Mixed Race Studies

Feature: Between two worlds: challenges of being mixed-race in Japan

China Daily
Xinhua News Agency
2013-11-13

TOKYO, November 13 (Xinhua) — The latest statistics from Japan’s health ministry show that one in 49 babies born in Japan today are born into families with one non-Japanese parent, giving way to a growing demographic of mixed-race nationals in Japan, known colloquially as “Hafu.”

“Hafu,” the Japanese popular phonetic expression for the English word “Half,” describes those of mixed-racial, Japanese heritage, and, more precisely, those who are half Japanese and half non-Japanese.

The phrase has been widely coined by popular media here, as those of mixed-race backgrounds born or living in Japan have made their way into the celebrity limelight and as the general socio- demographic ethnicity of Japan undergoes a shift away from its former homogeneity, and towards multiculturalism…

…”What we see on TV and in magazines regarding mixed-raced celebrities is great in terms of a seeming mainstream acceptance to this emerging demographic, by a notably homogenous society, but this doesn’t exactly paint a perfect picture of the challenges faced by mixed-race people in Japan,” Keiko Gono, a sociologist and parent of a mixed-race teenager, told Xinhua…

…For the families well-networked socially and professionally in multicultural circles and can afford the advantages Japan’s international schools can provide, raising a bicultural child is a relatively smooth process.

But for others, it can be a truly testing lifestyle, both for parents and their mixed-race children.

“I’ve lived in Japan all my life. My father is from Nigeria and my mother is Japanese,” Edwin Tanabe, a software designer for a U. S. firm in Tokyo, told Xinhua. He took his mother’s family name in elementary school as nobody could pronounce his name properly.

“It was tough at school because I was the only ‘gaijin’ ( foreigner) in the school, yet I couldn’t speak English and had no knowledge of the world, as I was born and raised in Japan, just like my peers,” he said…

Read the entire article here.

INDIGO: An Exhibit of Textiles

Gandhi Memorial Center
4748 Western Avenue
Bethesda, Maryland, 20816
Washington, D.C.
Phone: 301-320-6871

Opening Reception:
Saturday, 2013-11-16, 14:00-16:00 EST (Local Time)
Inaugural Remarks at 14:30 EST

INDIGO, an exhibition of textiles by Laura Kina and Shelly Jyoti will be inaugurated at the Gandhi Memorial Center in cooperation with the Embassy of India and with support of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations on November 16th at the Gandhi Memorial Center, from 2pm to 4pm. Mr. Taranjit Singh Sandhu, Deputy Chief of Mission, will be the distinguished guest for the afternoon. The exhibition features Laura Kina’s “Devon Avenue Sampler” and Shelly Jyoti’s “Indigo Narratives”.  The common thread between both bodies of work is the color indigo blue from India’s colonial past, to indigo-dyed Japanese kasuri fabrics and boro patchwork quilts, through blue threads of a Jewish prayer tallis, to working class blue jeans in the U.S.  Since 2009, “Indigo” has exhibited in galleries and cultural centers in Baroda, New Delhi, Mumbai, Seattle, Miami, and Chicago.

For more information, click here.

Infant Perceptions of Mixed-Race Faces: An Exploration of the Hypodescent Rule in 8.5 Month-Old Infants

Pitzer College, Claremont, California
Senior Theses
Spring 2013
42 pages

Sophie Beiers

Studies have shown that adults often categorize mixed-race individuals of White and non-White descent as members of the non-White racial group, an effect said to be reminiscent of the “hypodescent” or “one-drop rule.” This effect has not yet been thoroughly studied in infants, although 9-month-old infants have been shown to be able to categorize mono-racial faces into different racial groups. In the present study, the perception of mixed-race White and Asian/Asian American faces was studied in sixteen 8.5-month-old infants. The infants were randomly assigned to two stimulus groups. The stimuli were the photographed faces of female college students who had self-identified as White, Asian/Asian American, or a 50-50 mix of those two races. Half the infants were habituated to White faces and half were habituated to Asian/Asian American faces, after which all infants were shown a mixed-race face. The results revealed that only infants in the White stimulus group recovered looking to the mixed-race face. This effect suggests that 8.5- month-old infants might see the mixed-race face as part of a different racial group than the White faces, and may see the mixed-race face as part of the same racial group as the Asian faces. Implications of this study on a larger scale are discussed. Further research including a larger sample size and participants of Asian/Asian American descent is recommended.

Read the entire thesis here.

Seeing Opportunity In A Question: ‘Where Are You Really From?’

