Takaki at the City Club
February 27, 2008
SAN FRANCISCO — The Jamison Roundtable at City Club of San Francisco hosted a luncheon featuring world renowned author and historian Ronald Takaki on Feb. 14.
The professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, Berkeley, for more than 35 years captivated an audience of business professionals and executives by leading a discussion titled “We Will All Be Minorities: A History of America for the Coming Century.” The title refers to the U.S. Census estimate that by 2060 whites will no longer be a racial majority. “Whites are already a minority in California,” Takaki explained. “This is a soon-realized destiny for the entire nation.”
The retired professor described how he became a preeminent scholar of history and ethnic studies: He was born and raised in Oahu, where his neighbors were Chinese, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean and Filipino. He spoke about being a young surfer who was not academically inclined, and how he was inspired by his high school teacher to attend the College of Wooster in Ohio and eventually pursued his doctorate in American history at Berkeley.
“At Wooster, I found a very homogeneous student body and experienced a culture shock,” Takaki said. “My fellow students asked me questions like, ‘How long have you been in this country?’ and ‘Where did you learn to speak English?’” Takaki’s grandfather arrived in the United States in 1886 before many European immigrants, but to his classmates at Wooster, Takaki did not look like an American. “They viewed me through a filter. I call this filter the ‘master narrative of American history.’ Once we become aware of it, we can find it almost everywhere.”
Many attendees asked about current politics. “Obama is inspiring and stirring the hopes of young people the way Martin Luther King did in the 1960s,” Takaki said. “His ‘audacity of hope’ is making many of us, who were politicized in the ’60s, young again. I am one of them.”
Takaki plans to continue teaching, albeit in public settings. “Nonetheless, the task in both places is the same — to comprehend the world in order to change the world.”
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