Mixed Race Studies

By drawing on their Hapa identity while situating themselves within historically Black and Brown musical and cultural aesthetics these artists are contributing to what ethnomusicologist, T. Carlis Roberts calls the “new Black” movement in music, a trend that embraces broader definitions of what it means to be Black and Brown. According to Roberts, “Not only has this process resulted in more visible diversity in media and other social realms, it has productively worked to unseat the Black–white dichotomy as the paradigm of racial conversation.”³ Musicians like [Jhené] Aiko are unseating several racial dichotomies.

Sonia C. Gomez, “Jhené Aiko and the Problem of Multiracial Self-Representation,” Discover Nikkei, January 29, 2019. http://www.discovernikkei.org/en/journal/2019/1/29/jhene-aiko/.

Instead of enforcing segregation policies to sanction white superiority, Argentine authorities sought to eliminate blackness through European immigration and miscegenation. The constant arrival of European males through immigration made this goal attainable. For example, [Domingo] Sarmiento often touted mulatos as proof of progress because they “had the brute force of the African and the intellect of the European.”⁵ By the turn of the twentieth century, it seemed that the whitening project had achieved success. In 1905 Juan José Soiza Reilly wrote in the magazine Caras y Caretas, “The [black] race is losing in the mixture its primitive color. It becomes gray. It dissolves. It lightens. An African tree is producing white flowers.”⁶

Erika Denise Edwards, “A Tale of Two Cities: Buenos Aires, Córdoba and the Disappearance of the Black Population in Argentina,” The Metropole: The Official Blog of the Urban History Association, May 31, 2018. https://themetropole.blog/2018/05/31/a-tale-of-two-cities-buenos-aires-cordoba-and-the-disappearance-of-the-black-population-in-argentina/.

Jhené Aiko and the Problem of Multiracial Self-Representation

Hapa Music is Black and Brown
Discover Nikkei
2019-01-29

Sonia C. Gomez, Postdoctoral Fellow
Mahindra Humanities Center
Harvard University

Jhené Aiko. Photo courtesy of The come Up Show.

At the 2018 VH1 Mother’s Day music tribute concert titled, Dear Mama: A Love Letter to Moms, Grammy nominated singer and songwriter Jhené Aiko recited this poem she wrote for her mother, Christina Yamamoto, a woman of African American and Japanese ancestry:

“I found another grey hair today but I was not bothered at all. I feel like I earned it. I’m better, I’m wiser, I’m leveling up overall. I am becoming my mother, my beautiful mother, who taught me with age, comes might. I’m becoming my mother, my beautiful mother, she is love in the flesh, what a sight.”

Afterwards, Aiko and her young daughter, Namiko Love, serenaded the audience with an original song Aiko wrote titled, Sing to Me. The performance was a touching display of affection between three generations of women, and as such, offers an opportunity to reflect on the role Aiko’s mother’s racial heritage has played in Aiko’s musical career. After all, she is her mother’s daughter.

Jhené Aiko Chilombo was born in 1988 in Los Angeles to Christina Yamamoto, a woman who is African American and Japanese, and Karamo Chilombo, a man of mixed-Black and Native American ancestry. Aiko is one of five siblings who grew up in a multiracial and tight-knit family from Ladera Heights, a Black middle-class enclave in south Los Angeles. Aiko’s sister, Mila J, is a singer, songwriter, and dancer herself…

Read the entire article here.

Is Naomi Osaka Japanese enough for Japan?

Nikkei View: Perspectives on Asian-American culture through the lens of identity, history, and experience
2019-02-01

Gil Asakawa

Naomi Osaka at the 2018 Nottingham Open qualifiers, photo by Peter Menzel, Creative Commons/flickr

I love following the exciting young career of Naomi Osaka, the world’s first Japanese tennis star who has been ranked number-one by the Women’s Tennis Association, after her recent win in the Australian Open.

I love her passion and skill and determination to win. And most of all, I love that she is mixed-race, with a Japanese mom and Haitian dad. And, that she’s culturally as American as she is Japanese or Haitian.

She was born in Japan, and her family came to the U.S. when she was just three years old. They first lived with her father’s family in Long Island, New York, and by the time she was 10, the family (which includes an older sister who also competes in tennis) moved to Florida, where they still live.

Osaka claims both American and Japanese citizenship. She’s 21 now, and the media have begun pointing out Japan’s citizenship law: At 22, Japan doesn’t allow dual citizenship. Naomi will soon have to choose her nationality…

Read the entire article here.

Participants Needed for Oral History Research/Dissertation Project: Multiracial Americans in the 1960s and 70s

Marlena Boswell, Ph.D. Candidate
Department of History
Indiana University, Bloomington

2019-02-01

I am a Ph.D. candidate researching the racial politics of multiracial individuals in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s. While the scholarly literature clearly establishes how society has historically viewed and racially identified multiracial Americans, I am seeking to understand how multiracial individuals racially identified themselves and how they related to the various race-based movements of the 60s and 70s. Therefore, I am seeking volunteers to share their stories in this oral history project.

I am seeking multiracial individuals who:

• Were born between 1945 and 1965
• Preferably (but not necessarily) have ties to the U.S. military

Because a portion of my research will focus on the U.S. military presence overseas in the post-World War II years and its role in the growth of the multiracial population, I am seeking (but not limiting participation to) individuals who come from multiracial families that grew out of the U.S. military presence in:

• England
• Germany
• Japan
• Korea

Please note: There is no monetary compensation for participation in this project.

If you are interested, please email me, Marlena Boswell, at mrb4@indiana.edu or brown.marlena@yahoo.com.