A Different Mirror

Chapter 4 details the ethnocide of indigenous populations in the United States. Takaki begins with a statement from Andrew Jackson, who devoted his military and political career to appropriating land from Native Americans and moving them “West, toward ‘the Stony Mountains’” (79). As a military leader, Jackson killed Native Americans with impunity; as president, he repeatedly reneged on promises and violated land treaties. He justified these actions as part of a “civilizing” mission on the march to “progress” and frequently framed his goals in the paternalistic language of a father-figure protecting his “children” (81-82). In reality, “He was clearing the way for the rise of the Cotton Kingdom” (82).

In the remainder of the chapter, Takaki narrates the devastating effects of the government’s agenda on indigenous populations. He provides case studies from several groups—the Choctaws of Mississippi, Cherokees of Georgia, and the Pawnee who lived in the territory West of the Mississippi River. He describes the integrity of their social, economic, and political organization prior to the incursion of white settlers. In each case, they were removed from their lands through deceit, manipulation, and violence, enduring immense suffering and death in their forced relocation to reservations. The letters, songs, and poems of the Choctaws, Cherokees, and Pawnees document these degradations, which also are supported by firsthand accounts from travelers like Alexis de Tocqueville.

Takaki ends the chapter with a discussion of the transcontinental railroad and the expansion of the Western frontier, which continuously displaced Native Americans from their lands and reservations. Corporate interests successfully lobbied for the 1871 Indian Appropriation Act, which declared that “no Indian nation or tribe within the territory of the United States shall be acknowledged or recognized as an independent nation, tribe, or power, with whom the United States may contract by treaty” (95). From this legislation, companies received the right to continue building railroads through Native American territories and also dissolved their political sovereignty.

Chapter 5 describes the political, economic, and social conditions that African Americans experienced in the 1800s, spanning the Early Republic, Civil War, and Reconstruction periods. Takaki begins by comparing the North with the South. After the American Revolution, slavery was not legal in the North; however, blacks still experienced racism, discrimination, and political disenfranchisement. They were unable to vote, excluded from most forms of wage employment, and largely segregated from white society. They also “encountered a powerful cluster of negative racial images” that perpetuated stereotypes and prejudice (100).

In the South blacks remained enslaved until 1863, with some states like Texas refusing to recognize emancipation until the Confederate government was defeated in 1865. The vast majority of slaves worked on plantations in brutalizing conditions. To justify slavery, white Southerners adopted paternalistic attitudes toward blacks, claiming they were incapable of looking after themselves. As Takaki writes, “To many white southerners, slaves were childlike, irresponsible, affectionate, and happy. Altogether these alleged qualities represented a type of personality—the Sambo” (104). The image of the Sambo—as happy, docile, deferential, and loyal—also presented white Southerners with “psychological assurances that their slaves were under control” (105). However, the reality was quite different, and Takaki documents numerous instances of slaves resisting their oppression outright, such as running away, fighting, and organizing rebellions as well as relying on more covert forms of resistance like pretending to be too sick to work, stealing, lying, and poisoning their masters.

In the second half of the chapter, Takaki narrates the history of slavery, disenfranchisement, and racism through the biographies of three influential African American men. He begins with Frederick Douglass who, born a slave, ran away to the North and became a defining figure in the abolitionist movement. Although critical of slavery, Douglass also identified with his biracial heritage and adopted a philosophical approach that advocated “for an integrated and interracial America, a society without racial barriers” (118).

Douglass’s philosophy contrasted with the position of Martin Delany, who Takaki credits as the “Father of Black Nationalism” (118). Delany believed that emigration to Africa was the only solution for blacks to cast off the oppression of whites and keep their racial heritage intact. While Delany was disillusioned with America, he still enlisted in the Union Army, willing to risk his life for emancipation and the chance for economic independence. This economic independence, however, did not materialize for most African Americans, as they were not granted land during the Reconstruction period and were forced into sharecropping and menial wage labor.

Takaki’s third life history focuses on Booker T. Washington, whose message of economic self-reliance and cooperation resonated with white Southerners who were unwilling to accept blacks as social equals. Although sometimes mistaken as an accommodationist, Washington worked behind the scenes to combat discrimination, funding lawsuits against large corporations that aimed to segregate and disenfranchise blacks. Takaki concludes the chapter with a discussion of the highly repressive conditions that blacks faced at the end of the 19th century—from voting restrictions like poll taxes and literacy requirements, to unremitting acts of lynching, to the 1896 US Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson, which upheld the constitutionality of segregation.

Chapter 6 describes the English oppression of the Irish and their emigration to the United States in the 19th century. Similar to the experiences of Native Americans and African Americans, the Irish were dispossessed of their lands in Ireland and “depicted and degraded as the ‘Other’—as ‘savages,’ outside of ‘civilization,’ and ‘wild’” (131). In the 1700s the Irish, who mainly were subsistence farmers, owned only 14% of the land in Ireland. The English owned the rest, and in the 1800s they transformed their agricultural estates into ranches, evicting large numbers of Irish farmers and their families from their lands.

In 1845 a potato blight intensified the suffering of the Irish, destroying about 40% of potato crops, which was their primary food staple. The English continued to export grain and livestock while the Irish starved and died from malnutrition and debilitating diseases. The Great Famine, which lasted nearly a decade, prompted 1.5 million Irish to migrate to America; between 1855 and 1900, 2 million more Irish emigrated.

