Volume 26, Number 18 · November 22, 1979
America the Bad?
By C. Vann Woodward
Iron Cages: Race and Culture in Nineteenth-Century America
by Ronald T. Takaki
Knopf, 384 pp., $15.95
American history, according to the account at hand, is not a history of liberty, freedom, and opportunity. It is instead a history of repression, confinement, and renunciations. The appropriate symbol of its spirit is not a golden eagle but an iron cage. And the cage does not merely symbolize the fate of the racial minorities of color but the lot of the dominant whites who forged it as well. For they constructed the cage—or rather their multitudinous cages—for purposes of self-restraint as well as for the restraint of non-white minorities.
Review, 2428 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |