{"id":55956,"date":"2018-03-18T21:26:05","date_gmt":"2018-03-18T21:26:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=55956"},"modified":"2018-03-18T21:26:05","modified_gmt":"2018-03-18T21:26:05","slug":"thoughts-on-identity-who-is-hapa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=55956","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts on Identity: Who is Hapa?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thoughts on Identity: Who is Hapa?<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Daily Gazette: Swarthmore College’s daily student newspaper. Founded 1997.<\/a>
\nSwarthmore, Pennsylvania
\n2016-04-29<\/p>\n

Charlotte Iwasaki<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The first time that I consciously considered my multicultural background was in fifth grade when a friend jokingly announced to the class that I was both a Jap<\/a> and a Nazi<\/a>. At the time, I laughed along with the class, but I later asked my father what they meant by \u201cJap\u201d after school. He was vague and kind in answering, but I understood. I knew that my dad was Japanese and that my mom was Caucasian, mostly German, but I never saw myself as really either, or even both. Being mixed race wasn\u2019t something I thought about at the time, but I have never since forgotten.<\/p>\n

My parents often tossed around the word \u201chapa<\/a>\u201d in reference to my sister and me. They picked up the term back when they were in college in southern California<\/a> where people often describe anyone who is half-Asian as \u201chapa.\u201d Growing up, I naturally adopted the word without much thought. But after I entered high school, I began to question what exactly I considered to be my personal identity.<\/p>\n

I started the cultural club, Hapa, with the intention of creating a space for people that similarly identify as mixed race and Asian. When I first came to Swarthmore, I was surprised that there wasn\u2019t a community for students from multicultural and multiethnic backgrounds. Everyone in SAO (Swarthmore Asian Organization) was kind and welcoming, but I didn\u2019t feel completely comfortable; I didn\u2019t see anyone like myself in the people around me…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first time that I consciously considered my multicultural background was in fifth grade when a friend jokingly announced to the class that I was both a Jap and a Nazi.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,395,2895,125,20],"tags":[28178,28186,28180,28181,28183,28185,28184,28182,3980,28179],"class_list":["post-55956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-asia","category-autobiography","category-campus-life","category-identitydevelopment","category-usa","tag-charlotte-iwasaki","tag-daily-gazette","tag-david-dj-chan","tag-dominic-sonkowsky","tag-emma-remy","tag-jasper-rendich-millis","tag-kyle-yee","tag-sayed-malawi","tag-swarthmore-college","tag-the-daily-gazette"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55956"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55958,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55956\/revisions\/55958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}