Positioning American Japanese in the Context of Japanese and Okinawan Nationalism and Ethnicity

Posted in Articles, Asian Diaspora, Media Archive, Social Science on 2011-01-07 22:41Z by Steven

Positioning American Japanese in the Context of Japanese and Okinawan Nationalism and Ethnicity

Stanford Journal of Asian American Studies
Volume II (October 2009)
18 pages

Stephanie Otani
Stanford University

have the right…
Not to justify my existence in this world.
Not to keep the races separate within me.
Not to be responsible for people’s discomfort with my physical ambiguity.
Not to justify my ethnic legitimacy…
To identify myself differently than strangers expect me to identify…
To create a vocabulary to communicate about being multiracial…
To have loyalties and identification with more than one group of people.

~from the Bill of Rights for Racially Mixed People, by Maria P.P. Root

They wear war in their faces. They are the symbols of foreign domination. They embody the transgression of sacred boundaries. In Okinawa, people of Japanese and American descent (or Amerasians) are first and foremost foreigners, no matter how Japanese or Okinawan their language, customs, mannerisms, or worldviews may be. Before they even speak, their face and skin signal to people the circumstances of their births. The rights claimed by Root in the “Bill of Rights for Racially Mixed People” ultimately culminate in the right to first and foremost be understood as a human being as opposed to racial anomaly or mistake. As of now, these rights are insubstantial claims for those who carry signs of American parentage in their appearance throughout Okinawa and the rest of Japan. Instead, they continue to be externally categorized as gaijin or “foreigners” in their own homes.

Japan does not contain the linguistic nor legal infrastructure to accommodate them under the idea of Japaneseness. Within Japan, Okinawa is a particularly interesting and relevant site to explore issues of cultural and political legitimacy and conflicts between internal and external identity. The historical experience of Okinawa and its struggle for political sovereignty in international affairs mirrors the experience of American Japanese and their struggle to find a sense of national belonging. It is because of the contentious physical and political space Okinawa has historically inhabited that Amerasians struggle to fit into a larger Okinawan or Japanese identity.

Amerasians Within the Broader Context of Japan

In this section I will discuss the overall Japanese attitude toward multiracial people by examining the terms used to refer to multiracial people and the legal status of international couples. These two aspects of Japanese society reflect its reluctance to incorporate ethnic difference…

Read the entire article here.

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Hapas: Emerging Identity, Emerging Terms and Labels & the Social Construction of Race

Posted in Articles, Asian Diaspora, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2010-04-16 01:10Z by Steven

Hapas: Emerging Identity, Emerging Terms and Labels & the Social Construction of Race

Stanford Journal of Asian American Studies
Volume II (October 2009)
20 pages

Adriane E. Gamble

Adriane E. Gamble presents part of her honors thesis in her paper “Hapas: Emerging Identity, Emerging Terms and Labels, and the Social Construction of Race.” Her paper shows how emerging trends in community, terms and labels, and role models are seen in the growing population in the United States. She writes of how this can be observed both in the development of individuals’ identities and communities as well as a new racial category that offers a contemporary example of the social construction of race.

The first time I heard hapa, I went to this club fair [on campus]… I heard this voice, “We’re cool, cause we check the other box!” … I realized, oh my god, there are more people like me.

Originally a Native Hawaiian word, “hapa” is defined as “part” or “mixed,” with no racial or ethnic meaning. The current use of hapa stems from the phrase hapa haole, meaning “half foreigner” or “half White” (Dariotis, 2003). Today, the term is commonly used to describe Asian Pacific Islanders of mixed race heritage.

Conducted in 2004, this research studies how hapa has become a racial identity of its own, distinct from the classically recognized American racial categories of Asian or White. Based on the premise that racial identity is significantly informed by a racial community, and given the historical absence of a hapa community, the question emerges: how does one develop a hapa identity, without a hapa community with which to identify? Trends from the turn of the millennium show the racial landscape has changed, as a community emerged in American society of individuals self-identifying as hapa. Student and community groups have provided communities for hapas, which in turn inform racial identity, leading to an increased population of individuals self-identifying as hapa. The construction of hapa communities and hapa identity as a new racial category offer a contemporary example of the social construction of race…

Read the entire article here.

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