[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 70 (Wednesday, June 8, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: June 8, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                 INTERVIEW WITH HISTORIAN RONALD TAKAKI

 Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, anyone who has any sensitivity at 
all understands that we have to reach out and understand one another 
more than we have been doing.
  Recently, I picked up the spring edition of the magazine Teaching 
Tolerance and read an interview with Dr. Ronald Takaki, a professor of 
ethnic studies at the University of California and the author of 
several books.
  His insights into our culture, where we are and where we must go, are 
useful to any thoughtful American.
  I particularly like his reflections on the common belief that ``Asian 
Americans have made it'' with an implied insult to African-Americans.
  His comments about race and immigration are also significant.
  I ask to insert Dr. Takaki's interview in the Congressional Record at 
this point.
  The interview follows:

                  Reflections From a Different Mirror

       Ronald Takaki is one of the nation's foremost scholars of 
     multicultural studies. The grandson of Japanese immigrant 
     plantation laborers in Hawaii, he holds a Ph.D. in American 
     history from the University of California, Berkeley, where he 
     has been a professor of ethnic studies for over two decades.
       Takaki is the author of the critically acclaimed Iron 
     Cages: Race and Culture in Nineteenth-Century America and the 
     prize-winning Strangers From a Different Shore: A History of 
     Asian Americans, which was cited in 1989 by the New York 
     Times Book Review as one of the year's Notable Books. His 
     most recent book, A Different Mirror: A History of 
     Multicultural America, is a lively and dramatic retelling of 
     the nation's history through the eyes and voices of the many 
     different peoples who together compose it.
       Takaki spoke by telephone from his office in Berkeley with 
     Teaching Tolerance staff writer David Aronson in August 1993.
       Q. How did you decide to become a historian and to focus on 
     issues of multiculturalism?
       A. I grew up in a small valley on the island of Oahu, 
     Hawaii, playing with kids whose parents came from all over 
     the world: China, Japan, Hawaii, Portugal, Puerto Rico and 
     Korea. We all thought of ourselves as Americans. We spoke 
     pidgin English to each other and thought nothing about the 
     fact that our parents spoke different languages.
       But when we went to school, our textbooks and our teachers 
     did not explain the diversity of our community. Why were we 
     here? What was the meaning of our racially diverse valley, 
     which was a corner of this place called the United States of 
     America?
       So I became a historian largely in search of my own roots. 
     I realized that the traditional historians had offered me, 
     and many people like me, a mirror which had rendered us 
     invisible, that had excluded us from the definition of what 
     it meant to be an American. ``American'' meant having 
     European ancestry; ``American'' meant white--and I could just 
     look at myself in the morning and know that this was not 
     true, this was not accurate.
       Q. Why is it important that we--as Americans--recognize our 
     multicultural heritage?
       A. I think there are two reasons. The first is 
     intellectual. Recognizing our diversity invites us to reach 
     towards a more accurate understanding of our past and our 
     present.
       The second is social. I remember listening to Rodney King 
     during those days of rage in Los Angeles in April 1992. His 
     lips were trembling, and he was saying, ``We can get along, 
     we can work it out.'' I think the question we have to ask is, 
     ``Well, how do we get along, how do we work it out?'' I don't 
     believe we will until we learn more about one another.
       Q. What do you think accounts for the persistence of racism 
     and prejudice in America?
       A. The making of America as a multicultural society 
     represents a contradiction. On the one hand, this country 
     began with the English invasion and settlement of the New 
     World. The English settlers who arrived here envisioned a 
     homogeneous society. When John Winthrop sailed across the 
     Atlantic with his fellow Puritans aboard the Arbella, he gave 
     a sermon, and in the sermon he declared to his fellow 
     settlers, ``We shall be as a city on a hill. The eyes of the 
     world are upon us.''
       Well, this was to be a city upon the hill, but it would not 
     be a city that included Native Americans or African 
     Americans--or later, Chicanos or Asian Americans. Jefferson 
     articulated this vision as well. Shortly after the purchase 
     of Louisiana, he wrote a letter to James Monroe in which he 
     stated that he looked forward to the day when this continent 
     would be covered by the same people, sharing the same values.
       So on the one hand, there was this vision of a homogeneous 
     Anglo-American society. Yet on the other, this was an 
     expanding nation that would incorporate Native American lands 
     and Native Americans themselves, that would require labor 
     imported from Africa and, later, from Mexico and Asia. But as 
