Wu

When I was a freshman in High School I felt very out of place. I had had a relativly sheltered school life, with 8 years in a small Catholic school. When it came time to go to High School I choose to go to the public school because it offered soccer as a varsity sport. In one particular class (graphic arts it think) I was in the minority. Most people in the class were black. They defined me as soccer karati dude. Soccer because I wore my jersey to school on game days, Karati - I have no idea why, and Dude because I was different then they were. I have never felt so misrepresented since.

Takaki Chapter 10

In chapter 10 of “A Different Mirror” Ronald Takaki takes up the America’s history of oppression and discrimination surrounding the Asian race and the Japanese in particular. It is scathing incitement of those in power’s manipulation of the Japanese in the unending quest for profit.

The first section of chapter 10 discusses the differences in the Chinese and Japanese cultures that affected immigrants to the US and specifically Hawaii. Chinese immigrants were typically male and relatively younger. The Chinese immigrants took on something of a bachelor culture. This would lead the proud Japanese government to have more stringent standards for potential immigrants. Due to cultural institutions such as arranged marriages, Japanese immigrants were much more prone to relocate with wives and families. After arrival Chinese and Japanese found agricultural work in Hawaii. Takaki outlines strategies by wealthy landowners to keep the ethnic groups at odds with each other, and specifically to disrupt attempts by Japanese laborers to organize. Other ethnic groups such as Koreans, Philippians, Portuguese and Puerto Ricans were put into the mix to further complicate the organization and striking process. The landowners finally relented and improved conditions for the Japanese. They provided housing as well as other amenities to pacify the Japanese laborers. Takaki points out that Japanese immigrants in Hawaii were relatively successful compared to their counterparts in California. Due to racially motivated exclusion from the labor market, Japanese immigrants turned to agriculture and private ansulary enterprises for subsistence. The self-imposed racial seclusion proved to be a big hindrance to assimilation. Meanwhile a generation of native Japanese Americans were born, and educated. They faced most of the same discrimination their parents did. The chapter ends shortly before the start of World War II with Japanese Americans not seeing much progress in rolling back the specter of discrimination.

The second section of Chapter 10 makes no real mention of the Great Depression as a factor for the racial intolerance of the Japanese Americans. The conditions faced by Japanese Americans of the time period must have been very similar to those faced by Blacks in Reconstruction Era America. Takaki makes no attempt to connect the tight economic market and increased competition for scarce funds as a contributing factor for Congressional enactment of immigration restrictions. He even goes so far as to say that the success the Japanese enjoyed was due to an expanding economy, and downplays the entrepreneurial genius they clearly had.

I found Takaki to be not very thorough in this chapter. He clearly overlooks the economic factors of the day and conveniently ends with the start of World War II. He usually covers most if not all the contributing factors with great attention to detail. This chapter left me with an incomplete feeling. He should have covered the internment of the Japanese Americans in this chapter. However I did find the first half of the chapter very informative. His explanation of labor practices in Hawaii was fascinating and I felt totally plausible. He could have explored the cross-racial discrimination the Japanese had for the Chinese and the Koreans a little, but I guess the book is indeed about race and culture in the United States.

How Jews Became White Folks

In “How Jews Became White Folks” Karen Brodkin outlines the progression of Jewish Americans through the strata of American society. Brodkin relates personal experiences growing up to the overall struggle of Jews to throw off the chains of religous and cultural bigotry.

One of the first important points Brodkin makes is that there was discrimination between the races of Europe. The Nordic races were considered to be the pure races of Europe, and the Alpine and Mediterranean races were considered inferior. Jews even though found among most of the sub sects were automatically considered inferior. Bodkin details her own experiences of living in a semi closed ethnic community as well as similar closed ethnic communities such as Irish and Italian communities. On page 44 Bodkin explains that public high schools and colleges were not welcoming Jews into their ranks for both structural and racist reasons. The cessation of hostilities and the GI Bill would change all that for the Jews. In post war America Jews were swept up into the rapidly expanding job force and were able to break out of their closed ethnic communities. They were able follow the waves of suburban migration, and take full advantage of government low cost housing loans. Bodkin explains the title of the piece by comparing the prosperity enjoyed by the Jews as well as other ethic groups was not being shared by the Blacks. Through what Bodkin claims that the government and in particular the Veterans Administration and the US Employment Services were actively excluding Blacks from enjoying the rights promised to them by the GI Bill (Bodkin 46).

