Mixed Race Studies

The Revitalization of Eurasian Identity in Singapore

Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science
Volume 25, Number 2 (1997)
pages 7-24
DOI: 10.1163/030382497X00149

Alexius Pereira

This paper accounts for the revitalization of Eurasian identity in the 1990s. The revitalization was instrumental, as Eurasians had found themselves socially marginalized, particularly since the other ethnic groups were becoming more assertive about their respective ethnic identities since the 1980s. To counter this, the Eurasians selectively constructed a set of cultural practices and outlooks which were unique to the group, but not necessarily reviving practices that were “lost”. The revitalization was therefore not a deep-seated emotional or primordial attachment to their identity; instead, it was used to improve the position of the community in Singapore.

Race Mixture in Hawaii

Journal of Heredity
Volume 10, Issue 1 (1919)
pages 41-47

Vaughan MacCaughey
College of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii

THE CHINESE

The   Hawaiian Islands   arc remarkable for the diversity of  races represented and for the varied conjugal race-mingling which has taken place in this tiny island world during the past hundred and fifty years. Excellent general accounts of the nature of Hawaii’s population can be found in W. F. Blackman’s “The Making of Hawaii” (Macmillan, 1906, 266 pp.) and in “Race Mingling in Hawaii” by Ernest J. Reece (American Journal of Sociology, 20:104-16, July. 1914). The present paper is the first of a series of eugenic studies of Hawaii’s polyglot and polychrome population, a series which embodies data not heretofore assembled and made available for students of eugenics.

The population of Hawaii, 1918, in round numbers is as follows:

Asiatics............................153,500
   Japanses..................105,000
   Chinese....................23,000
   Koreans.....................5,000
   Filipinos..................20,000

Polynesians..........................40,000
   Hawaiian...................23,000
   Caucasian-Hawaiians........11,000
   Chinese-Hawaiians...........6,000

Latins...............................31,000
   Portuguese.................23,000
   Spanish.....................2,000
   Porto Rican.................6,000

Americans. Scotch. British, Germans,
Russians, etc........................22,000

The Hawaiians are remnants of the splendid Polynesian stock that formerly solely possessed this lovely mid-Pacific archipelago. The Americans, North Europeans and other “white men” represent the traders, missionaries, beach-combers, sailors, fugitives from justice, merchants, sugar planters, professional, military and capitalistic classes that have completely dominated and exploited the life and resources of the islands. All of the other races—Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Filipino, Spanish, Portuguese, Porto Rican, Russian, Negro, South Sea Islanders, etc.—have been imported wholesale by the agricultural corporations to work in the sugar-cane fields. At present the population of Hawaii is predominantly Asiatic, alien, male, illiterate, non-English-speaking, non-Christian, landless, and homeless.

The Chinese have been associated with Hawaii since very early times The first epoch in Hawaii’s industrial exploitation was the “Sandalwood Period,” during which an active trade was carried on with China. Chinese coolie? began to he imported in small numbers about 1870. The flood of coolie labor swelled rapidly and reached a maximum about 1870. The exclusion law, which went into effect with annexation in 1898, has decreased the number of Chinese immigrants. The immigration of foreign-born Chinese into Hawaii to 1910 has been as follows:

Previous to 1890..............6,580
1891-1895.....................3,340
1898-1900.................... 3,830
1900-1905 ......................445
1905-1910.......................205

The Chinese now number 23,000; the increase during the past decade has been slight. There are now 800 registered Chinese voters in Hawaii. In 1900 there were almost as many Chinese children (1,300) in the public and private…

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The Anglo-Indians: A Disorganized Marginal Group

Social Forces
Volume 14, Number 2 (December 1935)
pages 263-268

Paul Frederick Cressey, Professor of Sociology and Anthropology
Wheaton College, Newton, Massachusetts

FOUR centuries of European contact with India have left a biological residue of many thousand people of mixed European and Indian stock. Since 1911 this group has been officially designated by the government of India as the Anglo-Indian Community. Elsewhere in Asia racial hybrids of European and Oriental stock are commonly known as Eurasians. The Anglo-Indians are by far the largest group of such hybrids in Asia.

The distribution of the Anglo-Indians accurately reflects their history. They are concentrated in those areas where the maximum European contact has occurred. In the four largest port cities, Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, and Rangoon, live one-third of all the Anglo-Indians, while an additional one-third live in other parts of the provinces in which these cities are located. Anglo-Indians are predominantly city dwellers, and their life and problems have an urban setting. In 1931 the Anglo-Indian population of India and Burma was returned by the official census as 138,395. This represents an increase of 11.4 per cent during the preceding decade, and 12.1.9 per cent for the last fifty years. The increase in the total population of India in these same periods has been 10.1 per cent and 31.3 per cent respectively. There is a tendency for many persons of light complexion to return themselves as British, and some Indian Christians are enumerated as Anglo-Indians. The Census of India recognizes these errors and estimates the corrected total for Anglo-Indians to be approximately 165,000. In 1931 the sex ratio was 1,061 Anglo-Indian males for every 1,000 females.

