Iron Cages: Race and Culture in 19th-Century America

Iron Cages American History from the days after the revolutionary war to the Spanish American War during a time when the country grew in size, population, and importance. Takaki looks at these issues showing American philosophy of moving westard and expanding trade. He focuses on the race relatted issues of the period such as the roles of Native Ameiricans, Blacks and Chinese in this country.

Professor Takaki picks up where Max Weber left off, in that he illustrates how white men of means - those "culture makers" of early American society, effectively raised the American level of technical rationalization to not only oppress Africans, Asians, Mexicans, and Native Americas, but how that heightened level of rationalization ultimately subsumed those "culture makers" themselves. (He briefly illustrates how this animus was turned toward women in helping to define what white men were not.) He connects the ascendency of technical rationalization to the rationalization employed by a religious ethic that stresses religious salvation through work and the suppression of natural instincts. His study is not accusatory; it is illustrative. By use of diaries and works culled from the deepest annals of history, Professor Takaki points out and points to the vulnerability, ambivalence, befuddlement and powerlessness felt and experienced by the founding fathers, who looked to build a moral nation - one not mirroring the licentiousness and dissipation of Great Britain. The very mores, however, advanced by the founding fathers, in twisted and convoluted turns, gave rise to the very "profligacy" and "luxury" that threatened the infant nation. It is from this point forward where the Professor effectively links the oppression of black slavery to other forms of white racial animus experienced by those groups not labeled, or hesitantly so, as white and particularly male. Joel Kovel's White Racism: A Psychohistory is both a good and interesting follow-up read.

I was privileged to be Ronald Takaki's student at the University of California, Berkeley when he was completing his research on this insightful, wonderfully enlightening work. The course he taught from his research was the most meaningful, stimulating, truly inspirational I have taken in my many years as a student. Dr. Takaki is not only intellectually incandescent, but is a profoundly humane and compassionate man. As a high school social studies teacher, I have included Dr. Takaki's premises and conclusions in every class I teach and never fail to see the same sort of epiphanies in my students that I, myself, experienced. Dr. Takaki makes entirely comprehensible the paradigm of racism, sexism and elitism which has so long prevailed in our society; and his observations are as pertinent and contemporary today as they were a quarter of a century ago. A marvelous book!

Takaki explores race and it relation to the economic intent of the majority. He uses people such as Thomas Jefferson, Dr. Rush, Roosevelt, and others to illustrate differing ideas in dealing with the race problems. Excelent book for those who want to understand where racist ideals originated from and how these same ideals are still played out today.