I really enjoyed this article. It highlights a positive outcome for a minority group. The issue of affirmative action is one of real conflict for me. It is righteous to want to help the oppressed and propel them to their rightful place in society, but to do so by taking away opportunities of those who were not taking part in the oppression is not fair. Two wrongs never turn out to make a right, and affirmative action is just that. Also I ask the question that once affirmative action programs are started when does it become clear that they have achieved its goal. I put forth that government is not capable of making that judgment.

Extra Credit

Although slavery had been abolished, a new and sinister mechanism of oppression took hold of the post-civil war era. The African American community struggled to participate in society in the face of Jim Crow.

Richard Wright describes childhood through the eyes of a young black man. As he is growing up he is faced with different challenges that require leave him with a good understanding of how African American’s were being harassed, intimidated, brutalized, and even murdered. Wright’s asserts that white racism in the South was widespread and commonplace.

A variety of situations are presented in the text. The first is an encounter with local white boys. The main character engages in a mock battle with neighborhood boys. The throw harmless cinders from the nearby railroad tracks and the white boys return with salvos of glass bottles. A second encounter is when the main character goes to work for an optical company. His coworkers refuse to train him for any meaningful work, and later confront him with unfounded accusations. Under threat of a bludgeoning and with no recourse the main character is forced to leave the jobsite never to return. Additional experiences are provided to further the notion that southern whites engaged in truly abominable behavior in a concerted effort to physically and mentally intimidate African Americans.

Wright implies that the methods and instances of intimidation and brutality were commonplace. Wright also assumes that the experiences detailed by the main character are both true and not exaggerated. The excerpt is from a book called Uncle Tom’s Children first published in 1937, and we can assume that the unethical treatment was in fact still going on or those who the book was based on were no more than a generation removed.

Evidence that leads to different conclusion: The evidence presented seems to run in step with some of the other works by Takaki and Johnson. The physical brutality described is consistent with Takaki as well as Zinn. The psychological oppression described is similar to the chapters in Johnson’s book. The article describes the aftermath of the abolition of slavery. The slaves were freed from the oppressive hands of the wealthy whites only to enter into a more hostile environment dominated by the poor whites of the time.

It is hard to put into words the distain I have for the perpetrators of violence and intimidation described in the text. The callousness with which they treated the African Americans was astounding, and it is a lesson of which I gladly will not repeat.

Zinn Chapter 9

In chapter 9 Slavery Without Submission, Emancipation Without Freedom, A People's History of the United States, Howard Zinn highlights on how blacks, throughout the history of the United States, were given freedoms, only to have those very same freedoms denied in order to maintain a system of white elitism.

Zinn covers the period of about ten years before the civil war to the early 1900’s. As always he provides ample evidence to support his thesis. His first subject is the pre-Civil War legal environment which leads to a number of organized slave rebellions. His intention is to illustrate the point that certain rights were afforded to blacks in law but were not being exercised. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 (pg 135) is an example of a “deal with the devil” made in order to pacify the southern states. It enabled slave owners to recapture escaped slaves and return them to bondage. Unlikely support of the legislation was found in J. W. Loguen who was the son of a slave mother. Zinn characterizes the North as tacitly supporting slavery by not making a meaningful stand against it. Zinn later turns his attention to Abraham Lincoln as another case of a northerner who refuses to make a significant stand against slavery and the institutions that propped it up. On page 140 he illuminates Lincoln’s inaction on the issues surrounding the Fugitive Slave laws. Zinn later expounds on the rights of the freed slaves in post-Civil War America. He makes the point that blacks under the protection of the Union army were able to participate in society and many were elected to office (pg 148). After the withdrawal of occupation forces the whites of the South were able to engage in oppressive tactics to roll back the freedoms blacks enjoyed. The period gave rise to organized terrorist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. The era was capped with the 1896 Supreme Court ruling in Plessey vs. Ferguson (pg 151). The ruling paved the way for the doctrine of “separate but equal”, which for all intensive purposes leads to inferior treatment for blacks.