The Irish came to America for jobs. Initially the men worked as unskilled laborers, primarily on the railroads. Although Irish immigrants experienced prejudice and discrimination in America, they did not form class solidarity with other ethnic groups. Rather, they pursued strategies of assimilation. Over time, they identified as “white” and adopted an “antiblack” stance, perpetuating the same kinds of virulent racism they had experienced in Ireland (142).

The Irish also came to settle in the United States permanently. They pursued paths of citizenship and gained the right to vote, consolidating their political power, which they used to buttress their economic security by offering municipal, construction, and industrial jobs to Irish compatriots. These sectors also became highly unionized, which further protected their political-economic base, largely to the exclusion of other ethnic groups.

The status of Irish women also differed from other immigrant communities like the Italians and Greek. More than half of Irish immigrants were women, a large majority of them unmarried and unattached to families when they arrived in the United States. Valuing economic self-sufficiency, they worked as domestic servants, seamstresses, dressmakers, and factory workers. Over time, they accumulated enough savings to support dependents, including their daughters, whom they sent to schools to become professional nurses, teachers, and secretaries. Takaki concludes the chapter by noting the success of these assimilation strategies: “Working as ‘factory girls’ and railroad builders, entering politics and business, and speaking English with an ‘American accent,’ they transformed themselves into Americans” (154).

In Chapter 7 Takaki describes Americans’ incursions into Mexico and the conquest of the Southwestern and Western parts of the country. In the 1820s Americans crossed into present-day Texas to expand cotton cultivation. In 1830 the Mexican government, wary of these settlements, denied further immigration into Texas and outlawed slavery, undercutting Americans’ reliance on cheap labor. Americans ignored these prohibitions and “continued to cross the border as illegal aliens” (156). In 1836 American rebels initiated an insurrection in San Antonio, converting the Alamo mission into a barricaded fort. They renamed the territory the “Lone Star Republic” (157). The Mexican government retaliated, killing most of the rebels. Americans organized a counterattack, enacting widespread casualties and forcing the local commander to cede Texas, which the United States annexed in 1845.

Americans employed similar tactics of hostility and conquest, known as “the Texas game” (162), throughout the Southwest, committing atrocities against Mexican civilian populations. In 1848 the Mexican government ceded about half of its territory to the United States for $15 million—comprising the present-day states of California, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and parts of Colorado and Utah. Americans justified this conquest through a doctrine of “manifest destiny,” which also supported their “belief in American Anglo-Saxon superiority” (164).

Meanwhile, for Mexicans, American imperialism turned them into “foreigners in their own land’” (165). They became a minority group with very little political representation or power, a situation exacerbated by discoveries of mineral rich deposits in the West and Southwest. Americans—desiring land for mining, cultivation, and ranching—enacted repressive laws and exploitative taxes that further dispossessed Mexicans of their property with little recourse to reclamation. Mexicans turned to wage labor to survive and support their families, working in industries like agriculture, ranching, mining, and the railroads. They made important contributions to these sectors—transforming dry lands into productive agricultural fields, laying down railroad tracks for the expansion of the Market Revolution, and mining copper that made electricity possible for the rest of America.

The importance of these contributions was not recognized by most Americans. Forced into “a caste labor system—a racially stratified occupational hierarchy” (173), Mexicans were paid substantially less than white workers doing the same job. To counter these inequalities, Mexicans often went on strike, forming alliances with other minority groups, like the Japanese, to demand better working conditions, successfully demonstrating an “interethnic class solidarity” (175). These strikes often were supported by mutualistas, benevolent associations that provided strikers with entertainment, food, and clothing. As Takaki concludes, “Through these ethnic organizations, Mexicans were resisting labor exploitation and racism” (176).

In Chapter 8 Takaki discusses Chinese migration to the United States, which began in 1849. Many Chinese came to America to flee political and economic conflicts, such as those caused by the British Opium Wars and peasant land rebellions. Almost all the migrants were men, with the great majority going to California to mine gold. In 1852 California enacted a tax that targeted the profits of foreign miners. Unable to become naturalized citizens (because of the Naturalization Act of 1790) and facing declining incomes, Chinese workers increasingly turned to the railroad, manufacturing, and agricultural industries to make a living.

Similar to other minority groups, Chinese migrants encountered racism and became targets of white violence, especially during economic downturns: “‘Ethnic antagonism’ in the mines, factories, and fields forced thousands of Chinese into self-employment—stores, restaurants, and especially laundries” (184). Institutionalized racism also was prevalent. For instance, the Chinese Exclusionary Act of 1882 prohibited Chinese laborers from entering the country for 10 years and denied any possibility of naturalized citizenship.

While Chinese men migrated to the United States in large numbers during the 19th century, Chinese women mostly remained in China. Takaki discusses the cultural proscriptions that limited women’s movement, such as the norms that compelled women to stay home and take care of their children and aging in-laws. Most men regarded their sojourn to the United States as a temporary arrangement, expecting to reunite with their families in China. From their perspective, it was more feasible for wives to remain home. Repressive legislation in the United States also made it difficult for women to gain entry to the country. Accounts of Chinese women in the United States during the 19th century are largely limited to descriptions of prostitutes, many of whom were forced into the sex industry.

The presence of Chinese women in the United States increased substantially after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Fires destroyed municipal records and made it possible for Chinese men to claim natural-born citizenship. Their newfound status granted them certain rights, like bringing their families to the United States to settle permanently. Takaki concludes the chapter by describing some of the cultural tensions between second-generation children and their immigrant parents—tensions that often centered on educational opportunities and American ideologies of individualism.