Many European stocks are represented among these hybrids, including British, French, Dutch, and Portuguese. The term Anglo-Indian is thus something of a misnomer, but the largest single stock is British, and the group is predominantly British in its cultural affiliations. On the Indian side the stock is almost entirely of Hindu origin, only a very few persons being of Moslem descent.   There is no…

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Developing critical race theory to study race and racism in China’s media: a case study of the chocolate girl’s bittersweet stardom on Go Oriental Angel

California State University, Sacramento
Summer 2011
105 pages

Siok Kwan Teoh

Submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS in COMMUNICATION STUDIES

This study discusses the history, tenets, and evolution of Critical Race Theory (CRT), and how the theory can be developed for use in a mediated context and a Chinese context. This paper employs Lou Jing’s (a mixed-race reality show contestant in China) story as a case study while reflecting upon the role that China’s history, socio-economic influences, and politics have played in shaping the country’s contemporary outlook on racial identities and racism. The analysis shows that most CRT tenets have a multitude of uses in exploring race, racism, classism, and European and U.S. influence in Chinese society, and how power is manipulated by the government in China’s media outlets.

Table of Contents

• 1. INTRODUCTION
• 2. BACKGROUND OF CRITICAL RACE THEORY
  • The History of Race
  • The History of Critical Race Theory
  • The Basic Tenets of Critical Race Theory
  • Criticisms of Critical Race Theory
  • The Evolving Nature of Critical Race Theory
  • Applications of Critical Race Theory
• 3. BACKGROUND OF CHINA
  • The Racial Homogeneity Myth
  • Late Nineteenth Century and Racial Nationalism
  • Twentieth Century and the Myth of the Yellow Emperor
  • Contemporary China’s Racial Identities
  • Contemporary China and its Media Environment
  • Reality Television in China
• 4. METHOD
  • Data Collection
  • The Chocolate Girl Case Study
• 5. ANALYSIS
  • Racism is Ordinary
  • Intersectionality and Anti-Essentialism
  • The Social Construction of Race
  • Interest Convergence
  • The Use of Storytelling and Counter-Narratives
  • Whiteness
• 6. CONCLUSION
  • Future Studies
• References

Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION

China has been continually evolving over the centuries to meet a variety of challenges that shaped the nation and led it from imperial rule to communism, and to its subsequent economic development that opened its doors to the rest of the world. In the twenty-first century, more foreigners are making China their home, resulting in Chinese people marrying foreigners and giving birth to mixed race children. The data from the Shanghai Civil Affairs Bureau show that, from 1994 to 2008, there was an average of 3,000 mixed race marriages a year in Shanghai. Even with the increasing mixed race marriage rate, China still likes to think of itself as monocultural instead of a multicultural nation (Elegant & Jiang, 2009). A popular televised singing competition in China called Go Oriental Angel featured a mixed race African American and Chinese contestant in the 2009 season. Lou Jing was born and raised in Shanghai by her Chinese mother, and essentially identifies as Chinese. However, her appearance on a nationally televised show caused a major uproar in China and brought about international attention to China’s issues of racism and the Chinese identity. If a reality-based television star had been criticized for her/his race by audience members in the United States, scholars from different fields including communication, sociology, and ethnic studies would have studied the phenomenon. Some of those scholars might have chosen a theory that could clarify why and how the United States’ history with race could lead to the audience reacting so negatively to the reality star’s race.

Although a relatively new theory, academics and activists across the United States have employed Critical Race Theory (CRT) in legal, healthcare, education, criminal justice, and sports to examine the relationship between race, racism, and power. CRT is a specifically American theory based upon the socio-political history of the United States and mainly applied to study and change the policies that affect unequal treatments based upon race, especially in education and criminal justice issues. This thesis is a theoretical discussion on CRT, its history, implications, and the evolution of its scholarship; this theory also raises two questions about CRT: how can CRT be developed for use in a mediated context and how can it be developed for use in a Chinese context? This thesis employs the reality television program Go Oriental Angel and the story of Lou Jing as a case study to answer the two questions.