Morning Edition
National Public Radio
2013-11-11

Renee Montagne, Host

Steve Inskeep, Host

Michele Norris, Host/Special Correspondent

NPR continues a series of conversations about The Race Card Project, where thousands of people have submitted their thoughts on race and cultural identity in six words. Every so often NPR Host/Special Correspondent Michele Norris will dip into those six-word stories to explore issues surrounding race and cultural identity for Morning Edition.

“Where are you from?”

“No, really, where are you from?”

Those questions about identity and appearance come up again and again in submissions to The Race Card Project. In some cases, Norris tells Morning Edition‘s Steve Inskeep, people say it feels accusatory — like, ‘Do you really belong?’

It’s also a question that Alex Sugiura, because of his racially ambiguous appearance, can’t seem to escape.

Sugiura, 27, is the child of a first-generation Japanese immigrant father and a Jewish mother of Eastern European descent. Sugiura’s brother Max looks more identifiably Asian, but when people meet Alex, they’re often not satisfied to hear that he’s from Brooklyn…

Read the article here. Listen to the story here. Download the audio here. Read the transcript here.

Mixing Racial Messages

Hyperallergic: Sensitive to Art & its Discontents
2013-10-30

Ryan Wong

Starting with its title, the group exhibition War Baby/Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art  at Seattle’s Wing Luke museum asks a provocative question: how do those seen by Americans as products of either colonial domination or subversive desire move past those categories? How do they escape, as the curators put it, an “identity defined by their parentage,” “fixed in the status of infants or children”?

Paradoxically, War Baby/Love Child begins with that parentage in order to make room for the artist to grow past it. Organized by Laura Kina and Wei Ming Dariotis, it is the most significant exhibition on the subject since Kip Fulbeck’s groundbreaking Hapa Project, which began in 2002. In the decade since, we have seen America’s multiracial population grow a third, to 9 million, not to mention the election of our first mixed race President…

Read the entire article here.

Jesus for Revolutionaries: An Introduction to Race, Social Justice, and Christianity

Robert Chao Romero
2013-10-07
262 pages
5.83 wide x 8.26 tall
Paperback ISBN: 9781304513984
eBook ISBN: 9781304531063

Robert Chao Romero, Associate Professor of Chicana/o Studies and Asian American Studies
University of California, Los Angeles

Are you a “revolutionary”? Are you curious about exploring issues of race and social justice from a Christian perspective? This book by UCLA Professor and Pastor, Robert Chao Romero, is for you!

Topics covered include: a biblical framework for understanding poverty, race, and gender; undocumented immigration; politics; affirmative action; mixed race issues; Christian social justice pioneers; and, an introduction to the Christian world of social justice and community development.

Contents

• Foreword
• Preface
• Introduction: Student Stories from the Revolution
• 1. God’s “Equal Protection Clause”: The Biblical Basis for Social justice
• 2. Jesus Was An Immigrant
• 3. “A Day Without A Mexican”: The Essential Economic Contributions of Undocumented Immigrants
• 4. “Secure Communities” Destroys Immigrant Families
• 5. God Loves “Dreamers”: Undocumented Youth and Comprehensive Immigration Reform
• 6. Jesus Invented Affirmative Action
• 7. The Case for Affirmative Action Today
• 8. Jesus and the Tea Party: Politics and Christianity
• 9. “Chino-Chicano“: A Biblical Framework for Diversity
• 10. Colorblindness, Structural Inequality, and Trayvon Martin
• 11. Gender
• 12. Class
• 13. Summing Up the Image of God: Neither Jew nor Gentile, Male nor Female, Slave nor Free
• 14. Manifest Destiny? The Historical Misrepresentation of Christianity
• 15. God Never Leaves Himself Without A Witness: MLK, Cesar Chavez, and other Social Justice Pioneers
• 16. Modern-Day Revolutionaries
• 17. Join the Revolution!
• Appendix I: A Faith and Justice Manifesto
• Appendix II: More Resources for the Budding Revolutionary—Books, Films, and Immigration
• Appendix III: PraXis Groups and The 4-Part Study

My Basmati Bat Mitzvah

Amulet Books
2013-10-01
256 pages
5 1/2 x 8 1/4
Hardcover ISBN: 1-4197-0806-6

Paula J. Freedman

During the fall leading up to her bat mitzvah, Tara (Hindi for “star”) Feinstein has a lot more than her Torah portion on her mind. Between Hebrew school and study sessions with the rabbi, there doesn’t seem to be enough time to hang out with her best friend Ben-O—who might also be her boyfriend—and her other best friend, Rebecca, who’s getting a little too cozy with the snotty Sheila Rosenberg. Not to mention working on her robotics project with the class clown Ryan Berger, or figuring out what to do with a priceless heirloom sari that she accidentally ruined. Amid all this drama, Tara considers how to balance her Indian and Jewish identities and what it means to have a bat mitzvah while questioning her faith.