A key point Zinn makes is that the North initially was not fighting the civil war for the abolition of slavery, but for reasons of economics, and the South could have neutralized the North’s ideological riotousness by letting blacks fight for the South or abolish slavery altogether. The Southern leadership was just too embroiled in hatred and loathing making this option feasible, but it is interesting to hypothesize what changes this would have made to history.

Zinn as always provides ample evidence to support his arguments, however he stubbles onto what I can only consider an inadvertent point which is the clear presentation of the limitation of our government to deal with issues of morality. It seems clear to me that the politicians of the North were idealistic enough to oppose the institutions of slavery, but were impotent to funneling it into a cohesive political agenda. The politicians fumbled and botched seemingly every opportunity to make a stand to limit or roll back slavery. The process of compromise seems to break down when one side (the South) is completely wrong. Any deals struck would naturally favor the pro-slavery crowd. The issue of slavery would only be decided through armed conflict and only when the North needs the ideological righteousness to overcome their military’s leadership inadequacies. As a nation we are lucky that the post war treatment of southern blacks did not require a second war to end discrimination, but the blacks of the time paid a heavy price for the inactions of the political leadership of the day.

Kindred

Kindred by Octavia Butler is a story of a African American woman from modern times named Dana, who inexplicably travels back and forth in time to the era of southern slavery. It provides a first hand accounting of the brutality necessary to keep an entire race of people enslaved.

Dana is propelled back in time when a young boy named Rufus is in dire trouble. Initially her time junkets are short, but she and her husband are eventually stuck in the past for long tracts of time. Dana is actually a direct but distant descendant of Rufus and a free-born black woman named Alice. Rufus morphs from a relatively decent yet intolerant and bigoted young boy, into a tyrannical and brutal man reminiscent of his father Tom Weylan. Dana’s role is to save Rufus from harm, care for her illiterate grandmother-to-be, and generally survive in a time when a black woman had no rights.

Is it an injustice for Dana to encourage Alice to let Rufus rape her with the intention of getting her pregnant and thus insuring her own birth? Yes it is an injustice. Even in the murky world of time travel the ends do not justify the means. Dana’s behavior in this matter is selfish and inexcusable. She was unable explain why she was able to time travel, but she was sure if the two didn’t copulate then she would never be born. I could not understand how Dana could do this, and I never really got past this paradox. By encouraging Alice to let Rufus rape her, Dana is party to rape, and thus participating in the very oppression she knew from her perspective to be wrong. Was it ok for Dana to do this in the past because it was socially acceptable for a white slave owner to rape a black slave? If it is, she is no better then the example of Thomas Jefferson we used in class and from the Takaki reading. If Dana would have done this in her own time she would have been found guilty of being an accomplice to rape in a court of law. Just because she did it in a time when it was socially acceptable, she is just as culpable or possible more culpable then anyone doing it in modern times.

The aspect I liked most about this novel was the interpersonal relationships. History texts are full of facts and figures, but they cannot capture the specter of slavery in the intimate terms like this book does. The history of slavery, as I have learned it, does highlight the physical brutality of African Americans, but it fails to capture psychological brutality like this book does. It is clear from the reading that the slaves could have organized and rose up against their oppressors at any given time, but the psychological punishment prevented them from doing anything more than just thinking about it. This fact is all too often understated.