Takaki ch 10

In the chapter “Pacific Crossings: Seeking the Land of Money Trees” Takaki discusses the immigration of Asian countries. Japanese immigrants came to America to escape the high taxes due to Japan’s attempt to establish a military that could compete with Americas. America offered much more money than Japan did and many woman, men, and families chose to move from Japan. Women from Japan whose customs called for arranged marriage would move to America to meet a husband they had only seen pictures of. They were called “picture brides” and would end up doing large amounts of work in the New World.
Many Japanese workers dominated companies working class and when conditions where unfair they often voiced their opinion. Workers got frustrated with the uprisings and strikes that Japanese workers would bond together to accomplish. Planters began to bring over other nationalities in order to diversify their workers. They to their laborers created competition between races in order to stop the employees from banding together and form strikes. By pinning Filipinos, Chinese, and Koreans against each other they created “race pride” which increased productivity as different races wished to show how good they were and how much better they were than other countries.
The way Americans used other nationalities as pawns in their game of commerce shows how privilege was established in favor of whites over those with a different color skin. Planters used these people to make money with out considering the humanity of these people. Races where forced to compete against each other, which made them work hard for their country. The harder these people worked the more money the white man made, and these nationalities were seldom offered a chance to become in a better possession. Whites could be promoted while they were forced to stay in the working class.
Why did American planters feel the need to keep other nationalities as a working class? White planters wanted to keep power in the hands of their own race. Whites had shown this need for power in past experiences with those of color when dealing with the Indians and Africans. In recognition of the link between power and money whites kept Koreans, Asians, Puerto Ricans, and many others in working class status. This kept them working to make money for their white bosses who remained rich and getting richer, while many immigrants were forced to struggle to get by. This is just another example of why whites established privilege over those of color.