First, this thesis will briefly investigate the socio-political racial history in Europe and in the United States to explain how race was created and used to justify slavery and segregation, and the relationship between race and the global capitalistic system. It will then introduce CRT and delve into its history, concepts, and tenets, as well as the critiques, applications, and evolution of the theory. To better understand how China perceives race and what it means to be Chinese, this thesis will investigate the myth of the Yellow Emperor that helped China develop and proliferate the notion of the monocultural Han Chinese identity, and it will then briefly discuss the issues in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries that shaped China’s Chinese identity. It also will examine contemporary China’s economic growth and how that growth has impacted the social and media environment of China particularly in the area of reality-based television programming. The show Go Oriental Angel and the treatment of its mixed-race contestant, Lou Jing by the show’s hosts and the Internet audience will be discussed. Based upon the literature review of CRT, China’s history, contemporary issues, and media environment, and utilizing Go Oriental Angel as a case study, this thesis will answer the questions of how CRT can be developed for use in a mediated context and how it can be developed for use in a Chinese context. Finally, this thesis will explore possible future studies of CRT that would accommodate a global perspective and a communication focus…

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Multifaceted Identity of Interethnic Young People: Chameleon Identities [Review: DaCosta]

Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews
Volume 40, Number 5 (September 2011)
pages 571-572
DOI: 10.1177/0094306111419111i

Kimberly McClain DaCosta, Associate Professor
Gallatin School of Individualized Study, New York University

Multifaceted Identity of Interethnic Young People: Chameleon Identities, by Sultana Choudhry. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010. 219 pp. cloth. ISBN: 9780754678601.

Multifaceted Identity of Interethnic Young People: Chameleon Identities is a study of identity choices among South Asian/white individuals in the United Kingdom. The term “South Asian” refers here to peoples with ancestry from the Indian subcontinent, including India, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

Sultana Choudhry situates her study primarily in the social psychology literature and in the growing body of social science literature on mixed race or, to use the author’s preferred term, “interethnic” people in the Anglophone world. In focusing on South Asian/white interethnics, the author begins to fill a gap in both literatures. She rightly points out that there is a relative dearth of research on South Asian/white interethnics in Britain, despite the fact that they comprise a substantial proportion of interethnics in a society in which interethnic births are on the rise.

This is a multi-method study, incorporating semi-structured interviews, discourse analysis, retrospective diary accounts of factors that influenced respondents’ ethnic identity choices and a survey of 87 interethnics of a variety of ethnoracial combinations. While the majority of respondents were interethnic, some phases of the study include monoethnic respondents, including some parents of the interethnic respondents.

While I applaud this use…

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Hapa-Palooza challenges mixed-race stereotypes

The Vancouver Sun
2011-09-07

Vivian Luk, Special To The Sun

‘We’re 100-per-cent whole, we’re Canadian,’ says filmmaker who faced identity struggles and discrimination while growing up

The nickname Super Nip – partly derived from a Second World War term to describe Japanese people – and racial jokes followed Jeff Chiba Stearns everywhere when he was growing up in Kelowna.

More common, however, was the question, “So, what are you anyway?” Back in elementary and high school, Stearns, now 32, would answer truthfully: He is half-Japanese (the other half being a mixture of English, Scottish, Russian and German).

His “monster truck-driving, redneck” friends would treat him like Fez, the fictional foreign exchange student from Fox Network’s That ’70s Show, whose country of origin was one of the series’ longest-running jokes.

Other times, given his slightly darker complexion, he would say for fun that he is Hawaiian or Tahitian.

But asked that question now, Stearns, an animated filmmaker, answers, “I’m hapa.”

“Hapa” is a Hawaiian term that describes someone of interracial descent. A new cultural festival in Vancouver this week will celebrate and raise awareness of people of mixedroots origins.

From today to Saturday, Hapa-Palooza will feature film, literature, dance and music produced by mixedrace artists, as well as panel discussions. While the festival is meant to foster dialogue about the identity struggles and discrimination that many mixed-race Canadians face, Stearns, whose documentary on growing up in a hapa family will be featured on Thursday, said the goal is also to challenge the idea that mixed people are only part Canadian.

“I don’t like that people refer to themselves as half because we’re not broken, we don’t need fixing,” he said. “I’ve grown to understand that we’re still 100-per-cent whole, we’re Canadian.”…

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Biracial and Biethnic Identity Development in Vietnamese/Caucasian Adults

Alliant International University, San Francisco Bay
May 2011
75 pages
Publication Number: AAT 3467139
ISBN: 9781124783406

Tien Vu

A Clinical Dissertation Proposal Presented to the Faculty of The California School of Professional Psychology, San Francisco Bay Campus Alliant International University

The current study explored factors that contribute to Vietnamese/White biracial identity. Three interview participants who were raised in the United States experienced less racism and discrimination than the two interviewees raised overseas. All of the participants currently have healthy and strong biracial and biethnic identity development. These findings suggest that Vietnamese/White individuals are more resilient and are more likely to have healthy outcomes than previous research has suggested.

