Mixed Race Studies

The whole story on being ‘hafu’

CNN International
CNN Go
2010-11-29

Daniel Krieger

The movie ‘Hafu’ explores the limbo world of people who are half-Japanese and half something else, as they try to find their place in society

What does it mean to be half-Japanese in 21st-century Japan?

This is what filmmakers Megumi Nishikura and Lara Takagi set out to explore in their documentary film, “Hafu,” of which they showed a preview screening last month at the Kansai Franco-Japanese Institute in Kyoto.

The film, which is not yet completed, is an offshoot of the Hafu Project, which was set up in London two years ago by sociologist Marcia Yume Lise and photographer Natalie Maya Willer, both half-Japanese.

The project profiles hafus with photos and interviews that shed light on the experience of living between two cultures.

“We wanted to create an opportunity to discuss contemporary Japan through the lens of half Japanese,” says Lise…

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Will there ever be a rainbow Japan?

CNN International
CNN Go
2010-12-01

Tracy Slater

Government statistics suggest multiculturalism is on the rise, but social organizations for mixed-race Japanese say ‘hafus’ still face challenges

Japan, which closed its borders from 1639 to 1854 and later colonized its neighbors, has an uneasy history with foreigners, national identity, and multiculturalism.

Yet government statistics and grassroots organizations say multiculturalism in the famously insular country is now on the rise…
Japan: The new melting pot?

Japan’s national government recently announced it is turning to travelers in a foreigner-friendly mission to boost diversity — at least in tourist spots — by paying them to provide feedback on how to increase accessibility for non-Japanese speakers.

David Askew, associate professor of law at Kyoto’s Ritsumeikan University, identifies more profound changes.

In 1965, a mere 1 in 250 of all marriages in Japan were international, he notes. By 2004, the number had climbed to 1 in 15 across the nation and 1 in 10 in Tokyo…

Celebrating diversity

A handful of new organizations are tied, at least in part, to the increase in multicultural marriages.

Groups such as Mixed Roots Japan and Hapa Japan, founded by children of mixed-Japanese couples, aim to celebrate the broadening scope of Japanese identity, both nationally and globally.

“There is a real need now to recognize that Japan is getting more multiracial,” says Mixed Roots founder Edward Sumoto, a self-described “hafu” of Japanese/Venezuelan ethnicity. “The Japanese citizen is not simply a traditional Japanese person with Japanese nationality anymore.”

The issue of the identity of hafu is also being explored in a new film titled “Hafu,” currently under production by the Hafu Project.

In support of multiracial families, Mixed Roots holds Halloween and Christmas parties, picnics and beach days…

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What are you? A qualitative study on multiracial identity development

The Wright Institute
June 2008
115 pages
Publication Number: AAT 3351317
ISBN: 9781109073614

Luana M. Coloma

A dissertation submitted to the Wright Institute Graduate School of Psychology, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Psychology

The current study explored essential themes of multiracial ethnic identity among six Asian-White women. Participants were between the ages of 19 and 27, and self-identified as having a White mother and an Asian father. Participants were interviewed face-to-face using a semi-structured questionnaire. Interviews were then transcribed and coded for themes using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Five primary themes emerged: The Continuous Journey of Ethnic Identity Development, Situational Identity, The Maternal Relationship and its Effects on Identity Development, The Comparison of Multiracial Experiences to Monoracial Experiences, and the Asian-White Experience. A number of subthemes also were identified. Although some of the themes mirrored findings from previous multiracial research, such as identity being situationally based, new themes also emerged. In particular, themes related to the relationship between the White mother and her multiracial daughter were brought to light. In addition, preliminary results relating to the unique experience of the Asian-White subgroup when compared to the larger multiracial subgroup were identified. Implications of the findings and recommendations for future research are discussed.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
  • Statement of Purpose
  • Definitions
  • Historical Background of the Presence of Multiracial Individuals in the United States
  • Current Research on the Multiracial Population
  • The Asian-White Multiracial Experience
  • Identity Development
    • Ethnic Identity Development Models
    • Multiracial Identity Development Models
    • Multiracial Identity Development Models for Asian-White Individuals
  • A Closer Look at the Mother-Daughter Relationship
    • The Mother-Daughter Relationship
    • Multiracial Daughters and Their Relationships With Their Mothers
    • Multiracial Daughters and Their White Mothers
  • Summary
  • Hypotheses
• Methodology
  • Participants
  • Procedure
  • Instruments
  • Data Analyses
• Results
  • Demographic and Biographical Information
    • Participant 1
    • Participant 2
    • Participant 3
    • Participant 4
    • Participant 5
    • Participant 6
  • Interview Themes
    • The Continuous Journey of Ethnic Identity Development
    • Situational Identity
    • The Maternal Relationship and its Effects on Ethnic Identity
    • The Comparison of Multiracial Experiences to Monoracial Experiences
    • The Asian-White Experience
• Discussion
  • Discussion of Results
    • Hypothesis One
    • Hypothesis Two
    • Hypothesis Three
  • Limitations and Confounds
  • Recommendations for Future Research
• References
  • Appendices
  • Appendix A
  • Appendix B
  • Appendix C
  • Appendix D

Puchase the dissertation here.

