Critic speak is tough, but we've got you covered.
Quote :Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans
Many classics in the field of American history have …] equated "American" with "white" or "European" in origin. […] Eurocentric history serves no one. It only shrouds the pluralism that is America and that makes our nation so unique, and thus the possibility of appreciating our rich racial and cultural diversity remains a dream deferred. […] We need to "re-vision" history to include Asians in the history of America, and to do so in a broad and comparative way. […] [W]e must not study Asian Americans primarily in terms of statistics and what was done to them. They are entitled to be viewed as subjects—as men and women with minds, wills, and voices. By "voices" we mean their own words and stories as told in their oral histories, conversations, speeches, soliloquies, and songs, as well as in their own writings—diaries, letters, newspapers, magazines, pamphlets, placards, posters, flyers, court petitions, autobiographies, short stories, novels, and poems.
We often study American history from the perspective of white people, because we just kind of assume that "Americans" can't be anything but white. But actually, America and its history are way more complex than that.
America's a melting pot, and Takaki is pointing out that Asian Americans are a big part of that. One way that historians whitewash American history is by excluding Asian Americans, who have been in the U.S. for a really long time, and their history as part of American history.
Takaki's also saying that if you're going to study Asian American history, you shouldn't just study what white people did to Asian Americans. You should also study Asian Americans on their own terms, as people with their own perspectives, their own histories, and their own cultures. Asian American history is linked with American history overall, but it's also unique.