Mixed Race Studies

Are Mixed Race Asian/Whites, “Basically White”?

Multiracial Asian Families: thinking about race, families, children, and the intersection of mixed ID/Asian
2015-02-17

Sharon H. Chang

[She] never told the son who was crippled by polio about her relationship with his father. All she said was that the man was an American, a sergeant in the Army. He was one of the thousands of GIs who left children behind as victims of the conflict that the United States never officially called a war.
— “Life and Times of Le Van Minh” by Irene Virag

I’ve gotten some pretty vitriolic comments these last months regarding my writings on white-mixing not being synonymous with whiteness. A recent response to my piece protesting Asian Fortune’s troubled 2013 “Hapa” article:

“Guys…Sometimes you just need to calm the f down. You need to get out of your heads a little bit and stop over analyzing things. I’m sure all you hapas out there have some understanding of the way hapas are treated in Asia. Talk about superficial stereotypical understandings! Your ultra-liberal, ultra-progressive, straight-out-of-an-undergraduate-African-American-studies-class mumbo jumbo would only ever be considered in White countries. And you know damn well that you benefit from ‘White privilege.’ The reason I put that in quotes is beyond the scope of this comment. Don’t write back with some bullshit about traffic stops – I know the statistics.” (October 26, 2014)

Another recent response, this time to my piece on talking mixed race identity with young children for Hyphen Magazine:

“‘mom am i white?’

the answer is yes, he is. Stop confusing the poor child and STOP telling him he’s of Asian descent when you and the baby daddy are clearly white. He will grow up with an identity problem and will very likely hate you for it. Have some decency as a parent.” (February 10, 2015)…

…There are a lot of problems with the idea that Asian/whites are white: (1) it disallows space for contemporary Asian/whites to discuss the racialized experiences they do have when they are viewed and treated as non-white, (2) it ignores/invalidates/erases these oppressions as stemming from a long history of racism Asian/whites have faced nationally and globally that is an integral part of the larger narrative of race, and (3) it ultimately deflects from the more important point that it is not Asian/whites who created and uphold the racism we struggle to undo today…

Read the entire article here.

Mixed Feelings

The Center for Asian American Media
1998
45 minutes, VHS

Mikko Jokela, Director/Poducer

Through interviews with five UC Berkeley students and teachers of mixed ethnic heritage, filmmaker Mikko Jokela illuminates the experience of what it is like to grow up part Asian in American society. His peers offer personal anecdotes detailing how their parents met, what it was like growing up, how they initially perceived their own cultural identities and how they see themselves today. Humorous and revelatory, this experimental documentary manages to tackle difficult issues of racial reconciliation while celebrating difference and diversity.

For more information, click here.

Growing Up As A Hafu In Japan

GaijinPot
2014-08-23

Yumi Nakata

Even though Japan is far more Westernized today than it has ever been, it still remains a very homogeneous country. The government has been trying to promote internationalization and also improve the English curriculum in schools but the process takes times and Japan is not a country that moves quickly.

As more foreigners choose to live in Japan, the number of interracial children has been on the rise. These children who have a non-Japanese parent are called “Hafu”, a twist on the English word half. Some people say these mixed children should be called “double” instead of “half”.

I am actually Hafu myself. My mother is from South East Asia and my father is Japanese. They met while my mother was studying in Japan as an international student. All of us, Hafu who grow up in Japan share the same dilemma. Hafu children are minorities so we struggle to fit into the mainstream Japanese society that constantly teaches us the importance of harmony and unity. At least, I look Japanese and people would never know that I am Hafu unless I tell them but what about the Hafu children who look non-Japanese?…

Read the entire article here.

What Are Words Worth: Hapa, Hafu or Mixed-Race?

Pacific Citizen: The National Newspaper of the JACL
Los Angeles, California
2015-01-27

Gil Asakawa

I’ve just finished writing revisions for a new edition of my book, “Being Japanese American: A JA Sourcebook for Nikkei, Hapa … & Their Friends,” which will be published this July by Stone Bridge Press. I mention this not just to pimp the book to you all, but because I wrote in the new foreword how I have decided not to use the word “hapa,” at least for now.

Instead, I wrote that I’ll use “mixed race” instead.

Hapa is a word originally used in Hawaii to describe mixed-race people, like half-Asian, half-Hawaiian. The term was used as a slur, but over the years, it’s become commonly used even by mixed-race people. In fact, I’ve heard mixed-race people other than Asian combinations refer to themselves as hapa.