Chinese Interracial Families

Undergraduate Research Journal
Indiana University, South Bend
1998

Lin Liu, Honors Freshman Research Seminar Participant

In an increasingly multi-cultural America, the Chinese population as well as the number of Chinese interracial families has risen significantly among all other nationalities. Since the 1940’s, the Chinese population has soared. There have been many contributing factors. These factors include World War II, the Immigration Act of 1965, the Civil Rights Movement, and the ruling of anti-miscegenation laws as unconstitutional. But despite this continual increase over the years, many Chinese and Chinese interracial families still face barriers such as subtle and blatant racism. From history and current statistics we see these families have overcome many obstacles to become what they are today. But there is no reason for these barriers to remain in place because these families are special in their own way.

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The Eurasian in Shanghai

The American Journal of Sociology
Volume 41, Number 5 (March, 1936)
pages 642-648

Herbert Day Lamson

Although hybrid offspring tend to form an intermediary group of cultural contact between the native and the alien in societies where they are found, the Eurasian in Shanghai finds himself discriminated against by both parent-stocks. Since his father is often a poorly paid transient and his mother frequently is from the servant class, his biological inheritance is low grade and his opportunities for educational and social advantages few. The cultural blending of the white and the yellow races that has gone forward has not come through the Eurasian, but through the large number of the upper strata of natives who have visited and studied in foreign lands and have brought back varying degrees of that culture.

The Eurasian in Shanghai occupies an intermediate position biologically, and somewhat socially in so far as he is the subject of social discrimination at the hands of both alien and native groups. Over the mixed blood hovers the traditional stigma of illegitimacy. The ostracism is not absolute, there are no lynchings and no laws against mixture, but, granted this prejudice on the part of the two parent-groups, the hybrid offspring differ outstandingly. Not that they are biologic freaks, but the fact of being “half-caste” gives thejn a position in the social structure which interferes with their mobility and social contacts even in a so-called cosmopolitan society. For this reason this intermixture has important sociological consequences.

Each of the ethnic groups, the native and the alien in Shanghai, has tended to remain socially somewhat isolated from the other, though individuals have, through legal or illegal mating, produced a group of hybrid offspring of varying nationalities. This has come about chiefly through the taking of native women by alien men. The resulting mixed bloods have been subjected to estrangement and isolation. The British brought with them from India their prejudice against the half-caste, and the alien population has been strongly influenced by this point of view. On the whole, the Chinese disapprove of miscegenation and discriminate against the hybrid, especially if the latter has hybrid-racial visibility and follows the alien in belittling the native. This is one reason why the Eurasian…

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Multiracial and Adopted Asians

Electronic Magazine of Multicultural Education
Volume 3, Number 2 (Fall 2001)
Theme: Interracial and Mixed-racial Relationships and Families

C. N. Le, Senior Lecturer Professor
University of Massachusetts, Amherst

In the 1980s Asian Americans became the fastest growing racial/ethnic group in the United States in terms of percentage growth.  As part of this growth, the number of those who are multiracial and adopted from Asia is increasing significantly.  These particular Asian Americans face unique political and cultural challenges from Asians and non-Asians alike.  While many struggle to fit into both cultures, many are creating their own identity that unites, rather than separates, their experiences. 

Table of Contents

• All Mixed Up?
• All Asians Alone or with Other Races
• Room to Grow
• Much More Than the Sum of the Parts
• References
• Editor’s Note

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Adopted Territory: Transnational Korean Adoptees and the Politics of Belonging

Duke University Press
November 2010
320 pages
15 photographs, 4 tables
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8223-4683-8
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8223-4695-1

