to the Founding Fathers….”
What I
learned was many people, including politicians, who quote the Founding Fathers
haven’t read or studied them. They spout what somebody else said, and often,
it’s not even accurate, especially about religion and economics. Many of the
Founding Fathers were agnostics or outright atheists but could never admit it.
Many, like Jefferson, wanted to abolish slavery but knew they’d upset too many rich,
influential Southern plantation owners if they did.
Takaki’s
book provides a conceptual foundation for ethnic history in the U.S., and not
in a dry, analytical scholarly way but, as I said earlier, wrapped up in
engaging stories about people, based on historical research, often in the words
of the historical figures themselves, as uncomfortable and disconcerting as
those words might be.
Navajos,
and many American indigenous people, as children, had their languages and
cultures stripped from them in school. Ironically, commanders in WWII gave it
back to them by asking Navajo Marines to resurrect their language and create a
code the Japanese couldn’t break. A similar code was used in Europe against the
Germans.
We often
talk about why we used the atomic bombs on Japan. We had no choice, some argue.
We would have lost too many soldiers and Marines had we invaded, was what most historians
taught. Takaki and other historians’ research points to another path, one few
talk about, a cultural path to peace, one our leaders did not understand or
refused to accept. They chose a more destructive path, an intriguing dilemma for
teachers and students to discuss.
It is all part
of our history, the real history of America and Americans, not the sanitized or
invented history some would like us to believe, the one being forced on our
schools and children today. Ethnic Studies teaches us how we are much more united as Americans, even though we come from so many different countries and cultures, or as the Founding Fathers said, "Out of many -- one."
