history

A Different Miror AHistory af Multicultural America

RONALD TAKAKI

Ronald rakaki, professor of ethnic studies at the university of Cali fornia, Berkeley,is the author of numerous books, including sf rangers from a Different shore; Pau Hana: plantation Life and Labor in fiawaii;iran ?S!t, ! Pro-Slaaery Crusade; and Violence in the Black lmagination.In his book ADifferent Mirror: AHistory of Multicurturar Ameiica, Thkaki writes that he has chosen in this book to look closely at America,s "racial and cultural diversity-Native Americans as well as peoples from different 'points of departure, such as England, Africa, irelind, Mexico, Asia, and Russia." In this selection, tiken from A Different Mirror, Takaki reflects on the history of race relations inAmerici, and urges us to considerAmerican multiculfuralism through a ',different mirror," a mirror that reflects all of the many races and peoples who make up the American identity.

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I had flown from san Francisco to Norfolk and was riding in a taxi to my ]

hotel to attend a conference on murticulturalism. Hundreds of""dr"rtors f.orirl across the country were meeting to discuss the need for greater cultural di- versity in the curriculum. My driver and I chatted about tf,e weather and the, tourists. The sky was cloudy, and_ virginia Beach was twenty minutes away. i The rearview mirror reflected a white man in his forties. ,,How long huve yol i beerr in_this counhy?'he-asked. 'All my life,' rreplied, wincing. ,{ was btrn r in the United states." with a strong southern drawi, he remarkej, ,,I was won- deringbecause your English is excellent!" Then, as I had *rny ii*u, before, I explained: 'My grandfather came here from Japan in the 1gg0s. My family has been here, in America, for over a hundred years." He glanced it me in l the mirror. somehow I did not look "Ameri"uni' to him; m"y eyes and com- plexion looked foreign.

Suddenly, we both became uncomfortably conscious of a racial divide separating us. An awkward silence turned my gaze from the mirror to the passing landscape, the shore where the Engliih and the powhatan Indians first encountered each other. our highway wis on land that sir walter Raleigh . had renamed "Yirginia" in honor of ghributh I, the virgin eueen. In the Enlg-, lish cultural appropriation of America, the indigenou"s peoples themselv6s would become outsiders in their native land. Heie, at the eastern edge of the continent, I mused, was the site of the beginning of multicultural ,{merica. ]amestown, the English settlement founded in16oz, was nearby: the first

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Taxer<r I ADiffercnt iv4irror 77L

twenty Africans were brought here a year before the Pilgrims arrived at Ply-

mouth Rock. Several hundred miles offshore was Bermuda, the "Bermoothes" where William Shakespeare's Prospero had landed and met the native Caliban

in The Tempest. Earlier, another voyagel had made an Atlantic crossing and unexpectedly bumped into some islands to the south. Thinking he had reached

Asia, Chrisiophei Columbus mistakenly identified one of the islands as "Cipango" (Japan). In the wake of the admiral, many peoples would come to Americi from different shores, not only from Europe but also Africa and Asia' One of them would be my grandfather. My mental wandering across terrain and time ended abruptly as we arrived at my destination. I said good-bye to

my driver and went into the hotel, carrying a vivid reminder of why I was at- tending this conference.

Questions like the one my taxi driver asked me are always jarring, but I can understand why he could not see me as American. He had a narrow but widety shared sense of the past-a history that has viewed American as Eu- ropean in ancestry. "Race," Toni Morrison explained, has functioned as a "metaphor" necessary to the "construction of Americanness": in the creation

of our national identity, "American" has been defined as "white." But America has been racially diverse since our very beginning on the

Virginia shore, and this reality is increasingly becoming visible and ubiquitous. Currently, one-third of the American people do not trace their origins to Eu- rope; in California, minorities are fast becoming a majority. They already pre- dominate in major cities across the country-New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Detroit, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

This emerging demographic diversity has raised fundamental questions about America's identity and culture. In7990, Time published a cover story on "America's Changing Colors." "someday soon," the magazine announced, "white Americans will become a minority group." How soon? By 2056, most Americans will trace their descent to "Africa,Asia, the Hispanic world, the Pa- cific Islands, Arabia-almost anywhere but white Europe." This dramatic change in our nation's ethnic composition is altering the way we think about ourselves. 'The deeper significance of America's becoming a majority non- white society is what it means to the national psyche, to individuals' sense of themselves and their nation-their idea of what it is to be American."