But in 2008, when I moderated a panel in Denver titled “The Bonds of Community: Hapa Identity in a Changing U.S.” for a conference sponsored by the Japanese American National Museum, a man stood up during the question-and-answer period and said he thought it was a racist term. At the time, I pushed back gently and noted that it’s already a pretty common term.

The interchange with this man has stayed with me ever since…

Read the entire article here.

Katanga’s forgotten people

FRANCE 24
2010-03-16

Marlène Rabaud

Arnaud Zajtman

Like many mixed-race children in Congo, they were born of a Japanese father who came to work in the mines of Katanga in south-east of the country. Today, they accuse their fathers of wanting to kill them so as not to leave behind any traces when they returned to Japan. FRANCE 24 met these men and women seeking the recognition that has always been denied them.

Watch the video (00:10:51) here.

Part Asian-American, All Jewish?

Code Switch: Frontiers of Race, Culture and Ethnicity
National Public Radio
2015-02-10

Rachel Gross, Editor
Moment Magazine

I was five years old when my mother threatened to give me away to journalist Connie Chung.

Chung and her husband, Maury Povich, had just announced their intention to adopt a half-Chinese, half-Jewish child. At this, my mother, watching on TV in our living room, did a double take. She looked at the screen. Then she looked at me, her half-Chinese, half-Jewish, fully-misbehaving daughter. “How would you like to go live with that woman?” she said.

It was then that I had a startling realization: I was special. Not special in the way that everyone’s kids are special — I mean really special. I, with my chubby Chinese cheeks and frizzy Jewish hair, was a unique snowflake, shaped like the Star of David, dusted with matcha green tea powder.

“I’m special!” I announced. “Famous people want to adopt me!”

Mom rolled her eyes as if to say, oy vey.

Only later would I learn the truth: Not everyone was as thrilled about my heritage as I was. The problem was mainly on the Jewish side. As I grew up, announcing I was Jewish often felt “like trying to cross a border with borrowed credentials,” in Joan Didion’s words. “But you don’t look Jewish!” came the incredulous reply. Some even implied that the union that produced me was nothing less than a threat to the Jewish people — that I was what was wrong with Judaism today…

Read the entire article here.

INTERVIEW: Jason Fung, Author of ‘Beyond Eurasian and Hapa’

Hapa Mama: Asian Fusion Family and Food
2015-02-02

Grace Hwang Lynch

I recently had a chance to interview Jason Fung, author of the upcoming book Beyond Eurasian and Hapa. Fung is a 34-year-old mixed-race (Chinese and Caucasian) person who went to high school and college in the U.S. is currently living in Hong Kong. His book draws upon his own family experiences, as well as history, to examine the different terms we use to describe multiracial Asians.

HM: What are your thoughts about the terms “Eurasian” and “Hapa”? How are they good descriptors and how do they fall short?

JF: These terms are really broad, and mean different things to different people.

For example, Macau has Eurasians; India has Eurasians (aka Anglo-Indians); Hong Kong and Sri Lanka and Burma have Eurasians. There are other definitions for the term, but as far as I define it “Eurasian” means one thing: a bloodline traceable to original European colonials. Macau Eurasians, for example, see themselves as utterly distinctive. Even if you are Portuguese-Chinese mixed they still won’t accept you as “Eurasian” by their standards if you were not from the accepted colonial bloodlines.There are plenty of fascinating “Eurasian” stories, surrounded by a rich material culture but “Eurasian” is too singular and closed…

“Hapa” is a term I really want to like. I really do…

Read the entire interview here.

An Interview with Poet Brian Komei Dempster

Hyphen: Asian America Unabridged
2015-02-02

Jeffrey Thomas Leong, San Francisco Bay Area poet; 2014 graduate of the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in Writing program in poetry

I first met Brian Komei Dempster in Winter 2000 as a student in his Kearny Street Workshop writing class, held in his grandfather’s Buddhist church in San Francisco’s Japantown, and was immediately impressed by his warmth and patience. Brian has edited two books of personal stories by Japanese Americans who were incarcerated in WW II camps — From Our Side of the Fence and Making Home from War. His debut poetry book Topaz, which won the 15 Bytes 2014 Book Award in Poetry, was published in 2013 by Four Way Books.

What I admire most about Topaz is its skillful interweaving of the historical and the personal, which reflects the way that inherited family legacies are both a burden and a gift for one to sort through and integrate. Brian’s story — and the speaker’s quest in the book — is further complicated by his mixed race heritage and upbringing by a Japanese American mother and white father. As a Chinese American, I’ve experienced cultural bifurcation but, through Brian’s work, have discovered a new world of racial dualism. His fearless investigation of its nuances and conflicts is inspiring. He can write of a grandmother’s grief and then seamlessly present the sexual angst of adolescent males: his ordering and juxtaposition of poems reflects the multi-layered resonances of the speaker’s life.

