Mixed Race: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

Posted in Articles, Asian Diaspora, Autobiography, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, United States, Women on 2011-06-23 21:19Z by Steven

Mixed Race: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

Rafu Shimpo: Los Angeles Japanese Daily News
2011-06-19

Velina Hasu Houston

Recently I was honored with a Loving Award from the Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival (held June 11-12 at the Japanese American National Museum). The award and the meaning behind it has caused me to reflect on multiracial identity.

My parents married in 1954 after a nine-year courtship in Japan. When they left Japan, they arrived in the U.S., a country in which their marriage was illegal in 17 states and would remain so until 1967, two years before my father’s death.

In the landmark civil rights case Loving v. Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court finally struck down laws against interracial marriage, honoring the marriage of Afro-Indian Mildred Loving and her white husband Richard (who also were second cousins).

I grew up in a community where being mixed race was a natural thing, at least for those of us who had foreign mothers and American fathers. We were multiracial, multiethnic, and multicultural — and often, like me, transnational. The idea of having a foot in at least two countries and being a blend of three or four ethnicities was par for the course…

Read the entire article here.

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