One History Seen through a Different Mirror

 by Daniel Cano                                                                           

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Sitting in a neighbor's trash, just waiting for me

     Professor Ron 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 Takaki’s book, Strangers from a Different Shore (1998), his book about Asian migration to the U.S., a topic few Americans, including me, knew, other than generalities, and since my family had grown up on the West Coast, home to most Asian Americans in the U.S., we knew quite a few Japanese families, many we called friends.

     In 1990, or thereabouts, I heard Dr. Takaki speak in an auditorium filled with faculty at Santa Monica College, where I was teaching, at the time. Unlike many highly educated historians, Takaki 's work was accessible to the public, both edifying and entertaining, something snobbish scholars avoided, preferring to couch their work in oblique academic jargon and complex concepts, I think so they can get away with calling their discipline a “science.”

     Takaki began his lecture by asking, “How many know about Ellis Island.?” 

     Of course, nearly every hand in the auditorium shot up. 

     “Good,” Takaki said, and laughed, something of a cackle, like setting up a good joke. He then asked, in a serious tone, “How many of you have heard of Angel Island?” 

     Slowly, as if needing to think about it, only a smattering of hands went up. The majority of educators sat silent, maybe embarrassed at their own ignorance.

       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, at the turn of the 20th century, strangers from a different shore. He then asked, “As educators, if we know about Ellis Island, why don't we also know about Angel Island?” Silence.

     After an invigorating lecture on his book about Asian America, Takaki made a bold pronouncement. He said something like, “If university students don’t know the real history of the U.S., and about all the people who contributed to its creation,” here he raised his voice, “I believe they are not worthy of a university degree.”

     Well, that got the attention of the erudite crowd. I remember hearing more than a few murmurs pass through the audience. As the only Chicano professor ever hired by the English department at SMC, about a 70-year-old institution, at the time, I knew exactly what Takaki meant.

     In the late 1980s, early 1990s, “Ethnic Studies,” as a discipline, was just taking hold in the academy. The study of other U.S. cultures, in American academia, wasn’t’ new, but it hadn't yet been organized into a coherent program, department, or discipline. 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, yet, somehow, it threatened many traditional educators, who wanted to believe the U.S. was solely a European construct.

     When Takaki opened his talk to a rousing Q&A session, I remember one professor standing and, subtly, accusing Takaki of introducing an illegitimate field of study into the curriculum, even hinting at the flimsiness of Takaki’s scholarly credentials. I suppose the teacher thought Takaki had received his doctorate in Ethnic Studies. Takaki remained cool. It wasn’t his first time under verbal assault. He thanked the man for his comment, clarified his doctorate was in American history, and described the rigorous curricula students needed to study to pass courses in Ethic Studies, or to receive degrees in the field. Once again, he had the crowd behind him.

     I recall, somewhere towards the end of his talk, Takaki said, “Even ‘Whites’ need to take back their history.” He was suggesting, Americans, who emigrated from Europe, to be considered “educated” should know about their own backgrounds, whether English, Irish, Pole, French, etc., especially since we live in a global world.

     I’m nearly half-way through Takaki’s book, a fascinating read. I wish I’d read it earlier, years earlier. It’s 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 African migration in the Northern colonies, before slavery was even institutionalized, explaining why and how it became an institution and affected 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, forced labor, or their treatment of the Indians, especially, men like Thomas Jefferson, who suffered a moral dilemma, introducing laws to outlaw slavery, yet, at the same, time, building his fortune on the backs of African labor, while passing laws to take native American lands.

     Takaki includes much about early august Americans that many historians choose to avoid, or completely, ignore, especially harsh language leading to the detriment of those they considered outsiders, but, understanding, even the outsiders were here to stay, a part of the complex American tapestry.

     I’m looking forward to the next chapters, where Takaki describes Mexican and Asian immigrants and how they became American, and the unique challenges they faced. Where Irish and Africans were forced, or coerced, to come to America to work, often under hellish conditions, Mexicans were already here, but later chose to cross the border, for whatever reason, much like the Chinese and Japanese, who emigrated to Gold Mountain out of desperation.

     I’ve always known about Takaki’s, A Different Mirror, but never took the time to read it, until now, imagine, after finding it tossed away outside neighbor’s house. Coincidentally, I’ve been working my way through biographies of the Founding Fathers, to get a better grasp of this country’s foundation. I hear so many people say, “The Founding Fathers this and the founding fathers that…,” many of them, clearly, understanding little about the men who founded the country. 

     Some of the early composers and signers of the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights were outright atheists and agnostics, some siding with flamboyant France and others with cold, dark England. 

     Takaki’s book provides that conceptual foundation, 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, documented in diaries and letters, as uncomfortable and disconcerting as those words might be. 

     They are part of our history, the history that makes us all Americans, even if there are those who will never accept us, those who choose to complicate basic historical study with erroneous words like Critical Race Theory (CRT), a study that has no bearing on ethnic studies, but, either way, for sure, I’ll keep my eye out for books in other neighbor’s boxes, especially now that we have so few bookstores in town, another way, I guess, to keep us all uniformed and ignorant.

Daniel Cano is author of the award-winning novel, Death and the American Dream