With the cross-cultural charm of Bend It Like Beckham, this delightful debut novel is a classic coming-of-age story and young romance with universal appeal.

Transforming Korea into a multicultural society: reception of multiculturalism discourse and its discursive disposition in Korea

Asian Ethnicity
Volume 13, Issue 1, 2012
pages 97-109
DOI: 10.1080/14631369.2012.625703

Ji-Hyun Ahn
University of Texas, Austin

Since 2005, multicultural-based words such as multicultural society, multicultural family, and multicultural education have grown explosively in Korean society. Due to this social trend, adoption of the term multiculturalism has become a trend within the government and press to explain current social changes in Korea. Nevertheless, there have been few efforts to tackle multiculturalism as a crucial political project or a considerable academic theme of discussion. Thus, this study aims to examine how multiculturalism discourse in Korea has been received and draws its discursive disposition. It argues how the media, especially the press, incorporate other crucial issues such as ‘diversity’, ‘human rights’, and ‘minority politics’ in terms of multiculturalism. To analyse, a total of 275 journal articles were selected and scrutinised. This study contextualises Korean multiculturalism and suggests a meta-picture of the discursive economy of multiculturalism in Korea.

Introduction

Since 2005, ‘multicultural’-based terms such as ‘multicultural society’, ‘multicultural family’ and ‘multicultural education’ have grown explosively in Korean society. The advertising copy of ‘Dynamic Korea’ and many other multi-racial models in TV commercials seem to indicate that Korea is becoming a multicultural society. Furthermore, many journals deal with multiculturalism issues through features and series.

A key symbolic event illustrating this trend was when Hines Ward, an American football hero with a Korean mother, visited Korea in 2006. The passionate response to this ‘Korean’ hero from the U.S. ignited a discussion on issues of race and multicultural society in Korea. Following these events, adoption of the term ‘multiculturalism’ has become a trend within the government and press to explain current social changes in Korea. Nevertheless, there have been few efforts to tackle multiculturalism as a crucial political project or a considerable academic theme of discussion. In this sense, discussions of multiculturalism in Korea are either too superficial or absent altogether. What I want to point out in this context is that racial projects are now proceeding in Korea using multiculturalism discourse, and this serves as a launching point that propels this study.

One significant feature of globalization is an increase of mobility. The flow of people’s mobility is getting more and more diverse and dynamic. For example, Korea, originally supposed to be a very homogeneous country, is now experiencing a great, new influx of immigrants. In a demographical sense, South Korea has a total population of about 40 million people, with a foreign population approaching one million as of 2007. This influx of foreigners started in the early 90s with migrant workers, but the numbers increased in 2000 with a growing number of international, married couples in Korea.

Due to this drastic change, the Korean government has created many policies to assimilate those immigrants and foreigners into Korean society. Media especially plays a key role in handling this issue; for example, newspapers feature the issues of migrant workers and international marriage families, and frame the issues in terms of multiculturalism discourse. What is more, this discursive formation of multicultural society rearranges the order of other competing discourses such as globalization, neo-liberalism, and racism in Korea. Thus, this study has two aims: (1) it examines how multiculturalism discourse has been received and how the term multiculturalism has been used and (2) it studies how multiculturalism discourse in Korea draws its discursive disposition and how the media, especially the press, incorporates other crucial issues such as ‘diversity’, ‘human rights’ and ‘minority politics’ in terms of multiculturalism. I believe this would provide insights about how globalisation promotes social change incorporating multiculturalism discourse in Korea.

Analysing newspaper articles from 1992 to 2007, I demonstrate the typology of discursive dispositions on multiculturalism discourse in Korea. There are three dimensions: (1) multiculturalism discourse is representing multi-race, (2) it passes through minority politics and minority movements, and (3) it detours the idea of (cultural) diversity. I will discuss how this discursive disposition of multiculturalism is now proceeding in Korean society.

Read the entire article here.

School aims to give biracial kids a place to ‘be themselves’

Japan Times
2013-10-20

Michael Bradley, Special to the Japan Times

NAKAGUSUKU, OKINAWA – Melissa Tomlinson doesn’t have very happy memories of elementary school. As an 8-year-old, she “never had a chance to eat lunch normally — the other kids put something in it, or they mixed the milk and soup and orange together and told me to eat it.”

Like the three or four other mixed-race children in her class, Tomlinson was bullied on a daily basis. Now a 26-year-old high school English teacher, she still recalls how “they told me to go home to America, and they talked bad about my mom.”

