Sociology 4949: Reading Guide

Takaki, A Different Mirror

Takaki, chapter 1. Where did the title of the book come from, and what does Takaki see as unique in his treatment of the history of major race and ethnic groups in the United States? How does he support his contention that establishment scholars have treated the ethnic history of America too narrowly?

Takaki, chapter 2. How does Takaki use Shakespeare's play in this chapter? How does he compare and contrast English treatment of the indigenous people in Ireland, Virginia, and New England? How does he explain the differences in attitudes toward Indians in New England and Virginia? What kind of Indian policy is advocated by the young Virgina politician Thomas Jefferson?

Takaki, chapter 3. Why does slavery develop in Virginia and not the New England (the Massachusetts Bay Colony)? Why is there a shift landowners' dependence on indentured servants, mostly white, to dependence on black slaves? What was the Bacon rebellion, and why were its white participants eventually treated so differently from its black participants? Who are "the giddy mutlitude?" What was Jefferson's attitude toward slavery?

Takaki, chapter 4. What was the background to President Andrew Jackson's policies of Indian removal beyond the Mississippi? How did his policies accord with federal law and with court decisions? How was the allotment strategy applied to the situations of the Choctaws? How were the Cherokees made to agree to give up their lands by treaty? What happened to Indians who had been guaranteed long-term sanctuary in these lands beyond the Mississippi?

Takaki, chapter 5. What was the attitude toward and treatment of free blacks in the North in the nineteenth century? How about the treatment of slaves in the South, where they constituted 35% of the total population on the eve of the Civil War? Where did the Sambo stereotype come from and what function did it serve for white Southerners? Be aware of the contrasting stories of Frederick Douglass and Martin Delany. After the civil war, why did the freed ex-slaves receive no land and what were the consequences?

Takaki, chapter 6. What were the conditions of Irish life in the mid-19th century that led a greater proportion of the Irish to emigrate to America than any other European country? What was the relative role of the potato famine? commercialization of agriculture? English colonial policy? What kind of jobs did the Irish find as they arrived in America? Why did the Irish initially compare their status to that of black and later reject that identification and take a leading role in events like the 1863 anti-black riot in New york City? Why were so many Irish girls and women drawn into domestic service once they arrived in the United States? How did the second generation of Irish (those born in the U.S.) improve their position? What was the Irish role in the creation of a unionized white working class?

Takaki, chapter seven, " Foreigners in their Land: Manifest Destiny in the Southwest." How did what is now California become part of Mexico, and what kind of social system confronted the first significant numbers of American foreigners to arrive there? How about what is now Texas? How did slavery become an issue, and what finally led to war between the United States and Mexico? How did American soldiers comport themselves during that war and what was the outcome? Notice the elements of what we would later call ethnic cleansing, in terms not only of killing but of rape and intimidation (see Ulysses Grant's letter, p.175). How did Anglos come to dominate the political decision-making places in places like California and Texas, even though Mexicans were also granted suffrage? And what did that mean in terms of land ownership, taxes, and the development of a racially stratified labor force? Finally how did a tradition of labor protest develop and who were the mutualistas?

Takaki, chapter eight, "Searching for Gold Mountain." Why were most of the 19th century immigrants from China men, and the relatively few women often brought over as prostitutes? What consequences did that have for the kind of life created in the early Chinatowns in the U.S.? What kind of work was open to Chinese immigrants, and why were they at such a disadvantage when it came to organizing unions or pursuing their rights in American courts? When and why were the Chinese eventually excluded altogether from immigration?

Takaki, chapter 9. How and why have American policies toward Indians fluctuated so dramatically over the years, especially in relation to the issue of culture ("why can't they be like us?")? What are the basic sources of conflict between Inidian nations and white American society? Why have American Indian cultures been so resistant to assimilation?

Takaki, chapter 10, "Pacific Crossings." Why did Japanese immigration to Hawaii and the United States include so much higher a proportion of women than Chinese immigration had included, and what were the consequences of this difference? How did employers in Hawaii try to use diversity of the work force to divide workers and prevent higher wages and unionization? How did "pidgin English" develop and what role did it play in developing a national Hawaiian identity? Why was there so much more anti-Japanese sentiment in California than in Hawaii, and why did so many Japanese on the west coast of the United States become farmers? How did it happen that Japanese were eventually prohibited from owning land, obtaining citizenship, and eventually even from immigrating?

Takaki, chapter 11. What were the forces driving the emigration of Jews from eastern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th century? What were some of the restrictions on their lives within the shtlel? What were the main sources of anti-Semitism both in Europe and the United States? What kinds of work were open to Jews arriving in the United States in the early 20th century, and more generally, what kind of reception did they get in the big cities of the east coast, especially New York City? What was the role of women in the Jewish immigrant community?

Takaki, chapter 12, "El Norte: the Borderland of Chicano America" What were the push and pull factors that led to a rapid growth in the Mexican population of the Southwest from 1900-1930? What kind of jobs were these immigrants finding, and why did they make so little headway with unionization? What parallels do you see between Mexicans and Mexican-Americans in the Southwest and African Americans in the south, in terms of racial etiquette, segregated schools, and the like? What is the evidence that Mexicans were perceived as a race (and an inferior one at that) during these years? What was the nature and scope of the "repatriation" in the 1930s? How was Mexican culture preserved in the barrios, and what was assistencia?

Takaki, chapter 13, "To the Promised Land: Blacks in the Urban North" What were the pushes and pulls that drove the "Great Migration" of blacks out of the rural South into the north, east, and west beginning in the early 20th century? What kind of jobs did they initially find, and when did they begin to move into factory work on a large scale? How and why did population density become so intense in black neighborhoods of cities like Chicago and New York? Who was Langston Hughes and what was his role in what became known as the Harlem Renaissance? How were blacks in urban areas affected by the Great Depression, and how did they come to play an important role in the CIO union organizing campaigns of the 1930s?

Takaki, chapter 14: "Through a Glass Darkly." How did World War II affect minority groups and race relations in the U.S? What was the impact of the war economy? Participation in the military? Why were the Chinese exclusion laws lifted? Why were Japanese Americans who lived on the West Coast put in internship camps, while the even larger number who lived in Hawaii were not? What was the thinking behind the planned March on Washington by black Americans, and why didn't it happen? What were the ways in which America moved to repudiate legalized racial discrimination in the period following World War II?