Brian’s poetry is carefully crafted, with formal experimentation, yet remains accessible to a broad audience. It is personally expressive, though grounded within the context of family and community. His poems chart new territory and speak hard truths. Most importantly, for me as a writer, they feel authentic.

Brian’s poems have appeared in New England Review, North American Review, Ploughshares, and numerous other journals as well as various anthologies, including Language for a New Century and Asian American Poetry: the Next Generation. He is a professor of rhetoric and language and a faculty member in Asian Pacific American Studies at the University of San Francisco, where he also serves as Director of Administration for the Master of Arts in Asia Pacific Studies.

***

Jeffrey Thomas Leong: Can you tell us about your name — Brian Komei Dempster — and where it comes from?

Brian Komei Dempster: My father’s name is Dempster, which has European roots, and my mother’s maiden name is Ishida, which is Japanese. The name Komei was given to me by my grandfather, Archbishop Nitten Ishida. I didn’t always use Komei, but as I got older and became a writer, I felt I had to use Komei; otherwise someone might not know who I was, not get the half Asian part of my identity. According to my grandfather, the name means “tall, high, clear –like a mountain. ” The fact that my grandfather — who’s a priest — gave me the name imbues it with gravitas…

Read the entire interview here.

From Behind the Counter: Poems From a Rural Jamaican Experience

Ian Randle Publishers
2000-09-05
216 pages
5.5 x 0.5 x 8.5 inches
Paperback ISBN: 978-9768123879

Easton Lee

Photographs by Owen Minott

Easton Lee was born to a Chinese father and a Jamaican mother of mixed racial heritage in the 1930s at Wait-a-bit, Trelawny, Jamaica. The family lived in several villages and towns as his parents ‘moved shop’ in search of a livelihood. Life was different then – no television, no telephones, inadequate road systems, no radio. The life of rural communities revolved and evolved around the church, the school and the village shop. The majority of these shops were owned and operated by Chinese families. Lee recalls that many evenings during his elementary schooldays were spent under the counter of his parents’ shop so he could be near to his mother as she attended to customers and helped him with homework. Customers, unaware of his presence, often discussed the village happenings and their private business in the most intimate details, giving him insight and information not otherwise available. His mother who was born at the turn of the century, fed him with stories and legends she had gleaned from her older relatives. An avid reader and a great storyteller, she often entertained her children and their friends with fascinating tales she had read or had heard in her childhood. His attention later turned to his Chinese heritage with his father and other Chinese relatives providing the link to that source. He found to his amazement that those teachings were not all that different from those of other sources, and in some instances were identical. This lively interest in and knowledge of Jamaican folklore which began in his schooldays was broadened and enhanced when, in adulthood, he went to work with Jamaica Social Welfare Commission, now the Social Development Commission, in a job which took him to every corner of the country.

Moving beyond monoracial categories

The Daily: of the University of Washington
2015-01-25

Emily Muirhead

I once had a professor claim that in 50 years, everyone will be so racially “mixed” and therefore ambiguous, no one will be able to distinguish “what someone is,” so race won’t matter much anymore.

As a biracial individual who has been asked “What are you?” more times than not, race does matter. It matters more than many people choose to believe. Despite the fact that racial categories are arbitrary social constructs, race still has very real personal and public implications aside from blatant racism — which seems to be the only times race is actually is talked about.

Categorizing someone into a racial category upon meeting them happens instantaneously. For most people this isn’t problematic because it’s merely a harmless form of observation, but sometimes, regardless of intent, a person’s race negatively or positively changes how someone is perceived and interacted with.

Ralina Joseph, associate professor in the communication, ethnic studies, and women’s studies departments, and a woman of color, has experienced racially rooted assumptions when it comes to teaching. She explained how on a number of occasions on the first day of class while standing alongside a white male TA, students will wrongly address the TA as “professor,” likely due to the image that comes to mind when one thinks of a person in this profession — i.e., a white man.

Being half-Japanese and half-Caucasian (predominantly Scottish), I straddle two sides of a racial spectrum, one foot in an American minority and the other in the majority. I’ve even been called “exotic,” a Eurocentric term that labels me as a sort of racial commodity against which monoracial individuals may be measured. To some, my whiteness blended with Asian features automatically places me into the irritatingly vague racial category of “half-white, half-something,” but there is much more to my identity than that…

Read the entire article here.