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Article Critique
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Study Questions for Readings: Ronald Takaki

Article Critique Instructions:

Directions for Study Questions
In the first reading, Takaki addresses the diversity of US history. The other readings address immigration issues from an archaeological, ethnographic, or journalistic perspective. After you have read the readings, please answer each of the following study questions. I’ll look for thoughtful, original, insightful, well-written responses that use appropriate examples to support your points.
-Ronald Takaki was a Japanese-American professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, Berkeley.
1. Why did Takaki feel so uncomfortable during his taxi ride and how did he characterize the culturally shaped attitude of his taxi driver?
2. In the body of this reading, Takaki discusses various minority groups in US history in turn: African Americans, Asian Americans, Chicanos (Mexican Americans), Irish Americans, Jewish Americans, and Indians (Native Americans). Briefly identify his key point for three of these groups. What is his larger point here?

-Ambos Nogales (McGuire, Steel Walls and Picket Fences) constitutes what scholars call a “cultural borderland,” that is, a space created by a border where culture mix, move, and collide.
1. What are the different meanings and impact of the border wall McGuire has studied between Nogales, Arizona and Nogales, Sonora?
2. How does this ethnographic discussion compare to other ways “the wall” is discussed in the media, by politicians, and in mainstream US culture?
3. What did you learn from this article and what is the “take-away” or “moral of the story”?

-In the Introduction to Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies, medical anthropologist Seth Holmes recounts his own experience of crossing the border with a group of Triqui migrant laborers from San Miguel, Oaxaca.
1. First, how did you feel as you read and thought about Holmes’s narrative? What did you learn from it?
2. Second, why does Holmes argue that such “illegal” migration is necessary rather than voluntary?
3.Third, what are the social, political, and economic structures that shape migrant labor as a system of production, that, as he puts it, exports reproduction costs?
4. What is his point?

-In “Mother was Deported to Mexico” (LA Times), Tatiana Sanchez tells the story of Michael Paulsen and Emma Sanchez.
1. Briefly summarize the story? How has this family sought to cope with their situation? What does this suggest to you about the “culture of immigration in the US?

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Study Questions
Ronald Takaki
The taxi driver was somewhat surprised by Ronald Takaki's well-spoken English that the former asked about how long Ronald has stayed in America. Ronald was aware enough to know that the taxi driver's question and reaction to his English speaking, is an internalized and subtle racial discrimination. Takaki called the discomfort of the situation a "racial divide". This is the taxi driver's belief that it is hard to accept Ronald's "Americaness" because he is not white. This belief has long been discriminating against American immigrants despite having been in the land for centuries (Pettigrew, 2006).
Takaki briefly discussed several minorities that had reached American land long before the ancestors of whom white American people consider "American". One of the minorities is the Powhatan Indians who had been in the land of Virginia before the English reached the land in the 1600s (Stebbins). Africans were the first settlers of Plymouth before an English pilgrim colonized the land (Brown). Takaki also mentioned the settlement in America of his Japanese grandfather in the 1880s which hints on the Asian settlement in America for over a century (Daniels). In conclusion, Takaki implies that America has long been occupied by diverse peoples and that American ancestors are not originally white especially if the basis is the first settlers of America.
“Steel Walls and Picket Fences”
McGuire discusses that the U.S.-Mexican border wall does more than just separate the countries. This border across Ambo Nograles signifies sovereignty, restrictions, and control. The design of the wall is not only for people to look through from the other side; it is also a strategic design for officers to retaliate to stone-throwers. This wall is also built with more security to prevent the crossing of borders. Thus, emotional attachment to the old wall has to be forgotten with the rebuilt of the wall. The routines and communications that the people around the borders had created are now subject to change (McGuire).
McGuire studied the border wall with primary consideration for the ethnographic influence the wall has had on people for years. However, in the mainstream media, the wall is either called the "Trump wall" or Trump's project(BBC News; The Washinton Post; San Antonio Express-News). The mainstream culture view this rebuilt of border wall as Trump's project as part of his campaign for the nearing election.
As a takeaway, I learned that borders like the one that separates U.S. and Mexico can be viewed and used in many ways, and among those are ethnographic and political views. While the people living around the border care about the wall's long-standing role to their lifestyle, politics use this border to amplify their agenda and power.
“Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies”
Having read Seth Holmes' Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies is enough to open a discussion on labor exploitation of illegal immigrants. Holmes' narrative does not only tell the lifes...
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