A recent New York Times compare and contrast piece profiling the lives and evolution of the theories on race of Supreme Court Justice Clarance Thomas and Supreme Court Justice-nominee Sonia Sotamayor detailed how, despite visits to Puerto Rico in her youth and growing up in the Nuyorican [New Yorker-Puerto Rican] community, it was really her arrival at college that proved a catalyst for Judge Sotamayor's personal ethnic identity:
In New York, Puerto Ricans were pitied for poverty and blamed for crime. Popular images were dominated by the gangs of “West Side Story” and bumbling comics with broken English. According to friends, Ms. Sotomayor was not active in her high school’s small Latino club. Ethnicity was not something to be ashamed of, they said, but they did not really celebrate it either.
But on Princeton’s manicured campus, Ms. Sotomayor explored her roots in a way she never had on trips to Puerto Rico or in “Nuyorican” circles back home. In a Puerto Rican studies seminar, she absorbed the literature, economics, history and politics of the island, and by senior year, she was writing a thesis on its first democratically elected governor. [...]
Americans are, from the moment they are born, exposed to the realities of race and ethnicity in the United States. But given the lack--and sometimes hostility--to open and honest discussion of the powerful ways that race and ethnicity have impacted and continue to impact our cultural, social, and economic institutions, we are mostly limited to seeing ourselves (Americans) through a single lens of popular conceptions, perpetuated by popular media representations and cultural myths. The ability to study and reflect on how race and ethnicity, despite their realities as social/historical constructs, are deeply integrated into not only who we as a country have been, but who we might be as we move forward, is an invaluable opportunity. For race and ethnicity, though powerful throughout the world, has particular significance in the United States, a nation founded on the principle of strength through difference, unity through pluralism. Hence our national motto, e pluribus unum, out of many, one.
Like Judge Sotamayor, I have had the privilege of attending an undergraduate program that offered courses examining race and ethnicity through a rigorous academic lens. And I don't use the term "rigorous" lightly; while the idea of the study race and ethnicity may cause some to assume that it is a "fluffy" or "easy" area of study, the reality is quite the opposite. Due to the inherently interdisciplinary nature of the field--one that crosses sociology, ethnography, anthropology, linguistics, history, literature, urban studies, law, and even cultural analyses such as music and media studies--successful students of the subject must master the lexicons and theories of a variety of disciplines. I do not hesitate, as anyone who has discussed my undergraduate experience with me know, to state that my ethnic studies courses were always my most challenging, and significantly more difficult than my political science courses. Given these complexities and challenges in looking at who we are as a nation and how race and ethnicity have importantly shaped who we are, there is and always has been a need for great scholars, authors, and leaders in the field. Ronald Takaki was, in my mind, foremost amongst them.
As the San Francisco Chronicle's Matthai Kuruvila wrote, "Ronald Takaki didn't just teach about race and ethnicity. He helped redefine it." Perhaps most notably, he created the first doctoral-level ethnic studies program in the nation, at UC Berkeley, and helped seed similar departments across California. His students are considered leaders in today's ethnic studies scholarship; one student, Michael Omi, is author of what is sometimes considered a primary textbook of racial and ethnic studies, Omi & Winant's Racial Formation in the United States (1986). He authored over 20 books on the histories of a wide range of American communities, telling stories that had been well known within those communities' oral histories but never before put down on paper.
I had seen his name even as a child. Sitting on my parents' bookshelf was a copy of Takaki's seminal history of Asian Americans, Strangers from a Different Shore. But I never picked it up, intimidated by the size of the volume. It was not until near the end of my first year of college that I read any of his work, in the form of the even larger volume, A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America. I realize now that I should never have been fearful of the size of Takaki's books, for his prose is accessible and eloquent, and though coming from an academic background, A Different Mirror is less of a "history" and more of a "story." By telling the story of America through "a different mirror," that is, a different way of looking at ourselves, Takaki, in the words of one former student, "pushed and prodded us to ask the epistemological question, 'How do you know what you know?' about this history of the people of the United States, especially given the realities of racially diverse populations in America." Though I never had the pleasure of taking a course from Professor Takaki, his teaching and scholarship has deeply affected me, and multiple generations of students.
It took me a while to write this post, not only because others (including professional journalists) have already eulogized him, but also because it greatly saddened me to hear of the death of a writer and teacher who was so influential to my own thinking about such fundamental questions as who I am and who we are, and who we might all become. Ronald Takaki passed away on May 26, two weeks ago, after a lifetime of vibrant action and thinking, priceless contributions to the field of ethnic studies, and a 20-year struggle with multiple sclerosis. He is survived by his wife and three children. His family asks that in lieu of flowers, donations be made in Professor Takaki's name to the Asian Law Caucus, 55 Columbus Ave., San Francisco, CA 94111.
More on Professor Ronald Takaki:
Remember Ron Takaki, AsianWeek
In Memory of Ronald Takaki, Political Affairs
Ronald Takaki, Cal ethnic studies pioneer, dies, SF Chronicle
What does it mean to be Asian American [in the Age of Obama]?, Jeff Yang, SF Chronicle
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