Table of Contents

• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• I. Introduction
• II. Literature Review
  • Ethnic Identity Research
  • Biracial People
  • Asian-American Immigration
  • Biracial Asian-Americans
  • Vietnamese Immigration to the United States
  • Vietnamese Biracial Individuals
• III. Methods
• IV. Results
• V. Discussion
• VI. Implications
• References
• Appendix A: Research Study Flyer
• Appendix B: Script of Subject Screening
• Appendix C: Consent Form
• Appendix D: Background Information Form
• Appendix E: Interview Guide
• Appendix F: Follow-Up Phone Script

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An Interview with UW’s Lynet Uttal: Making the Asian American experience visible through learning

Asian Wisconzine
Volume 7, Number 9 (September 2011)

Heidi M. Pascual

Part 1 of 2

It was “quite an accident of fate” that Lynet Uttal became the director of the  University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Asian American Studies Program. Although Uttal has been a faculty affiliate of Asian American Studies since 2003, she never considered being in that position.

“I was in Mexico on sabbatical when I received an email from then director Leslie  Bow asking me if I would consider being the next director,” Uttal said in an interview with Asian Wisconzine. “Although I teach about Asian Americans in my courses, yet I never considered myself as doing research about Asian Americans or being part of the field of Asian American Studies.”

Four years into her position, Uttal has loved her work as she learned the importance of the program in terms of education offering and how it also helps her grow professionally.

“I love being the director of the Asian American Studies Program because the program is very important for the mission of the University as well as for my own professional growth as a race scholar,” she explained. “I have grown in the last four years to believe that the Asian American Studies Program is important because Asian Americans are a racialized group in the United States that is invisible in the practices and understanding of race in the the United States. For example, although it was Asian American graduate students who were extremely active in creating all of the ethnic studies programs and ethnic studies requirement at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, very little has been done to acknowledge their activism and contributions.  Yet, Asian Americans have a history in U.S. society parallel to African Americans in terms of having experienced legal exclusions and discrimination on the basis of race.”

Uttal has a mixed racial, cultural and national background, with a Japanese American mother and a Russian American Jewish father, but according to her, neither of these cultures (which were not mainstream Euro-American) was used to create a sense of ethnic identity in her parents’ home.

“My mother is a Japanese American who grew up in Japan from age 9-23 years and returned to the U.S., almost as if she were a Japanese immigrant,” Uttal said.  “She raised my two sisters and me to think of ourselves as American, because according to Japanese standards we certainly were not Japanese.  But we also were not Japanese American.  The cultural and socialization values in the home I grew up in reflected my Japanese grandparents’ values as well as my mother’s transnational identity ideas, and also father’s upbringing as a Russian American Jewish father.”…

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Laura Kina, visual artist and scholar of Asian-American and Mixed-Race Studies

APA Compass
KBOO FM, Community Radio
Portland, Oregon
2011-09-02

Andrew Yeh, Host

Laura Kina, Associate Professor Art, Media and Design and Director Asian American Studies
DePaul University

APA Compass’ Andrew Yeh speaks with artist Laura Kina.

Download to the interview (00:15:50) here.

Pure mixed blood: The multiple identities of Amerasians in South Korea

Indiana University
February 2007
256 pages
Publication Number: AAT 3253643

Sue-Je Lee Gage, Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Ithaca University

Submitted to the faculty of the University Graduate School in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of  Anthropology, Indiana University

Political and social currents play a role in how identities are ascribed and claimed by Amerasians in South Korea. Amerasians continue to be racialized as “other” within a set of desirable and undesirable qualities. Attitudes are complicated by the effects of globalization, especially the temporary immigration of US military personnel and guest workers, as well as current fashion and aesthetic trends. Within the context of a diversifying Korea, the very nature of “Amerasian” (American and Asian) and “Kosian” (Korean and South Asian) call into question notions of purity and race within the assumed ethnonation of Korea. How “pure” is pure when it comes to people and identity? In what ways do perceived appearances affect experiences?