Indeed, more than ever before, as we approach the time when whites be- come a minority, many of us are perplexed about our national identity and our future as one people. This uncertainty has Provoked Allan Bloom to reaffirm the preeminence of Western civilization. Author of The Closing ot' the American Mind,he has emerged as a leader of an intellectual backlash against cultural diversity. In his view, students entering the university are "uncivilized," and the university has the responsibility to "civtlize" them. Bloom claims he knows what their "hungers" are and "what they can digest." Eating is one of his fa- vorite metaphors. Noting the "large black presence" in major universities, he

772 Conflicts Past and Conflicts Present

laments the "one failure" in race relations-black students have proven to be "indigestible." They do not "melt as have all other groups." The problem, he contends, is that "blacks have become blacks": they have become "ethnic'" This separatism has been reinforced by an academic permissiveness that has befouled the curriculum with "Black Studies" along with "Learn Another Cul- ture." The only solution, Bloom insists, is "the good old Great Books approach."

Similarly, E. D. Hirsch worries that America is becoming a "tower of Babel," and that this multiplicity of cultures is threatening to rend our social fabric. He, too, longs for a more cohesive culture and a more homogeneous America: "If we had to make a choice between the one and the ffiany, rr:.ost Americans would choose the principle of unity, since we cannot function as a nation without it." The way to correct this fragmentization, Hirsch argues, is to acculturate "disadvantaged children." V\hat do they need to know? "O.ly by accumulating shared symbols, and the shared information that symbols represent/" Hirsch answers, "can we learn to communicate effectively with one another in our national community." Though he concedes the value of multicultural educatiorL he quickly dismisses it by insisting that it "should not be allowed to supplant or interfere with our schools'responsibility to ensure our children's mastery of American literate culture." ln Cultural Lituacy: What Eaery American Needs to Know, Hirsch offers a long list of terms that excludes much of the history of minority groups.

While Bloom and Hirsch are reacting defensively to what they regard as a vexatious balkanization of America, many other educators are responding to our diversity as an opportunity to open American minds. In7990, the Thsk Force on Minorities for New York emphasized the importance of a culturally diverse education. "Essentially," theNewYorkTimes commented, "the issue is how to deal with both dimensions of the nation's motto: 'E pluribus snsp/- 'Out of many, one."' Universities from New Hampshire to Berkeley have es- tablished American cultural diversity graduation requirements. "Every student needs to know," explained University of Wisconsin's chancellor Donna Shalala, "much more about the origins and history of the particular cultures which, as Americans, we will encounter during our lives." Even the Univer- sity of Minnesota, located in a state that is 98 percent white, requires its stu- dents to take ethnic studies courses. Asked why multiculturalism is so important, Dean Fred Lukermann answered: As a national university, Min- nesota has to offer a national curriculum-one that includes all of the peo- ples of America. He added that after graduation many students move to cities like Chicago and Los Angeles and thus need to know about racial diversity. Moreover, many educators stress, multiculturalism has an intellectual pur- pose. By allowing us to see events from the viewpoints of different groups, a multicultural curriculum enables us to reach toward a more comprehensive understanding of American history.

What is fueling this debate over our national identity and the content of our curriculum is America's intensifizing racial crisis. The alarming signs and symptoms seem to be everywhere-the killing of Vincent Chin in Detroit, the

Terert I ADiffercttt Mirror 773

black boycott of a Korean grocery store in Flatbush, the hysteria in Boston over the Carol Stuart murder, the battle between white sportsmen and Indi- ans over tribal fishing rights in Wisconsin, the jewish-black clashes in Brook-

lyn's Crown Heights, the black-Hispanic competition for jobs and educational

resources in Dallas, which Nezusweek desctibed as "a conflict of the have-nots,"

and the Willie Horton campaign commercials, which widened the divide be- tween the suburbs and the inner cities.

This reality of racial tension rudely woke America like a fire bell in the night on ApriiZ9,1992. Immediately after four Los Angeles police officers wJre found not guilty of brutality against Rodney King, rage exploded in Los Angeles. Race relations reached a new nadir. During the nightmarish ram- pag"e, scores of people were killed, over two thousand injured, twelve thou- sarid arrested, and ilmost a billion dollars' worth of property destroyed. The live televised images mesmerized America. The rioting and the murderous melee on the streets resembled the fighting in Beirut and the west Bank. The thousands of fires burning out of control and the dark smoke filling the skies brought back images of the burning oil fields of Kuwait during Desert Storm. Entire sections of Los Angeles looked like a bombed city. "Is this America?" many shocked viewers asked. "Please, can we get along here," pleaded Rod-

ney King, calling for calm. "We all can get along' I mean, we're all stuck here for a while. Let's try to work it out."

