A Different Mirror

Ronald Takaki was a historian, social activist, prolific writer, beloved teacher, and a key figure in the field of ethnic studies, which he helped establish and develop as a distinct discipline at the University of California, Berkeley.

Born in Hawaii in 1939 to a Japanese immigrant father and a Japanese American mother, Takaki grew up in a multicultural environment with many other ethnic minorities, learning different languages and lifestyles. When Takaki was five, his father died and his mother remarried a Chinese immigrant. While Takaki’s parents did not have much formal education, they valued leaning and enrolled Takaki at a private school. During his senior year of high school, one of Takaki’s teachers greatly influenced him, shaping the trajectory of his professional career. The teacher pushed Takaki to consider epistemological questions like, “How do you know what you know?” (442). Takaki later applied these questions to his scholarly endeavors, as evidenced in A Different Mirror, where he interrogates “how we know what we know” about American history.

At the urging of his high school teacher, Takaki attended the College of Wooster in Ohio. There he experienced culture shock, as most students assumed that he was not American because of his Japanese heritage, a misperception that he frequently experienced during his lifetime. In college Takaki also met his future wife, and while her parents accepted him after the birth of their son, they initially opposed the relationship because of Takaki’s Japanese background.

In 1961 Takaki enrolled at a doctoral program in American history at the University of California, Berkeley. He wrote his dissertation on the topic of slavery, and in 1967 UCLA hired him to teach black history, a newly developed course in the history department. Takaki narrates a story about his first day teaching the course that reveals much about his approach to history and its revolutionary potential:

Before I could begin my lecture, a tall black student stood up in the middle of the classroom and raised his hand. ‘Well, Professor Taa-ka-ki,’ he declared, ‘what revolutionary tools are we going to learn in this class?’ After hesitating for a moment, I replied, ‘We will be studying the history of the United States as it related to black people. We will also be strengthening and sharpening our critical thinking skills and our writing skills. And these can be revolutionary tools, if you want to make them so’ (444).

At UCLA, Takaki engaged in social activism and encouraged the university to hire more diverse faculty and develop more diverse courses. Despite Takaki’s impressive teaching credentials and scholarship, UCLA denied him tenure. UC Berkeley then offered him a tenured associate professor position in the newly instituted Department of Ethnic Studies, where he helped develop a new curriculum for undergraduate and graduate students. The courses he taught, with their exploration of racial and ethnic diversity, served as the basis for Takaki’s subsequent books, including A Different Mirror.