The Role Of Race In A Different Mirror By Ronald Takaki

In A Different Mirror, Ronald Takaki told a story that linked together multiracial groups in which there are many sides to the story more than just domination and conquest in America, where immigrants did not come by choice and natives who lived on the lands before the Americans came were forced to leave or sell their lands because either it was for survival. Even when choice was available, it was limited. America was a new country compared to other countries, in which the people were still wondering who goes to which hierarchal level because it was not yet stratified. It took a great deal of work to create a norm of white superiority and minority insubordination and inferiority. Race played an important role in making the modern United States

The Native Americans were the earliest and only settlers in the North American continents for more than thousands of years. Like their European counterparts, the English colonists justified the taking of their territories was because the natives were not entitled to the land because they lacked a work ethic in which shows that the colonists did not understand the Native Americans system of work and ownership of property. They believed the “Indians seemed to lack everything the English identified as civilized” (Takaki, Pg. 33). Because the settlers were living far away from civilizations, to ensure that they were civilized people, the settlers had negative images of the Native Americans so that they would not be influenced and live like the how the natives do, ensuring that these groups are savages who are uncivilized. Many began to believe this was God’s plans for them to civilize the country in which many would push westward and drive the Indians out to promote civilization and progress. While the United States was still in its early stages of development,

Africans unlike the Irish or the Chinese did not come willingly to America, in which they were captured and brought to America by slave ships then sold as slaves. Slaves were in high demand in which having indentured servants became less valuable in which the institution of slavery was strengthened overtime after Bacon Rebellion because the planter class now fear to have white workers for fear the social order would be disrupted (Takaki, pg. 59). Slavery helped to shape the history of the United States in which this institution made possible for the formation of the American Revolutionary ideals because slaves were running the nation through the work they were doing. This gave time for the leaders to formulate and plan the revolution. It also helped to fuel early globalization and the global market, the nation economy and capitalism through the slave trade. All these things gave rise to modern industry, modern finance, modern investment, new system of banking, in which it helped to give rise to the creation of wage laborers, in which this helped to finance the Industrial Revolution. With the rise of the cotton production, slaves became more valuable, in which cotton accelerates the value of slaves. Although slaves were an important source of labor for the Market Revolution, Industrial Revolution, and