But how should "we" be defined? Who are the people "stuck here" in America? One of the lessons of the Los Angeles explosion is the recognition of the fact that we are a multiracial society and that race can no longer be de- fined in the binary terms of white and black. "We" will have to include His- panics and Asians. While blacks currently constitute 13 percent of the Los Angeles population, Hispanics represent 40 percent. The 1990 census revealed that South Central Los Angeles, which was predominant$ black in 1965 when the Watts rebellion occurred, is now 45 percent Hispanic. A majority of the first 5,438 people arrested were Hispanic, while 37 percent were black. Of the fifty-eight people who died in the riot, more than a third were Hispanic, and about 40 percent of the businesses destroyed were Hispanic-owned. Most of the other shops and stores were Korean-owned. The dreams of many Korean

immigrants went up in smoke during the riol two thousand Korean-owned businesses were damaged or demolished, totaling about $400 million in loss- es. There is evidence indicating they were targeted' "After all," explained a black gang member, "we didn't burn our community, iust their stores."

"I dorlt feel like I'm in America an)'/rnore,'/ said Denisse Bustamente as she watched the police protecting the firefighters. "I feel like I am far away." In- deed, Americans have been witnessing ethnic strife erupting around the world-the rise of neo-Nazism and the murder of Turks in Germany, the ugly "ethnic cleansing" in Bosnia, the terrible and bloody clashes between Muslims and Hindus in India. Is the situation here different, we have been nervously wondering, or do ethnic conflicts elsewhere rePresent a prologue for Ameri- ca? What is the nature of malevolence? Is there a deep, perhaps primordial,

774 Conflicts Past and Conflicts Present

need for group identity rooted in hatred for the other? Is ethnic pluralism pos- sible for America? But answers have been limited. Television reports have been little more than thirty-second sound bites. Newspaper articles have been mostly superficial descriptions of racial antagonisms and the current urban malaise. What is lacking is historical context; consequently, we are left feeling bewildered.

How did we get to this point, Americans everywhere are anxiously ask- ing. What does our diversity mean, and where is it leading us? How do we work it out in the post-Rodney King era?

Certainly one crucial way is for our societ5r's various ethnic groups to de- velop a greater understanding of each other. For example, how can African Americans and Korean Americans work it out unless they learn about each other's cultures, histories, and also economic situations? This need to share knowledge about our ethnic diversity has acquired new importance and has given new urgency to the pursuit for a more accurate history.

More than ever before, there is a growing realization that the established scholarship has tended to define America too narrowly. For example, in his prize-winning study TheUprooted, Harvard historian Oscar Handlin present- ed-to use the book's subtitle-"the Epic Story of the Great Migrations That Made the American People." But Handlin's "epic story" excluded the "up- rooted" from Africa, Asia, and Latin America-the other "Great Migrations" that also helped to make "the American People." Similarly, inThe Age of lack- son, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.,left out blacks and Indians. There is not even a mention of two marker events-the Nat Turner insurrection and Indian re- moval, which Andrew ]ackson himself would have been surprised to find omitted from a history of his era.

Still, Schlesinger and Handlin offered us a refreshing revisionism, paving the way for the study of common people rather than princes and presidents. They inspired the next generation of historians to examine groups such as the artisan laborers of Philadelphia and the Irish immigrants of Boston. "Once I thought to write a history of the immigrants in America," Handlin confided in his introduction to The Uprooted. "I discovered that the immigrants usere American history." This door, once opened, led to the flowering of a more in- clusive scholarship as we began to recognize that ethnic history was Ameri- can history. Suddenly, there was a proliferation of seminal works such as Irving Howe's World of Our Fathers: The lourney of the East European Jews to America, Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West, Albert Camarillo's Chicanos in a Changing Society, Lawrence Levine's Black Culture and Black Consciousness, Yuji Ichiok a's The lssei: The Woild of the First Generation lapanese Immigrants, and Kerby Mrller's Emigrants and Ex- iles: Ireland and the lrish Exodus to North America.

But even this new scholarship, while it has given us a more expanded un- derstanding of the mosaic called America, does not address our needs in the post-Rodney King era. These books and others like them fragment American society, studying each group separately, in isolation from the other groups

Terext I ADifferent Mirror 775

and the whole. While scrutinizing our specific pieces, we have to step back in order to see the rich and complex portrait they compose. What is needed is a fresh angle, a study of the American past from a comparative perspective.

