What Are Words Worth: Hapa, Hafu or Mixed-Race? |
What Are Words Worth: Hapa, Hafu or Mixed-Race?
Pacific Citizen: The National Newspaper of the JACL
Los Angeles, California
2015-01-27
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.
Tags: Gil Asakawa, Pacific Citizen, Pacific Citizen: The National Newspaper of the JACL