Her teachers did little to stop the abuse — indeed, some, wittingly or not, even contributed to it. Every summer, on the anniversary of the end of the Battle of Okinawa — the three-month assault in which around 100,000 Okinawan civilians perished — Tomlinson would become the focus of the class. “The teacher always said, ‘Melissa, can you stand up? So, you are half-American, what do you think about this?’ For me, I was like, ‘I grew up here, I don’t know about American things.’ ” Tomlinson had no memory of her father, a U.S. serviceman who’d split from her mother when she was still a baby.

Tomlinson’s story is far from unique. Since 1946, many children here have been born to U.S. military fathers and Okinawan mothers. Sometimes (and especially when the fathers are deployed elsewhere) the mothers are left to bring up the children by themselves, and, like Tomlinson, those children don’t always have an easy time at school.

When five single mothers set up a school for their own “Amerasian” children in Okinawa 15 years ago, they were not so much worried about bullying as concerned about getting their kids a bilingual education. The only one of the women still involved with the school — the current principal, Midori Thayer — explains: “Our children needed to learn both languages because of their two different heritages. They had to be themselves.”…

Read the entire article here.

Interracial Encounters: Reciprocal Representations in African and Asian American Literatures, 1896–1937 by Julia H. Lee (review)

Journal of Asian American Studies
Volume 16, Number 3, October 2013
pages 340-342
DOI: 10.1353/jaas.2013.0025

Caroline H. Yang, Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies, English
University of Illinois, Chicago

Interracial Encounters: Reciprocal Representations in African and Asian American Literatures, 1896-1937, by Julia H. Lee. New York: New York University Press, 2011. xi + 219 pp. ISBN: 9780814752555.

That 1896 is a defining year in the history of segregation and unequal citizenship in the United States is obviously common knowledge in critical race studies. What Julia Lee teaches us about the moment in Interracial Encounters is probably not: that the Chinese figured significantly in Plessy v. Ferguson as a crucial component in both the majority and dissenting opinions on whether or not segregation based on race—specifically, blackness—was constitutional. According to Lee, the discourse of what it meant to be Chinese was influential to the definition of what it meant to be black, as both opinions adjudicated the placement of black bodies on a black–white racial binary through the figure of the Chinese. Naming the Plessy case as “the document that most dramatically reveals the ways that the figure of the Negro and the Asiatic were intertwined in this period” (42), Lee suggests in the rest of her book that 1896 was significant in not only instituting segregation but also inaugurating a particular brand of misreading. And this common misreading about the Plessy case has glossed over and continues to make invisible what she calls “encounters” between African Americans and Asians during this time, encounters wrought by the complexities of the historical moment following black emancipation and enfranchisement, as well as labor migrations from Asia.

Interracial Encounters demonstrates that not accounting for the significance of Chineseness in how blackness was defined in the Plessy case had a critical role in how race was understood in the United States for much of the twentieth century. In this way, Lee’s close reading of the Plessy case speaks to her book’s methodological interventions. It shows the importance of literary studies in not just historical analyses of texts that have been read heretofore as concerning only blacks and whites but also Afro-Asian critique. As part of a vibrant and rising field of study that teases out Afro-Asian connections and disconnections, Lee’s book makes clear why many of its proponents are Asian Americanists whose approach to critical race studies is shaped by their understanding of the vicissitudes and contradictions of the Asian racial form in the United States. Quite simply, the reading practice developed in Lee’s book is original and insightful, and it brings to light figures and forms in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century literatures that have often been rendered as insignificant nonpresence unrelated to other racialized figures.

With a deep interest in writing a “historicizing project” (9), Lee points to a wide-ranging archive of minstrel show sheet music, political cartoons, and films, as well as literature, to explain that African Americans and Asians were the most rampantly compared minority groups in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She also writes that the process of racializing the two groups was mutually constitutive and essential in the creation of the “fantasy of modern American identity” (21). Despite this, Lee argues that if and when they are remembered together in this period, they are seen as either antagonistic opposites or natural allies bonded together in solidarity based on shared experience of discrimination, violence, and exclusion. Against this way of thinking, Lee argues that we need to study not just the hegemonic ways in which blackness and Asianness became meaningful but also the ways in which African American and Asian American literatures contributed to and challenged the process of racial meaning making.

As such, save for one substantive chapter that explores the representations of African Americans and Asians in dominant popular culture from the Reconstruction period to the early twentieth century, all of the book’s chapters call attention to the formal strategies of literary texts by wide-ranging authors of color such as Charles Chesnutt, Wu Tingfang, Nella Larsen, Edith Eaton, Winnifred Eaton, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Younghill Kang. Lee’s focus on these texts and authors decenters whiteness as ostensibly the a priori authentic embodiment of citizenship into which minority groups were trying to assimilate. In turn, the texts decenter the nation as a privileged site of identification as they underscore the “multilateral nature of racial encounters” (43).

Certain parts of the book illustrate just how complex and ambitious Lee…