A Different Mirror
Chapter 1 and excerpts of Chapter 4
For: Dr. Linda Purrington and ELA Cohort
From: Ruth Nichols, Marisela Richardson,
Greg Sheppard, and Thelma Stevenson.
March 12, 2005
What is an American?
Ronald Takaki on his way to
Norfolk, Virginia to attend a
conference on multiculturalism.
In the cab, he had a brief
conversation with the driver.
Norfolk Convention Center in Virginia
The cab driver asks Ronald Takaki:
“How long have you been is this country?”
• Ronald Takaki responds, “All my life. I was born in the
United States, my family came from Japan in the 1880s.”
• In a strong southern drawl, the cab driver remarks,
“I was wondering because your English is excellent!”
• At this point, Ronald Takaki was reminded of how
important it was to be attending the conference on
multiculturalism.
• Somehow Ronald Takaki did not look “American” to the
cab driver. Suddenly, they both became uncomfortably
conscience of the racial divide that separated them.
Race in America
Toni Morrison –
• Race has functioned as a metaphor
necessary for the construction of
“Americanness”.
• In the creation of our national identify,
American has been defined as white, with
based on a Eurocentric culture.
• Currently, one-third of Americans do not
trace their origins to Europe.
Racism and Fear
• Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and
tends to produce ferocity toward those who are
not regarded as members of the herd.
Bertrand Russell
• Fact
During World II, Japanese Americans were
interned. German and Italian Americans were
not. Why?
• In Hawaii, 1,444 Japanese were interned.
Japanese Americans were a large part of the
population of Hawaii. Large scale internment
would disrupt the economy. p. 379
A Brief History of the United States
of America
• An excerpt from Michael Moore’s
“Bowling for Columbine”
• The clip emphasizes that fear often motivates racism,
injustice, and hatred
• The clips you will see are intended to challenge your
preconceptions and beliefs
– Just as books such as The Culturally Proficient School by
Randall Lindsey and A Different Mirror by Ronald Takaki inform
and challenge us
• The next slide has a review from praize.com,
a Christian website
A Review “Bowling for Columbine”
• From praize.com, a Christian Website.
• Michael Moore holds up a mirror to American culture.
The mirror shows us a lot about ourselves that we may
be surprised to see, even though we know it's there.
• Moore has masterfully blended various elements of our
culture into this picture. It is enough wild ride to qualify
as entertainment. But it is important because it forces us
to look at our culture and see some of the serious flaws
that lead to tragedies.
A Brief History of the United States
of America
On line version of video clip
http://www.bowlingforcolumbine.com/media/clips/windowsmedia.php?Clip=cartoon1021LG
Racialization of Savagery
- Marisela
Before Columbus:
Vineland
Thorvald Ericksson son of Erik the Red, Vikings sail from
Greenland to the New World. 1000 A.D.
First Europeans settled in the New World
Norwegian missionaries arrived in 1721 to find ruins of
farms and churches
Vikings were unacknowledged until the 1960s
The Racialization of Savagery
 The Indians of Massachusetts Bay
 Native perception of the strangers (p. 24)
 Manitto - “God”
 Mannittowock - “They are Gods”
The Racialization of Savagery
 Crucial timing for the performance of The
Tempest (p. 26)
 “Savage Irish, our enemies”
 Atrocities against families (p. 27)
 God-given responsibilities
English Expansionism
 Irish and Americans had parallels (p, 28)
 Savagery Irish/Indian
 Kidnappings of natives (p. 30)
 Aristotle’s Doctrine – Natural slaves (p. 32)
English Settlement
 Possibility for Friendship and interdependence (p. 33)
 Governor Thomas Gates - Forced labor of natives to serve the
colonists (p. 34)
 Invasion and possession of lands - Chief Powhatan
 Great Migration (p. 35)
 Competition for agricultural land (p. 36)
 Natives had a highly developed agricultural system (p. 38)
Puritan Possession
 Facilitated by unseen pathogens (p. 39)
 Two significant events
Infected rats from Samuel de Champlain's
ships
Shipwrecked infected French sailors on New
England Beach
introduction of small pox
The Will of God
 “Every man in the colony has a duty to bring the savage
Indians to “civil and Christian” government.”
Virginia Promotional 1606
 “For it pleased God to visit these Indains with a great
sickness and such a mortality that of a thousand, above
nine and a half hundred of them died …”
 “God has pushed the Pequots into a “Fiery Oven,” filling
the place with dead bodies.”
Commander John Mason 1637
What Happened in America
 In Virginia
Indian savagery was view as largely cultural
 In New England
Indian Savagery was view as Racialized
(p. 44)
Native Prespective
“These English have gotten our land…”
“So we must be one as they are otherwise
we shall be gone shortly…”
“We plainly see that their chiefest desire is
to deprive us of the privilege of our land,
and drive us off in utter ruin”
Jefferson
 Proclaimed friendship then advocated the removal and
the destruction of hostile Indians (p. 47)
 Stated they were victims of their own culture (p. 47)
 Factors Jefferson did not consider:
Dissemination of the game, for fur trade
Introduction of unfamiliar disease
The appropriation of their land
Brutal warfare waged against them
Jefferson Land Deals
 First, encourage Natives to abandon hunting
to take up agriculture
 Second, sell more manufactured good to the natives
 Run them into debt to create financial ruin
 Forced sale of land
 If you love the land in which your were born… (p. 49)
The Giddy
Multitude - Thelma
“The presence of Africans in America
becomes a reality, but how they came
to be enslaved and numerous has been
largely “hidden” from our understanding
of the making of a multicultural
America” (Takaki, p. 52).
