Mixed Race Studies

Nikkei Heritage: Intermarriages and Hapas: An Overview – Parts 1 and 2

Discover Nikkei (Japanese Migrans and Their Descendants)
Republished from Nikkei Heritage (The quarterly journal of the National Japanese American Historical Society)
2007-05-11

George Kitahara Kich, Senior Trial Consultant
Bonora D’Andrea

Rebecca Chiyoko King-O’Riain, Lecturer in Sociology
National University of Ireland, Maynooth

Larry Hajime Shinagawa, Associate Professor Director of Asian American Studies
University of Maryland

Shizue Seigel

To be biracial and Japanese American means having many different labels from which to choose. For this historical overview, we will use “Hapa”, a term popularized by the Hapa Issues Forum, to mean people who have an Asian/Asian Pacific Islander parent and a parent of any other race. Our focus here is on those with a Japanese or a Japanese American parent.

There is no single Hapa experience. Over the decades, Hapas have had widely different experiences based on individual circumstance and background, as well as the time period and environment into which they were born. The history of people of mixed-race has been deeply influenced by the evolving social and legal contexts for interracial relationships and marriages, along with community attitudes about culture, tradition and belongingness. Legal barriers against mixed marriages have fallen; however, discrimination, prejudice, community fears and stereotyping still affect interracial marriages and interracial people today. Nonetheless, about half* of all Japanese American marriages since 1970 have been to non-JAs, and the birthrate of interracial and interethnic children with some Japanese ancestry now exceeds that of JA/JA children. The Japanese American community has been gradually welcoming Hapas as a significant and growing part of the Japanese American community…

Read the entire Part 1 of the article here.
Read Part 2 here.

Framing mixed race: The face of America is changing

Contra Costa Times
2010-02-07

Jennifer Modenessi

Like any proud mother, Janine Mozée sees beauty when she looks at her four children.

But the Benicia resident perceives more than their physical qualities and the various shades and hues of their skin, eyes and hair. For Mozée, 46, it’s a “beautiful thing” that they can take strength and security from their identities, traverse diverse worlds and cultures and fit in where they want.

Bianca, Austin, Weston and Isabella Carr, whose mother is white and father is black, white and Native American, are not alone.

According to the most recent U.S. census, the number of people identifying as mixed race is growing. California‘s mixed-race population, by percentage, ranks fifth in the nation, and data from the 2008 U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey estimates that more than 4 percent of Bay Area residents identify as belonging to two or more races. Though that number may seem low and could be attributed to people of mixed heritage choosing to identify with one race, a look at the Bay Area’s diversity suggests the 2010 census could reveal much higher numbers. Still, more youths are being raised in interracial homes, often by mixed-race parents who are encouraging their children to embrace their diverse backgrounds, said sociologist and UC [University of California, ] Santa Barbara professor G. Reginald Daniel. The stories of Bay Area residents such as Carr and her family; Donna and Kim Hunter, sisters whose mother was German and father was black; and Whitney Moses, whose father was black, Native American and white, reflect that trend. And their images, featured in the recent book “Blended Nation: Portraits of Mixed-Race America,” offer further proof that the face of the nation is changing…

Read the entire article here.

Who am I?

Middlebury Magazine
Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vermont
Winter 2010

Kevin Charles Redmon, [class of 20]10

As Janet Mondlane Rodrigues [class of 20]12 grapples with her own complex racial identity, she implores others to take a look in the mirror, as well, and ask themselves this loaded question.

Early in Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, before clips of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s more polemical sermons looped endlessly on cable television and Obama was forced to publicly denounce his pastor, the neologism “postracial” was on a lot of lips. A hopeful word with an elusive definition, it seemed to have as much to do with Obama’s fair skin and poise as it did with any message he espoused. Indeed, postracial was more about what the junior senator didn’t say than what he did—here was a man of color who appeared to transcend his mother’s whiteness and father’s African heritage, an editor of the Harvard Law Review who could acknowledge the tribulations of being a black man in America without letting it consume him. In short, a man who had moved beyond race. The implication being, so should we.

Janet Mondlane Rodrigues ’12 hasn’t moved beyond race, and she’s determined not to let others move beyond it, either. Mozambican born and Brooklyn raised, she shoulders a complicated identity: Her maternal grandfather was a black African revolutionary, her maternal grandmother a tenacious, white Indiana girl. Her mother is a multiracial world musician; her father is white Portuguese. From this vantage point, Rodrigues sees an America and a campus still struggling to address racism and privilege. To her, talk of a post-racial era is a way of silencing an argument mid-sentence…

…In high school, Rodrigues was already probing what it meant to have a multiracial identity, particularly in a borough so heavily segregated. With her Latina friends, “I was known as the white girl, because of how I spoke.” Others mistook her for Dominican or Puerto Rican. “By the black community, I was seen as privileged because I didn’t have the hair; I didn’t have the totally dark skin; I could pretend like I didn’t have this black identity. But among whites, I didn’t have the privileges they had; I didn’t go to private school.” Indeed, race was as much about the deep chasms between socioeconomic classes as it was about skin color…

Read the entire article here.

Beyond Race: Examining the Facets of Multiracial Identity Through a Life-span Developmental Lens

Journal of Ethnic And Cultural Diversity in Social Work
Volume 18, Issue 4 (October 2009)
pages 293-310
DOI: 10.1080/15313200903310759

Kelly F. Jackson, Assistant Professor of Social Work
Arizona State University

Using a social work developmental lens, this qualitative study explored some of the numerous social and environmental factors that shape a multiracial individual’s cultural identity. Results from transcript analysis portray the cultural identity of multiracial persons as significantly influenced by (1) personal experiences of racism and discrimination; (2) social interactions and relationships with peers and family; and (3) the racial climate of the school and community. The findings from this study support more fluid, ecological models of multiracial identity development that are more effective at explicating some of the highly complex and influential contextual factors that impact a multiracial person’s cultural identity development.

Read or purchase the article here.