As a continual framework rather than a chronological phenomenon, settler imperialism provides the foundation for a historically based and comprehensive study of race and gender development in the United States. Nakano Glenn states that the purpose of settlers capturing and creating property claims over land and commodities necessitated the eradication of indigenous peoples. This was done through immediate and indirect brutality, such as militaristic extermination (Glenn, 2015). Settlers tried to dominate land, commodities, and populations by constructing an exclusive private property rule and oppressive labor arrangements, including slave ownership, to cultivate the land, take resources, and construct structures.
Recurring breakouts of warfare erupted during the seventeenth, second part of the eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries as colonists jammed against Native American territory in the East, Midwest, and later the West. Some murderous operations were performed by metropole or colonial military forces, while others were conducted by undocumented settler paramilitary groups (Glenn, 2015). Vigilante operations were believed to be exceptionally savage, involving the death of women, children, newborns, and the elderly.
When conflicts erupted between English migrants in Jamestown and Native Americans in the area in 1609, the colony’s governor, James Smith, established the history of unconventional fighting in the New World by destroying and torching Indian dwellings and farm areas (Glenn, 2015). A private property policy that turned people, concepts, and objects into a commodity that could be purchased, possessed, and sold was what connected land confiscation from indigenous peoples to black chattel slavery. Property law or, in the case of chattel enslaved people, slave law, regulated the acquisition, possession, and sale of assets, whether immovable or human. Some categories have been enrolled and guided into hard labor and super-exploited in the United States since they can be compelled to engage by need and maintained in place by movement limitations (Glenn, 2015). For a country that claims to stand for liberty, fairness, and possibility, the United States has a lengthy history of enforcing harsh labor systems, societal stratification, and reduced movement on many of its citizens.
Ronald Takaki starts by claiming that race is a sociological invention that has continuously distinguished racial minorities from European settlers’ populations. He continues to say that this architecture does not adequately portray America’s vast and diverse tapestry of variety. He attempts to depict the multicultural, interracial, and multiculturalism American nature more truthfully. Takaki follows the socioeconomic and political background of Indians, African Americans, Mexicans, Japanese, Chinese, Irish, and Jews in America, paying particular emphasis to incidents and effects of racism (Takaki, 2022). The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, the Trail of Tears, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Japanese incarceration are all included as evidence to rid America of minority groups.
Takaki expands views about race and ethnicity theoretically, seeing them as social, institutional entities that gain prominence through related depictions and similar encounters across time and geography. Another significant issue in Takaki’s work is the power inequities of race and ethnicity as they relate to class concerns. Part 1 of ‘Different Mirror’ exposes white imperialists, settlers, and slaveholders’ ruthless seizure of indigenous territory and black labor. Parts 2 and 3 chronicle the mistreatment of immigrants and migrant labor for capitalist development. Part 4 recounts the hard-won compromises gained from white Americans by ethnic minorities—a political win that did not equal socioeconomic fairness in the twenty-first century (Takaki, 2022). Takaki thus gives a narrative of class strife, a story in which entrenched racism allowed business people to gain from indigenous minorities’ plundered land and human resources.
Glenn and Takiki stand for equality among all American citizens and expose the ‘great nation’ for their malpractices throughout history. They prove that colonial imperialism is a structure, not a contextual phenomenon and that, as such, it propagates the marginalization of native people. They use that as an essential component for settler collectivization of lands and assets, creating constraints for the current viewpoint of culturally diverse neoliberal policies to emerge. They propose forming alliances by understanding the distinctive experiences of ethnic minorities, not from the perspective of the oppressed but from the perspective of all American people, which would result in a more favorable future.
References
Glenn, E. N. (2015). Settler colonialism as structure. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 1(1), 52–72. Web.
Takaki, R. (2022). Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America. Back Bay Books.