While all of America's many groups cannot be covered in one book, the English immigrants and their descendants require attention, for they pos- sesied inordinate power to define American culture and make public policy.

what men like ]ohn winthrop, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson thought as well as did mattered greatly to all of us and was consequential for

er"ryorl". A broad range of groups has been selected: African Americans, Asian Americans, Chicanos, Irish, Jews, and Indians. while together they help to explain general patterns in our society, each has contributed to the making

of the United States. African Americans have been the central minority throughout our coun-

try's history. They were initially brought here on a slave ship in 1619. Actual- ly, these first twenty Africans might not have been slaves; rather, like most of the white laborers, they were probably indentured servants' The transforma- tion of Africans into slaves is the story of the "hidden" origins of slavery. How and when was it decided to institute a system of bonded black labor? what happened, while freighted with racial significance, was actually conditioned by class conflicts within white society. Once established, the "peculiar insti- tution" would have consequences for centuries to come. During the nine- teenth century, the political storm over slavery almost destroyed the nation. Since the Civil War and emancipation, race has continued to be largely de- fined in relation to African Americans-segregation, civil rights, the under- class, and affirmative action. Constituting the largest minority gloup in our society, they have been at the cutting edge of the Civil Rights Movement. In- deed, their struggle has been a constant reminder of America's moral vision as a country committed to the principle of liberty. Martin Luther King clear- ly understood this truth when he wrote from a jail cell: "We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with America's destiny."

Asian Americans have been here for over one hundred and fifty years, before many European immigrant groups. But as "strangers" coming from a "different shore," they have been stereotyped as "heathen," exotic, and unassimilable. Seeking "Gold Mountain," the Chinese arrived first, and what happened to them influenced the reception of the japanese, Koreans, Fil- ipinos, and Asian indians as well as the Southeast Asian refugees like the vietnamese and the Hmong. The 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act was the first law that prohibited the entry of immigrants on the basis of nationality. The Chinese condemned this restriction as racist and tyrannical. "They call us 'Chink,"' complained a Chinese immigrant, cursing the "white demons." "They think we no good! America cuts us off. No more come now, too bad!" This precedent later provided a basis for the restriction of European immi- grant groups such as Italians, Russians, Poles, and Greeks. The Japanese

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painfully discovered that their accomplishments in America did not lead to acceptance, for during World War II, unlike Italian Americans and German Americans, they were placed in internment camps. TWo-thirds of them were citizens by birth. "FIow could I as a six-month-old child born in this country," asked Congressman Robert Matsui years later, "be declared by *y own Gov- ernment to be an enemy alien?" Today, Asian Americans represent the fastest- growing ethnic group. They have also become the focus of much mass media attention as "the Model Minority" not only for black and Chicanos, but also for whites on welfare and even middle-class whites experiencing economic difficulties.

Chicanos represent the largest group among the Hispanic population, which is projected to outnumber African Americans. They have been in the United States for a long time, initially incorporated by the war against Mexi- co. The treaty had moved the border between the fwo countries, and the peo- ple of "occupied" Mexico suddenly found themselves "foreigners" in their "native land." As historian Albert Camarillo pointed out, the Chicano past is an integral part of America's westward expansion, also known as "manifest destiny." But while the early Chicanos were a colonized people, most of them today have immigrant roots. Many began the trek to EI Norte in the ear$ twen- tieth century. "As I had heard a lot about the United States," Jesus Garza re- called, "it was my dream to come here." "We came to know families from Chihuahua, Sonora, Jalisco, and Durango," stated Ernesto Galarza. "I-ike our- selves, our Mexican neighbors had come this far moving step by step, work- ing and waiting, as if they were feeling their way up a ladder." Nevertheless, the Chicano experience has been unique, for most of them have lived close to their homeland-a proximity that has helped reinforce their language, identi- ty, aod culfure. This migration to El Norte has continued to the present. Los An- geles has more people of Mexican origin than any other city in the world, except Mexico City. A mostly mestizo people of Indian as well as African and Span- ish ancestries, Chicanos currently represent the largest minority group in the Southwest, where they have been visibly transforming culhrre and society.

