title controversy, takaki reading

Let me start off by saying that this is the first time I've ever posted any of my thoughts/opinions/words in an online journal/blog-like forum. I can't help but associate this with our incredibly voyeuristic self-obsessed generation, and I feel completely vulnerable sharing with annoymous peoples. That said, I can't wait to read everything everyone else posts, haha

I wasn't completely shocked when Francis told us that "history" was omitted from the title of the course. It was definitely a leading question though since it was prefaced by talk of how we were pioneers. Since Asian American history has not been taught before, calling this course as such would not only be calling attention to the lack of courses being offered on the subject but would also bring with it the need to continue expansion of this neglected topic. Also, people are afraid of new and different things, it's best to avoid controversy.

Reading Takaki, I felt overwhelmed with information that I desperately wished I had had access to during my educational career. My college career, has therefore appropriately consisted of unlearning everything else, and this is still, as I'm in my senior year, yet another history of which I was completely unaware. It seems almost absurd though because not only did I grow up around many Asian Americans, I just had never questioned the societal norms that had brought about the suppression of Asian history as I had for other minority groups.

What I found particularly striking was the sheer numbers in which Asian Americans immigrated to the United States, and how such a large number of people could go without historical recognition and mass appreciation for so long. Takaki writes that "eurocentric history serves no one. It only shrouds the pluralism that is America and that makes our nation so unique, and thus the possibilty of appreciating our rich racial and cultural diversity remains a dream deferred." He then goes on to list numbers and dates and anecdotes, all displaying racism, evincing hatred and exemplifying the institutionalized discrimination that kept Asian Americans as outsiders, as "strangers from a different shore." This Eurocentric spin has kept Americans from getting to know each other, has kept us in our own neighborhoods, in our own boxes and away from the "outsiders" that we are made to view as strange and not at all like us. Not only do I think it's xenophobia, but very much a capitalist tool to isolate and alienate us from one and other. That just might be the socialist in me, whatever.

It was also particularly uncomfortable to think of our "founding fathers" in such racist terms.

Takaki of course is telling his story, all the left out bits and important stuff for him. This is all new to me so I'll take it and decipher it as I can, but it seems like even in Takaki's history of Asian Americans some are bound to be forgotten.