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A review by daumari
A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America by Ronald Takaki
4.0
This is the revised addition, with extra chapters added in 2008 to more fully reflect the history of various groups in America including Afghan immigrants and the post-9/11 world. A solid introduction to American history and the parallels between various groups as they immigrated, were forcibly brought here, or were invaded. I'm a bit loathe to say this is the "hidden" part of American history, but if you think back to your schooling, how much space is given to immigration, and how often is it a paragraph about Ellis Island?
The most striking aspect to me was how much of American's immigration waves are due to labor, in a very cyclical way: "oh hey, we need cheap labor so let's import as many of these folks as we can; oh no there's too many of them we don't want to be taken over so let's ban them/send them home; oh wait we need cheap labor where's another place we can exploit", rinse and repeat. I'm a fourth generation Chinese American so it's a familiar story to me (familial, even), and I am quick to remind my social feeds of how the Chinese Exclusion Act set the blueprint for restrictive immigration police in the United States. The frustrating aspect to my more organized-labor minded friends is how often solidarity would've bonded the working class immigrants together, if not for the easy division tactic of xenophobia.
Strongly recommend this to supplement or educate yourself about the history of this country, and certainly for the reading lists y'all made in 2020 that you're definitely going to get around to reading in 2021, right?
The most striking aspect to me was how much of American's immigration waves are due to labor, in a very cyclical way: "oh hey, we need cheap labor so let's import as many of these folks as we can; oh no there's too many of them we don't want to be taken over so let's ban them/send them home; oh wait we need cheap labor where's another place we can exploit", rinse and repeat. I'm a fourth generation Chinese American so it's a familiar story to me (familial, even), and I am quick to remind my social feeds of how the Chinese Exclusion Act set the blueprint for restrictive immigration police in the United States. The frustrating aspect to my more organized-labor minded friends is how often solidarity would've bonded the working class immigrants together, if not for the easy division tactic of xenophobia.
Strongly recommend this to supplement or educate yourself about the history of this country, and certainly for the reading lists y'all made in 2020 that you're definitely going to get around to reading in 2021, right?