What is “the giddy
multitude”?
A discontented class of indentured
servants, slaves, and landless
freemen, both white and black
The color of their skin?
Black
• Deeply stained with
dirt
• Foul
• Dark or deadly
• Malignant
• Sinister
• Wicked
White
• Purity
• Innocence
• Goodness
Beliefs of English Settlers
about Africans
•
•
•
•
•
Brutish
Belonging to vile race
People of beastly living
Living without god, law, religion
Color of skin – “the devil’s incarnate”
Similarities
(Slaves/Indentured Servants)
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Common social space
Class exploitation/abuse
Iron collars around necks
Beaten/tortured
Required to have passes to leave plantations
Hard work
Came involuntarily
Differences
Slaves
• Reduced to property
• Required to work
without pay
Indentured Servants
• Mostly white = 75%
• Service of 4-7 years
• Work to repay
expenses of their
passage
• Responsible for
production and
improvements
Bacon’s Rebellion
• Nathaniel Bacon sought to protect settlers against the
Indians
• Enlisted the giddy multitude/militia
• Eliminate foe/redirect the white lower class’s anger
• Killed Indians/”glorious” defense of the country
• Charged with treason
• 500 men to Jamestown/burned it down
• Blacks joined him in hopes of being freed from their
slavery
• The largest rebellion known before the American
Revolution
• Five years later still worried about class structure
Two Laws
Slavery De Jure
• Laws for punishing slaves
• Black population increases
• Turn to slavery significant
(after Bacon’s rebellion)
• Planters did not recruit white
servants
• Acreage/slaves given to poor
whites
• African slaves work without
pay/cheaper than Indian and
white servants
The Law of 1691
• No race mixing
• White mothers of interracial
children fined fifteen pounds;
child in servitude 30 years
• Make mullato slaves stigmatize
them as black
• Denied free blacks the right to
vote; hold office; testify in court
• Virginia “elite” allowed poor
whites to abuse blacks
• Blacks owning any livestock
seized, profits given to the poor
• In exchange for white men
enlisting in the American
Revolution –awarded 300 acres
and a slave between the ages
of 10-30
Thomas Jefferson’s Beliefs
•
•
•
•
Worried about class tensions
Owned slaves, thought it was good for economy
By 1822, owned 267 slaves
Capable of cruel punishment for slaves
• James Hubbard
• Felt guilty about owning slaves
• Letters to brother/friends
• Slavery abolished/remove blacks from American society
• Deport future generations/infants trained and later sent away
• Blacks and whites could never coexist
• Color of skin/”inferior” race
• Met opposition from African Americans
• Phyllis Wheatley
• Benjamin Banneker
• Concerned of race mixing/race wars
• “Wolf by the ears” p. 76
Teaching Tolerance
Overview
• World War II, with German Nazism and Aryan
racial supremacy, forced Americans to look at
racism within their own society.
• Americans must stand before the whole world in
support of racial tolerance and equality.
Franklin Roosevelt
• America stood for the four freedoms:
– freedom of speech
– freedom of worship
– freedom from want
– freedom from fear
“Americanism is not, and never was, a matter of race
or ancestry.”
On the eve of World War II
• Asian immigrants were still excluded from citizenship,
and in many states they were unable to own land
• Mexican immigrants were pushed from welfare rolls
and targeted for deportation.
• Indians were confined to reservations where they were
governed by federal regulations.
• In the North, African Americans were restricted to
reservations (ghettos), and in the South were trapped in
the system of peonage – sharecropping.
Revolution from within
• Stop denying our wholeness as members of
humanity as well as one nation
• As Americans, we originally came from many
different shores and our diversity has been at the
center of the making of America
• To become visible is to see ourselves and each
other in a different mirror of history
Teaching Cultural Tolerance
• The Caring School Community Program features collaborative, noncompetitive activities which promote helpfulness, inclusiveness, responsibility,
service learning, and academic growth throughout the school. Buddy
Programs feature relationship building and collaborative learning activities
involving younger and older students working together on activities.
• Have students make friendship or remembrance bracelets which can be
exchanged or worn within a school to show solidarity during a crisis or sent to
students in another school.
• Study circles provide small-group, democratic, peer-led discussions which are
a simple way to involve students in dialogue and action on important social
and political issues.
• “The Believing Game” is designed to introduce perspective taking through
role playing and simulations. As students make decisions and face problems
from another's perspective, they may experience feelings similar to those felt
by an individual or group faced with the same circumstances.
• Incorporate multicultural education into your student's daily studies.
Judie Haynes, www.everythingESL.net
Culturally proficient leaders
• Question your assumptions and change your attitude
• Redefine your purpose
• Commit to facing difficult sociocultural problems …not
easy, but tackle it
• Engage others in facing the challenge
• Support others in questioning values, changing
perspectives, developing new ways of behaving
A Different Mirror
Credits:
Ruth Nichols, Marisela Richardson,
Greg Sheppard, and Thelma Stevenson.
March 12, 2005
Questions to Consider
What is the cultural proficiency of your school?
How do you measure it ?
What actions can you take to increase the cultural
proficieny of your school?