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SAN FRANCISCO — The bald statistic released the other day informing us
that the population of the state of California was no longer dominated by a
Caucasian majority, having given way to a fast-growing coalition of
Hispanics and Asians, should have surprised no one.
Looking at California's profile — from population mix, to
technology, to education, to lifestyle, to entertainment, to food variety,
and others — is to take a peek at the United States of tomorrow.
No one is suggesting that Lincoln, Nebraska, is going to evolve into
Los Angeles
completely or anytime soon, but you get the idea — the West Coast is
showing the way, which isn't exactly breaking news.
What is new and revelatory is the thinking that has gone into
explanations for
the sociological development of California's ethnic mix.
A new book by award-winning historian Ronald Takaki ("Double Victory:
A Multicultural History of America in World War II," Little, Brown and
Co., Boston, 2000, US$27.95) scrutinizes the contradictions of the "good
war" with all the honesty and maturity
expected of this distinguished scholar.
The book goes beyond California's border and Takagi examines the
hypocrisies of the period.
The war for the "Four Freedoms" was fought by a Jim Crow (segregated)
army; jobs in the "arsenal of democracy" were not open to all regardless of
race; bloody race riots in the cities denied "freedom from fear" to blacks,
Mexicans and other minorities; the fight against Nazism was accompanied by
the failure of the U.S. government to rescue Jewish refugees; and the
leader of the free world signed the executive order for the internment of
Japanese Americans into concentration camps.
Takaki contends that the minorities were not just victims, but
important actors in history, insisting that their nation live up to is
founding principle of equality and to defend the world's incomplete -but
best hope for-democracy.
Takaki's premise is that minorities fought for a "double victory"
against facism abroad and prejudice at home.
A uniform did not guarantee respect. Takaki cites may case in which
servicemen from minorities faced discrimination and violence during and
following the war. Daniel Inouye, later to become a U.S. Senator from
Hawaii, lost an arm during fighting in Italy. Takaki retells his
experience in San Francisco on his way home: "Entering a barbershop with
his empty right sleeve pinned to his army jacket covered with ribbons and
medalsŠCaptain Inouye was told: 'We don't serve Japs here.'"
So where do we go from here? Has the U.S. population matured out of its
prejudices? Does the patriotic instinct among minority Americans mean race
problems are over? Will California be overrun by Asian software programmers
and their relatives who start ethnic carry-out restaurants? Will education
accomplishment levels be altered by kindergartens full of Hispanics?
The dark and worst side of the argument is goes like this: the Anglo-Saxon
group of Americans in the 20th Century contributed to a society that by
all measures was the most advanced in history, "so why do we have to share
it with newcomers?"
I suppose that mean and short-sighted view was akin to my own narrow but
innocent, sort of tongue-in-cheek, quip expressed during university days
that "Western civilization peaked
in 1950, with its epicenter in West Los Angeles." But, so what?
Takaki, who is a third-generation American of Japanese heritage, once
asked rhetorically "You want to see how America will appear in the next
century? Look at Hawaii."
His prediction has come true as far as California goes, for now.
California and the great race and ethnic syndromes in America are
unfinished pieces of work As "works in progress," they are not bad.
The positive changes which these syndromes display are reasons why
California is in the forefront of the world's technological, intellectual,
political and social change.
Edward Neilan (eneilan@crisscross.com) is a veteran journalist, based in Tokyo, who covers East Asia and writes weekly for World Tribune.com.