Passing Thoughts

I read that Ronald Takaki passed away last week. Many people remember his culturally defining teachings and writings on race and ethnicity. I remember him as the author I first read that quoted my grandfather's work. I remember sitting in my dorm reading Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans for my beginning Ethnic Studies course and coming across my grandfather's name briefly here and there. It made me feel proud of my grandfather and his works. So reading about Ronald Takaki this week just made me reminisce about my grandfather.

I mentioned to my grandfather once that I saw his works quoted in my textbooks and he just responded with a smile. For being an author himself, my grandpa was a quiet man. I didn't know much about his life until after he passed in 2005. To us, he was the man who took us on walks around the neighborhood, counting the steps down to the park and back. He would clasp his fingers together and make us count his fingers to make sure they were all there. He had this little laugh that I still remember usually when he was setting us up for a joke, and he would always slip us money when grandma wasn't looking.

At his memorial service there were all sorts of people there who called themselves either his colleagues or his pupils. As they shared, it opened up this whole side of my grandpa that I just didn't realize was there. He was called a mentor, a teacher, a distinguished scholar, a man who went through political pressure, a man who wrote about his beliefs even when others didn't agree. Later reading biographical articles about him in books and periodicals, I couldn't believe how little I knew of his difficult yet distinguished life.

Yet, history tells us that we can be who we are because of the way our predecessor's fought to preserve rights and humanity in this country. I will never really understand how hard it was for them to claim their stake in the American dream when racial prejudices and cultural misunderstandings beat them down at every turn. Even now, yes, prejudices occur, but it is nothing (not even close) to what our grandparents and great-grandparents had to put up with in order to get to the place we are now.

So for those writers/professors/cultural forerunners of change like my grandfather and Ronald Takaki, I'm thankful for the path that they started paving long ago for understanding and acceptance. It's something I take for granted far too often in my charmed American life.