Takaki Chapter 10

Thesis: America is the land of opportunity and America has a lot to offer its residents. This article is about immigration and people wanting to come to America because of all it has to offer. They felt it was a way to escape their old lives and try and start fresh.

It first starts off talking about how by the nineteen twenty’s majority of the immigrants were women. The women who came over were considered “picture” brides. This meant that marriages were arranged. Also majority of the women that came over from Asia were Japanese rather than Chinese. Immigrants were used as cheap labor because they were willing to work at low prices. Both men and women worked. They had little to no rights, and considered not full humans. Because they were treated so poorly they went on strike and rebellions. Plantation owners preferred married men over single men because they were dependable and built nicer homes for the families of the married men. Plantations became like small neighborhoods where ethnic groups would set up temples and traditional events. Plantation owners were kind of upset because the kids were learning and they wanted another generation of workers. On the mainland Japanese immigrants began to create their own farms. Women played a role in helping with the farm stuff, but also mainly did house work. Japanese hoped that their hard work would help them to be accepted into the new country. The children of the immigrants that were born into America would have a better life than what they had but that was not how it went.

1. Why would the immigrants keep coming over to America if they new what hard times awaited them?

2. Did the plantation owners try to prevent these ethnic neighborhoods or did they just let them be?

I found this article to be interesting because the immigrants worked so hard to try to fit into the new world even when they kept on getting put down. I guess if they had not gone through the hard times then today’s people may not even be hear or they might not have the success or opportunities that are presented today.

McBride "I hate A&F"

Thesis: The success of A&F depends on the teenagers mainly white’s psychological sense of belonging. The main point of this article was about how a certain clothing company goes about the way they advertise and what race their clothing is intended for. It is mainly aimed towards the leisure or upper middle class and young people.

McBride first starts out with talking about his first experiences with seeing the logo Abercrombie & Fitch and how everywhere he went he would see some version of it. Mainly focused on how he mainly saw white gay men wearing the product with the occasional colored man wearing it. He then discusses the beginning of the company. It first started as Abercrombie & Co. and it purpose was in outdoor attire. He then meets up with Ezra Fitch who was used the brand all the time and asked Mr. Abercrombie if he could be a partner. So they did unite and it became Abercrombie & Fitch. They got in an argument because Abercrombie wanted to stay in outdoor attire and Fitch wanted to expand the business. So Abercrombie left the company and Fitch went about expanding. The people he was intending to reach was the white upper middle class. He then goes into explaining how certain requirements and the way you look is crucial to what your class is and the way you should appear to others. It then goes into how A&F were sued for discriminating hiring people of color. After the hearings they changed their policies and began to hire people of color. So basically people who did not meet the requirements were not welcomed in the store.

1. Couldn’t you also argue other clothing brands such a FUBU that is intended towards the colored community?

2. He talks a lot about gay men and wearing A&F clothing. Is he suggesting that the majority of men that wear this clothing line are gay?

I found this article to be somewhat interesting but also boring at times. He gives a long overview of how the company was started. But it then picked up when he started to talk about how A&F discriminated against people of color. It was a fairly easy read and I kind of already new about the not hiring of colored people.

This video from what we watched was mainly about black’s rights and what kinds of things they did to achieve them and how people mainly white, acted on the laws which were stated one way but carried out another.

Brown vs. Board of Education- was where it was stated that segregated schools were considered unconstitutional.

Emmet Till- fourteen year old boy who was from Chicago to visit his uncle in Alabama. He said bye to a white girl in a store and in the middle of the night two men came and dragged Emmet out of bed. They then put him in the car and took him by the river and beat him so badly that when he was found in the river the police could not identify him except for the ring on his finger.

J.W. Milan and Roy Bryant- The two men who were accused of killing Emmet Till but were found not guilty after a five day trial.

Segregation was a big thing and everything that you could imagine was segregated, from restaurants to drinking fountains. Many things or actions were taken by the black community to make a movement towards their rights. Such examples are sit-ins, little rock school incident, and Rosa Park’s bus incident. Such actions needed to be taken because if they just sat back and let the things happen nothing would change. It definitely took a bunch of courage because the protesters would face jail time or even getting beaten up by the whites or white gangs. An example of a white “gang” would be the KKK and they would even go to the extent of hanging black people.

1. During the riots or protests would the police ever kill a black person and not get in trouble for it?

2. Why is Martin Luther king Jr. looked at as probably the most influential person in the civil rights movement?

I found this movie to be very interesting from what I’ve seen so far. It allows you to see how and what black people had to go through and the severity of certain situations. It makes you appreciate the rights that we do have and that we should not take them for granted.