Eleana J. Kim, Assistant Professor of Anthropology
University of Rochester

Since the end of the Korean War, an estimated 200,000 children from South Korea have been adopted into white families in North America, Europe, and Australia. While these transnational adoptions were initiated as an emergency measure to find homes for mixed-race children born in the aftermath of the war, the practice grew exponentially from the 1960s through the 1980s. At the height of South Korea’s “economic miracle,” adoption became an institutionalized way of dealing with poor and illegitimate children. Most of the adoptees were raised with little exposure to Koreans or other Korean adoptees, but as adults, through global flows of communication, media, and travel, they came into increasing contact with each other, Korean culture, and the South Korean state. Since the 1990s, as infants continue to leave Korea for adoption to the West, a growing number of adult adoptees have been returning to seek their cultural and biological origins. In this fascinating ethnography, Eleana J. Kim examines the history of Korean adoption, the emergence of a distinctive adoptee collective identity, and adoptee returns to Korea in relation to South Korean modernity and globalization. Kim draws on interviews with adult adoptees, social workers, NGO volunteers, adoptee activists, scholars, and journalists in the U.S., Europe, and South Korea, as well as on observations at international adoptee conferences, regional organization meetings, and government-sponsored motherland tours.

Source: Ebony Magazine, 1955

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgments
• Notes on Transliteration, Terminology, and Pseudonyms
• Abbreviations
• Introduction: Understanding Transnational Korean Adoption
• Part I
  • 1. “Waifs” and “Orphans”: The Origins of Korean Adoption
  • 2. Adoptee Kinship
  • 3. Adoptee Cultural Citizenship
  • 4. Public Intimacies and Private Politics
• Part II
  • 5. Our Adoptee, Our Alien: Adoptees as Specters of Family and Foreignness in Global Korea
  • 6. Made in Korea: Adopted Koreans and Native Koreans in the Motherland
  • 7. Beyond Good and Evil: The Moral Economies of Children and their Best Interests in a Global Age
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index

Beyond Color-blind Universalism: Asians in a “Postracial America”

Journal of Asian American Studies
Volume 13, Number 3 (October 2010)
pages 327-342
E-ISSN: 1096-8598; Print ISSN: 1097-2129

Linda Trinh Võ, Associate Professor
Department of Asian American Studies School of Humanities
University of California, Irvine

Beyond the symbolism of President Barack Hussein Obama’s election is the unseen ways in which it is transforming the racial discourse in this country; however, whether it means a substantial transformation of structural inequities is more elusive. Does Obama’s election mean that the United States has moved beyond its historical legacy of slavery and institutionalized segregation? Are racial groups interchangeable in this colorblind universalism, so that one group can be merely substituted for another? We are in the process of digesting what his presidency means for Asian Americans on both a superficial or symbolic level, but also on the tangibles, namely the implementation of the campaign slogan “change we can believe in.” Recognizing that much remains uncertain for Asian Americans, I critique the connections, real and imagined, they have to the presidential election, provide cautionary notes on the post-racial narrative, and comment on the ongoing process and impact of racialization.

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Ethnic identity of biracial individuals with one Asian parent

California State University, Long Beach
2006
66 pages
Publication Number: AAT 1437924
ISBN: 9780542893049

Christina A. Nguyen

A Thesis Presented to the Department of Social Work, California State University, Long Beach In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Social Work

The purpose of this study was to examine ethnic identity of biracial, Asian individuals. Level of exposure to Asian culture of biracial Asian individuals was examined to find if there was a significant difference between males and females and with which parent he/she identified more strongly (i.e., Asian parent vs. other parent) and how they were influenced by their Asian culture. Self-administered surveys were gathered from a sample of 32 biracial, Asian individuals.

Results indicated that there was no significant difference between males and females and their levels of exposure to their Asian culture. However, results did indicate that males identified with their Asian parent more often than their female counterparts. Overall, most respondents felt accepted by their Asian community. Implications for social work practices and recommendations for future research were also addressed.

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Addressing Issues of Biracial Asian Americans

Reflections on Shattered Windows: Promises and Prospects for Asian American Studies
Washington State University Press
1988
Chapter 15, pages 111-116

Edited by: G. Y. Okihiro, S. Hune, A. A. Hansen, and J. M. Liu

Stephen L. Murphy-Shigematsu

Revising the Asian American Studies curriculum

One of the more dramatic changes in the post-World War II Asian American population is the increase in those of biracial ancestry. Over the past forty years large numbers of Asian women have married Americans and come to the United States. [n 1] During this period, too, thousands of Asian American men and women have married outside their ethnic group. [n 2] The burgeoning population of biracial youth that has resulted from these developments, represents a significant change in the face of Asian America.

In the light of the above situation, one of the challenges confronting Asian American Studies is to adapt and revise a curriculum created in the early 1970s that was designed primarily for American born Chinese and Japanese. It has become necessary to redesign courses to better accommodate the needs, interests, and backgrounds of the more diverse group of Asian Americans who are presently underrepresented in the curriculum, and increasingly in Asian American Studies classes and in the general population. Those of biracial ancestry are one emerging group whose experiences and needs must be addressed in curriculum development…

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