The Irish came here in greater numbers than most immigrant groups. Their history has been tied to America's past from the very beginning. Ire- land represented the earliest English frontier: the conquest of Ireland occurred before the colonization of America, and the Irish were the first group that the English called "savages." In this context, the Irish past foreshadowed the In- dian future. During the nineteenth century, the Irish, like the Chinese, were vic- tims of British colonialism. While the Chinese fled from the ravages of the Opium Wars, the Irish were pushed from their homeland by 'Gnglish tyran- ny." Here they became consfuction workers and factory operatives as well as the "maids" of America. Representing a Catholic group seeking to settle in a fiercely Protestant society, the Irish immigrants were targets of American na- tivist hostility. They were also what historian Lawrence ]. McCaffrey called "the pioneers of the American urban ghetto," "previewing" experiences that would later be shared by the Italians, Poles, and other groups from southern

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777 T.qr.{rt I ADit'ferent Mirtor

and eastern Europe. iurthermore, they offer contrast to the immigrants from

Asia. The Irish came about the same time as the Chinese, but they had a dis-

tinct advantage: the Naturalization Law of 7790 had reserved citizenship for

,,whites,,only.Theircompatiblecomplexionallowedthemtoassimilateby

blending intoAmerican siciety' In making their journey successfully l"l'|h: mainstream, ho*"rr"r, these immigrants iom Eiin pursued an Irish "ethnic"

strategy: they promot"d 'Iri,h' soildarity in order to gain political power and

also to dominate the skilled brue-co1ar oicupations, often at the expense of the

Chinese and blacks. Fleeing Pogroms and religious persecution

in Russia' the jews were dri-

ven from what ]ohn C"Jainy"a"r.rib"d as the "Middle Ages into the Anglo-

American world of the g'oyim'beyond the pale'"' To them' America represented the promisea flana. This vision led Iews to

struggle not only for

thlrr,r"lrr", but also for other oppressed groups' especially blacks' After the

1g17 Eastst. Louis race riot, tne xaaisn Forwird of New York compared this

anti_black violence to u rsoi pogrom in Russia: "Kishinev and st. Louis-the

same soil, the same peop1e."'jeivs cheered when ]ackie Robinson broke into

ihe erooktyn Dodgers in 1947 ' "He was adopted as the surrogate hero by

many of us growir,g up at the \^u," recalled iack Greenberg of the NAACP

i"jJf O"f*!e Funi. "i{e was the way we saw ourselves triumphing against the forces of bigotry and ignorance."' jews stood shoulder to

shouider with

blacks in the Civil Rights ltiovement two-thirds of the white volunteers who

went south during tteTg64Freedom summer were Jewish. Today jews are

considered a highiy successful "ethnic" group' How didthey make such great

socioeconomic"strides? This question ii often reframed by neoconservative intellectuals like Irving Kristol and Nathan Glazer to read: if

jewish immi-

;;;;;r;*" able to liftihemselves from poverty into the mainstream through

Ielf-help and education without welfaie and affirmative action, why can't

blacks? But what this thinking overlooks is the unique history of Jewish im-

migrants, especially the initiil advantages of many of them as literate and skilled. Moreover, it minimizes the virulence of raciai prejudice rooted in

American slaverY. Ind.iansrepresentacriticalcontrast,fortheirswasnotanimmigrantex-

perience.TheWampanoagsWereg"tl"shoreasthefirstEnglishstrangers arrived in what would be Jaled "New England." The encounters

between In-

dians and whites not only shaped the course of race relations, but also in-

fluencedtheverycultureandidentityofthegene-ralsociety,.Thearchitectof Indian removal, President Andrew Jickson told Congress: "Our

conduct to-

ward these people is deeply interesiing to the national character'" Frederick

jackson Turner understood the meaniig of this observation when he identi-

fi"d th" frontier as our transforming crucible. At first, the European new-

"omerc had to wear Indian moccasinJand shout the war cry' "Little by little,"

;; ,h"y subdued the wilderness, the pioneers became ,'a new product" that

was ,,American.,' But Indians have had a different view of this entire process'

,,The white man,,, Luther Standing Bear of the Sioux explained, ,,does not

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778 Conflicts Past and Conflicts Present'

understand the Indian for the reason that he does not understand America." Continuing to be "troubled with primitive Iears," he has "in his conscious- ness the perils of this frontier confinent. . . . The man from Europe is still a foreigneiand an alien. And he still hates the man who questioned his path' across the continent." Indians questioned what Jackson and Turner trumpet- , ed as "progress." For them, the frontier had a different "significance": their his- ' tory was how the West was lost. But their story has also been one of resistance. As Vine Deloria declared, 'Custer died for your sins." l

By looking at these groups from a multicultural perspective, we can com-, paratively analyze their experiences in order to develop an urderstanding of I their differences and similarities. Race, we will see, has been a social con-' struction that has historically set apart racial minorities from European im-, migrant groups. Contrary to the notions of scholars like Nathan Glazer and I Thomas Sowell, race in America has not been the same as ethnicity. A broad comparative focus also allows us to see how the varied experiences of differ- ent racial and ethnic groups occurred within shared contexts.