     laborers entered the society, they brought their vision of 
     America to these shores, and they defined America as a 
     multicultural society. ``This is our country, too,'' they 
     said. ``We belong here as well.''
       Q. Critics contend that multiculturalism, pushed too far, 
     can lead to divisiveness. How would you respond?
       A. The answer depends on the kind of multiculturalism 
     you're talking about. The particularistic approach emphasizes 
     the study of a specific group, such as Chicanos or Native 
     Americans. I can see how this approach could separate a group 
     from the larger society and from other groups.
       A pluralistic approach emphasizes a comparative analysis of 
     American society. We need to examine the broad range of 
     ethnic and racial groups that characterize the people of the 
     United States. This approach says that we need to study not 
     only this particular group or our individual group, but 
     others as well, and how the paths of other groups have criss-
     crossed in the making of America.
       Q. You have argued against extolling Asian Americans as a 
     ``model'' minority. Why not celebrate Asian American success?
       A. For one thing. Asian Americans have not made it. The 
     pundits and the journalists and sociologists have created a 
     mythology. If you look at reality, you realize that you can't 
     lump all Asian Americans together. We're a very diverse 
     community. We include not only fifth-generation Chinese 
     Americans, but also refugees from Laos--the Hmong and the 
     Hmu--who have welfare rates as high as 80 percent. So it's a 
     disservice to this diversity to say that all Asians have made 
     it.
       But there's also something pernicious about this 
     celebration. What this celebration does, almost invariably, 
     is condemn African Americans for their failure. Asian 
     American success has become a way to discipline African 
     Americans--a way of saying to African Americans, ``Look at 
     the Asians. They made it on their own, without welfare, 
     without political agitation or affirmative action.''
       This is a way of providing instruction to African Americans 
     on how they should behave, on what strategies they should 
     pursue: They should not pursue political activism but instead 
     should emphasize individualism, thrift and hard work. It pits 
     these groups against each other and generates resentment.
       Q. What do you make of the current anti-immigrant backlash?
       A. What's not mentioned in this anti-immigrant backlash is 
     the ``R'' word--race. I don't think you would have critics 
     clamoring to close the gates if it were not for the fact that 
     80 percent of immigrants coming to the U.S. come from Latin 
     America and Asia. This is leading to the changing colors of 
     America.
       The anti-immigrant pundits who say there are too many 
     immigrants are saying there are too many people of color in 
     America. If these immigrants were coming from Europe, I don't 
     think there would be this backlash against them.
       I think there is a kind of nervousness, a kind of 
     perplexity, an anxiousness within middle-class white America 
     that someday soon, in the 21st century, whites will become a 
     minority of the total U.S. population. Whites already are a 
     minority in virtually every major city across this country, 
     and politicians can appeal to this nervousness, this fear.
       But I think this distracts us; it derails us from pursuing 
     the real problems in our society. The reason so many of us 
     have these fears and these anxieties is due to the economic 
     context. I think if we were in a period of prosperity, we 
     would not be bashing immigrants. The problem is not the 
     immigrants--it's the economy.
       Q. What can schools do to help combat racism and prejudice?
       A. I think schools are a crucial--probably the most 
     crucial--site for inviting us to view ourselves in a 
     different mirror. I think schools have the responsibility to 
     teach Americans about who we are and who we have been. This 
     is where it's important for schools to offer a more accurate, 
     a more inclusive multicultural curriculum.
       The classroom is the place where students who come from 
     different ethnic or cultural communities can learn not only 
     about themselves but about one another in an informed, 
     systematic and non-intimidating way. I think the schools 
     offer us our best hope for working it out. I would be very 
     reluctant to depend upon the news media or the entertainment 
     media, which do not have a responsibility to educate.
       Q. How, finally, can the American promise become a reality 
     and not, in Langston Hughes' phrase, a dream deferred?
       A. We will have to free ourselves from the legacy of 
     racism. One way to begin is to acknowledge this legacy, this 
     reality of racism in our past. I think many of our historians 
     are engaging in denial: They want to try to deny this past.
       I think we should face this past and face it bravely. 
     Indeed, once we confront it, once we acknowledge it, it no 
     longer has so much power over us. Because we become aware of 
     its presence in the past, we become, by extension, aware of 
     its presence in our own time. Then, finally, we can address 
     it.

                          ____________________