Unequal Freedom Summary

While America has always claimed to be the “land of opportunity”, it has also remained a society in which gender and race determines opportunities. In Unequal Freedom, Glenn explores inequality in the U.S. through citizenship and labor. She uses three non-white groups in three settings: the south, the southwest, and Hawaii to explain her analysis of interactions among race and gender relations. The struggles of minority groups to received economic freedom and full political rights has always been problematic. This book seeks to identify the challenges of the oppressed, while discretely acknowledging the abusing tactics of the oppressor.
Glenn says (pg. 1), “Citizenship has been used to draw boundaries between those who are included as members …show more content…
Hawaii was a hot commodity for sugar and just as in the south, field owners saw profit from cheap labor. Once Hawaii became a U.S. territory so did the laws, which also as in the south excluded Haloes from social, civil, and political rights for the interest of free white men. Glenn says (pg. 192), “Privatization of land enabled the nascent Anglo American oligarchy to establish a plantation based economy relying at first on Native Hawaiian labor and later on imported Asian labor.” The emergence of property rights also arise here. What the Hawaiians had once owned was now taken by whites and as usual the whites or Anglo Americans could do what they want because they were the only ones who had a say so since non-whites were not citizens and most definitely could not own property. One contrast between black slaves and haloes was that haloes were paid for their labor, while slaves worked for free until whites in the south also began to pay them little money for more work. Hawaii consisted more of Native Hawaii and little whites, so when Japanese were imported into Hawaii there group became the “other” or “un- American.” This meant that Japanese were not considered citizens. Glenn says (pg.196), “Asian workers were treated strictly as laborers, not settlers and potential citizens.” There was also a psychological stigma that Japanese and Chinese workers were an ideal labor force and just better off as laborers. Education was also a barrier for both blacks, haloes, and Japanese. Glenn says (pg. 234), “Americanism in public schools, and the expansion of vocational education designed to track Japanese boys into agriculture and girls into domestic work.” Education was strategically place in non-whites life for a higher purpose to keep them from becoming more educated. Because they could not read, they were also excluded from