During the nineteenth century, for example, the Market Revolution employed Irish immigrant laborers in New England factories as it ex- panded cotton fields worked by enslaved blacks across Indian lands to- ward Mexico. Like blacks, the Irish newcomers were stereotyped as "savages," ruled by passions rather than "civilized" virtues such as self- i control and hard work. The Irish saw themselves as the "slaves" of British oppressors, and during a visit to Ireland in the 1840s, Frederick Douglass found that the "wailing notes" of the Irish ballads reminded him of the "wild notes" of slave songs. The U.S. annexation of California, while in- corporating Mexicans, led to trade with Asia and the migration of "strangers" from Pacific shores. In7870, Chinese immigrant laborers were transported to Massachusetts as scabs to break an Irish immigrant strike; in response, the Irish recognized the need for interethnic working-class solidarity and tried to organize a Chinese lodge of the Knight of St. Crispin. After the Civil War, Mississippi planters recruited Chinese immigrants to discipline the newly freed blacks. During the debate over an immigration ' exclusion bill in 7882, a senator asked: If Indians could be located on reser- vations, why not the Chinese?

Other instances of our connectedness abound. In 1903, Mexican and Japan- ese farm laborers went on strike together in California: their union officers had names like Yamaguchi and Lizarras, and strike meetings were conducted in Japanese and Spanish. The Mexican strikers declared that they were standing in solidarity with their 'Japanese brothers" because the two groups had toiled together in the fields and were now fighting together for a fair wage. Speak- ing in impassioned Yiddish during the 1909 "uprising of twenty thousand" strikers in New York, the charismatic Clara Lemlich compared the abuse of . Jewish female garment workers to the experience of blacks: "[The bosses] yell at the girls and 'call them down' even worse than I imagine the Negro slaves were in the South." During the 1920s, elite universities like Harvard worried

Texerr I ADifferari N4irror 779

about the increasing number of jewish students, and new admissions criteria were instituted to curb their enrollment. ]ewish sfudents were scorned for their studiousness and criticized for their "clannishness." Recently, Asian-Ameri- can students have been the targets of similar complaints: they have been called "nerds" and told there are "too many" of them on camPus.

Indians were already here, while blacks were forcibly transported to America, and Mexicans were initially enclosed by America's expanding bor- der. The other groups came here as immigrants: for them, America repre- sented liminality-a new world where they could Pursue extravagant urges and do things they had thought beyond their capabilities. Like the land itself, they found themselves "betwixt and between all fixed points of classifica- tion." No longer fastened as fiercely to their old countries, they felt a stirring to become new people in a society still being defined and formed.

These immigrants made bold and dangerous crossings, pushed by polit- ical events and economic hardships in their homelands and pulled by Amer- ica's demand for labor as well as by their own dreams for a better life. "By all means let me go to America," ayoung man in Japan begged his parents. He had calculated that in one year as a laborer here he could save almost a thou- sand yen-an amount equal to the income of a governor in Japan. "My dear Father," wrote an immigrant Irish girl living in New York, "Any man or woman without a family are fools that would not venture and come to this plentiful Country where no man or woman ever hungered." In the shtetls of Russia, the cry "ToAmerica!" roared like "wild-fire'" "America was in every- body's mouth," a Jewish immigrant recalled. "Businessmen talked [about] it over their accounts; the market women made up their quarrels that they might discuss it from stall to stall; people who had relatives in the famous land went around reading their letters." Similarly, for Mexican immigrants crossing the border in the early twentieth century El Norte became the stuff of overblown hopes. "If only you could see how nice the United States is," they said, "that is why the Mexicans are crazy about it."

The signs of America's ethnic diversity can be discerned across the con- tinent-Ellis Island, Angel Island, Chinatown, Harlem, South Boston, the Lower East Side, places with Spanish names like Los Angeles and San Anto- nio or Indian names like Massachusetts and Iowa. Much of what is familiar in America's cultural landscape actually has ethnic origins. The Bing cherry was developed by and early Chinese immigrant named Ah Bing. American In- dians were cultivating corn, tomatoes, and tobacco long before the arrival of Colombus. The term okny was derived from the Choctaw word oke, meaning "it is so." There is evidence indicating that the nameYankee came from Indi- an terms for the English-from eankke in Cherokee andYankwis in Delaware. Jazz and blues as well as rock and roll have African American origins. The "Forty-Niners" of the Goid Rush learned mining techniques from the Mexi- cans; American cowboys acquired herding skills from Mexican aaqueros and adopted their range terms-such as larint from ls renta, lasso from lazo, and stampede from estampida. Songs like "God Bless America," "Eastet Parade,"

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i780 Cortflicts Past and Conflicts Present

and "white Christmas" were written by a Russian-Jewish immigrant named Israel Baline, more popularly known as Irving Berlin.

Furthermore, many diverse ethnic groups have contributed to the build- ing of the American economy, forming what walt whitman saluted as ,'a vast, surging, hopeful army of workers." They worked in the south's cotton fields, New England's textile mills, Hawaii's canefields, New york's garment facto- ries, California's orchards, washington's salmon canneries, and Arizona's cop- per mines. They built the railroad, the great symbol of America's industriil triumph. Laying railroad ties, black laborers sang:

Down the railroad, um-hum Well, raise the iron, um-huh Raise the iron, um-huh

Irish railroad workers shouted as they stretched an iron ribbon across the continent:

Then drill, my Paddies, drill- Drill, my heroes, drill, Drill all day, no sugar in your tay Workin'on the U.P. railway.

Japanese laborers in the Northwest chorused as their bodies fought the fick- le weather:

A railroad worker- That's mel

I am great. Yes, I am a railroad worker. Complaining: "It is too hot!" "It is too coldl" "It rains too oftenl" "It snows too much!" They all ran off, I alone remained. I am a railroad workerl

Chicano workers in the Southwest joined in as they swore at the punishing work:

Some unloaded rails Others unloaded ties, And others of my companions Threw out thousands of curses.

r.

Teraxr I ADift'erent lv4irror 78L

Moreover, our diversity was tied to America's most serious crisis: the Civil war was fought over a racial issue-slavery. In his "First Inaugural Address," presented on March 4, 7867, President Abraham Lincoln declired: "One section of our country believes slavery is right and ought to be ex- tended, while the other believes it is l,zrong and ought not to be extended." southern secession, he argued, would be anarchy. Lincoln sternly warned the south that he had a solemn oath to defend and preserve the union. Ameri- cans were one people, he explained, bound together by ,,the mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave io every liv- ing heart and hearthstone all over this broad land." The struggle and sacri- fices of the war for Independence had enabled Americans to create a new nation out of thirteen separate colonies. But Lincoln's appeal for unity fell on deaf ears in the south. And the war came. Two and a half years later, at Gettysburg, President Lincoln declared that "brave men" had fought and "consecrated" the ground of this battlefield in order to preserve the union. Among the brave were black men. shortly after this bloody battle, Lincoln acknowledged the military contribution of blacks. "There will be some black men," he wrote in a letter to an old friend, James C. Conkling,

,,who can re-

member that with silent tongue, and clenched teeth, and steady eye, and well-poised bayonet, they have helped mankind on to this great consum- mation. . . ." Indeed, 186,000 blacks served in the Union Army, and one-third of them were listed as missing or dead. Black men in blue, Frederick Dou- glass pointed out, were "on the battlefield mingling their blood with that of white men in one common effort to save the country." Now the mystic chords of memory stretched across the new battlefields of the clvit waaand black soldiers were buried in "patriot graves.,, They, too, had given their lives to ensure that the "government of the people, by the p"opl", for the people shall not perish from the earth.',

Like these black soldiers, the people in our study have been actors in his- tory not merely victims of discrimination and exploitation. They are entitled to be viewed as subjects-as men and women with minds, willi, and voices.

In the telling and retelling of their stories,

They create communities of memory.

They also re-vision history. "It is very natural that the history written by the victim," said a Mexican in'l"874, "does not altogether chime with the itory of the victor." sometimes they are hesitant to speak, thinking they are only "little people." "I don't know why anybody wants to hear my history,,, an Irish maid said apologetically in 1900. "Nothing ever happened to me worth the tellin'."

But their stories are worthy. Through their stories, the people who have lived America's history can help all of us, including my taxi diiver, understand

782 Conflicts Past and Conflicts Present

that Americans originated from many shores, and that all of us are entitled to dignity. "I hope this survey do a lot of good for Chinese people," an im- migrant told an interviewer from Stanford University in the 7920s. "Make American people reahze that Chinese people are humans. i think very few. American people really know anything about Chinese." But the remember-

,

ing is also for the sake of the children. "This story is dedicated to the de-: scendants of Lazar and Goldie Glauberman," ]ewish immigrant Minnie Miller wrote in her autobiography. "My history is bound up in their history and the

.

generations that follow should know where they came from to know better l who they are." Similarly, Tomo Shoji, an elderly Nisei woman, urged Asian l Americans to learn more about their roots: "We got such good, fantastic sto- i ries to tell. All our stories are different." Seeking to know how they fit into America, many young people have become listeners; they are eager to learn , about the hardships and humiliations experienced by their parents and I grandparents. They want to hear their stories, unwilling to remain ignorant i or ashamed of their identity and past. I

The telling of stories liberates. By writing about the people on Mango ,

Street, Sandra Cisneros explained, "the ghost does not ache so much." The. place no longer holds her with "both arms. She sets me free." Indeed, stories I may not be as innocent or simple as they seem to be. Native American nov- I elist Leslie Marmon Silko cautioned: i

I will tell you something about stories They aren't just entertainment.