Many Amerasians subscribe to a presumed racial hierarchy incorporated and contextualized in the countries of their births from a western perspective on “race” in their own identity ascription and claiming. However, this hierarchy is neither simple nor fixed. It is complicated by perceptions and notions of “race” and what it means to be “human.” Class, gender, generation, English-speaking ability, appearance/beauty, parentage, education, and social support networks and organization affiliations also influence attitudes and perceptions. My research examines the local, global, and historical reasons that contribute to the ways Amerasians are perceived, as well as the ways they perceive themselves, including the on-going racial/ethnic/political dialogue within Korea and between Korea, the United States, and the international community.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Abstract
• List of illustrations and appendixes
• Note to Reader
• CHAPTER 1. Introduction
  • Methodology
  • Theory
  • Overview of the Book
• Part I: The Thick and Thin of Blood
  • CHAPTER 2. Minjok and the History of Korean Nationalism
    • Pre-Modern Context and Early Korean Interactions with the West
    • Nationalist Movements and the Articulation of Identities
    • US-ROK Relation
    • The More Recent Period
    • Conclusion
  • CHAPTER 3. Racing Self and Otherness in South Korea
    • Racing the Korean Self
    • Representations
    • Racing the Other in Korea
    • Globalization
    • Conclusion
  • CHAPTER 4. The “Amerasian Problem”: Blood, Duty, and Race
    • Representations of Amerasian Identity in the United States
    • Transnational Advocacy Networks Prior to the 1980s
    • Amerasian Policy Formation
    • Conclusion
• Part II: The Purity of Mixed Blood
  • CHAPTER 5. Living “Amerasian”
    • The Legacy of a Name: Looking “American,” Feeling “Korean”
    • American Names & Korean Names
    • Marriage & Breeding Out Amerasian Blood
    • Amerasian Entertainers & Celebrities
    • “Our Country” & Patriotism
    • Redefining and Claiming Amerasian Identity
    • Conclusion
  • CHAPTER 6. “We Want What Everybody Else Wants, to Live”
    • Human Rights, International Community & Globalization
    • From “other” to “Other
    • Immigrating to the US – Why and Why not?
    • Conclusion
• Part III: Globalizing Blood – Intersections and Conclusion
  • CHAPTER 7. Conclusion: Pure Mixed Blood
  • CHAPTER 8. Afterward: Feeling the Want of Something More – ashwiwŏ hada
• Epilogue
• Appendix A Glossary
• Appendix B Illustrations
• Bibliography
• Curriculum Vitae

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

• Figure 1.1 US Military Map of Korea. Highlights the major US military installations – Camp Casey in Tongduch’on, Osan Airbase near Pyongt’aek.
• Figure 1.2 Kyonggi Province (Gyeonggi-do) – Includes Tongduch’on to the north of Seoul, Seoul, and Pyongt’aek to the south of Seoul.
• Figure 1.3 Shalom House Building
• Figure 3.1 Korea Special Tourism sign – “This Facility is for Foreigners, Tourists, and US Soldiers Stationed in Korea Only.”
• Figure 3.2 Club Proof of Inspection by the Second Infantry, US Army in Tongduch’on – “Cheer” is handwritten on the label on the right corner.
• Figure 3.3 Korea Special Tourism Association Club. Exchange Bank located on the Right Side of the Club.
• Figure 3.4 Tongduch’on’s Kijich’on
• Figure 3.5 Molly Holt
• Figure 3.6 Director Woo, Sun-duk and Two Women Working in the Clubs
• Figure 3.7 Advertisement for Whitening Lotion for Men
• Figure 4.1 St. Vincent’s Home Sign
• Figure 5.1 I am Korean
• Figure 5.2 I am Korean
• Figure 5.3 We are Korean
• Figure 5.4 We are Korean
• Figure 5.5 I am Korean
• Figure 5.6 We are Korean
• Figure 5.7 I am Korean
• Figure 5.8 We are Korean
• Figure 5.9 We are Korean
• Figure 5.10 Pearl S. Buck Summer Camp 2002, Picture Taken at the Blue House
• Figure 5.11 Mrs. Chung Rodrigues
• Figure 5.12 Mrs. and Mr. Kang
• Figure 6.1 ACA Students
• Figure 6.2 Sports Day
• Figure 6.3 Durihana ACA Logo
• Figure 6.4 Marriage and Visa Center in Itaewon
• Figure 7.1 The Right to Experience Life
• Figure 8.1 Dance Therapy at Sunlit Sisters’ Center
• Figure 8.2 Family and Me in Tongduch’on
• Figure 8.3 Family in Tongduch’on
• Figure 8.4 Family in Anjong-ri
• Figure 8.5 Family and Me in Anjong-ri
• Figure 9.1 Baby Buddhas

APPENDIXES

• Appendix A Glossary
• Appendix B Illustrations
• Appendix C Map of Tongduch’on with Legend of Clubs and Shops

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