Takaki Chapter 12

In chapter 12 El Norte: The Borderland of Chicano America, Takaki outlines the origins Chicano Americans. Takaki suggests that Chicano Americans were treated unfairly and discriminated against.

The challenges facing the Chicanos were unique to their group. They made their way north to the United States first to escape civil war and then to find work or trabajo. The circumstances are similar to the Japanese Americans that were immigrating around the same time. The work they engaged in was mainly unskilled agrarian jobs. They mainly received wages inferior to their Anglo counterparts, and were generally not represented in the supervision and management of the companies they worked for. Furthermore management used them as a fulcrum against ever more powerful indigenous labor unions. Chicanos were a unique minority group in America in that they shared an actual boarder with the United States, and crossed and re-crossed the boarder with regular frequency.

Did the Chicanos of the early century pose a real threat to the racial identity of the United States? The point can be made that they did not show lower rates of assimilation of other similar groups. Some (especially those who were refugees of the civil war) had no desire to assimilate, and were Mexicans living in America (pg 314-315). It is suggested that Chicano resistance to assimilation threatened to roll back the gains made in the Mexican American War. I have heard this suggestion made by modern protectionists such as Pat Buchannan. I do not think that non-assimilation poses the kind of threat to American culture that some would lead us to believe. The American culture unique and strong and the Chicano heritage only enriches that culture.

In this case I feel that Takaki is stretching to make his point that the Chicanos were oppressed. They came to America by their own free will. I understand that they were often motivated by the backward and primitive systems that Mexico’s government and society is founded on, but cannot this argument be made regarding most European immigrants. The difference I see is that those European immigrants essentially made a bigger commitment and from that commitment came a greater buy-in. Most gave up everything they have ever known in order to get on a boat and maybe find a better life in America. The Chicanos in comparison had to make a medium to long walk north to a part of America that wasn’t dissimilar from the land they vacated, and when they got there they lived in Barrio’s or communities that were nearly identical to those in their native country.