Don't be fooled.

Indeed, the accounts given by the people in this study vibrantly re-create i moments, capturing the complexities of human emotions and thoughts. They ) also provide the authenticity of experience. After she escaped from slavery ' Harrietlacobs wrote in her autobiography: "[My purposel is not to tell what I have heard but what I have seen-and what I have suffered." In their shar- : ing of memory, the people in this study offer us an opportunity to see our- selves reflected in a mirror called history.

In his recent study of Spain and the New World, The Buried Mirror,Crr- l los Fuentes points out that mirrors have been found in the tombs of ancient Mexico, placed there to guide the dead through the underworld. He also tells , us about the legend of Quetzalcoatl, the Plumed Serpent: when this god was given a mirror by the Toltec deity Tezcatlipoca, he saw a man's face in the mir- ror and realized his own humanity. For us, the "mirror" of history can guide the living and also help us recognize who we have been and hence are. In A Distant Mirror, Barbara W. Tuchman finds "phenomenal parallels,, between the "calamitous 14th century" of European society and our own era. We can, she observes, have "greater fellow-feeling for a distraught age,, as we painful- , ly recognize the "similar disarray," "collapsing assumptions,,, and,,unusual discomfort."

I t t

Trreru I ADifferent Mirror 783

But what is needed in our own perpleing times is not so much a "distant" mirror, as one that is "different." while the study of the past can provide col- lective self-knowledge, it often reflects the scholar's particular perspective or

view of the world. what l-rappens rvhen historians leave out many of Ameri- ca's peoples? What happens, to borrow the words of Adrienne Rich, "when sorrr"on" with the authority of a teacher" describes our society, and "you are not in it"? Such an experience can be disorienting-"a moment of psychic dis- equilibrium, as if you looked into a mirror and saw nothing."

Through their narratives about their lives and circumstances, the people of America's diverse groups are able to see themselves and each other in our common past. They celebrate what Ishmael Reed has described as a society "unique" in the world because "the world i5 hsls//-n place "where the cul- tures of the world crisscross." Much of America's past, thev point out, has been riddled with racisrn. At the same time, these people offer hope, affirm- ing the struggle Ior equality as a central theme in our country's history. At its conception, our nation rvas dedicated to the proposition of equality. What has given concreteness to this powerful national principle has been our coming to- gether in the creation of a ner,v society. "Stuck here" togethe4 workers of dif- ferent backgrounds have attempted to get along with each other.

People harvesting

Work together unar{'are

Of racial problems.

rvrote a Japanese immigrant describing a lesson learned by Mexican and Asian farm laborers in California.

Finally, how do we see our prospects for "working out" America's racial crisis? Do we see it as through a glass darkly? Do the televised images of racial haked and violence that riveted us in 1992 during the days of rage in Los An- geles frame a furure of divisive race relations-what Arthur Scl-rlesinger, Jr., has fearfully denounced as the "disuniting of America"? Or will Americans of di- verse races and ethnicities be able to connect themselves to a larger narrative? Whatever happens, we can be certain that much of our society's fufure will be influenced by which "mirror" u,e choose io see ourselves. America does not belong to one race or one group, the people in this studv remind us, and Amer- icans have been constantly redefining their national identity from the mo- ment of first contact on the Virginia shore. By sharing their stories, they invite us to see ourselves in a different mirror.

Takaki, Ronald A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America

WritingTask L&2- Complete a written response re-stating each question to support your answers.

1). ln the essay you've just read , A Different Mirror: A History of Multiculturol America by Ronald Takaki, his centra! argument is that we need to look at history through a "different mirror," one that reflects the way in which "Americans" have been constantly redefining their national identity from the moment of first contact on the Virginia shore. What does Takaki mean by "constantly redefining their national identity?" How does this differ from a metaphor that describes America as a "melting pot?" why does Takaki consider it so important to listen to and study the stories that show how "American originated from many shores?" Do you feel that historical and literary texts about America should include the many different groups that Takaki refers to in his writing? (5 Paragraphs)

i