I've been doing a lot of thinking about "hapa" issues lately - about a month now - and this is the collection of some of my thoughts over the past month. It's not meant to be cohesive, authoritative, or final. Due to work, cs, and school mixed-race identity keeps coming up in different parts of my life. My mother is Caucasian (her ancestors were Scottish and came to the US on the Mayflower as indentured servants) and my father is Japanese (born in Japan...but my great-grandfather was actually the first one to move to the US). In geopolitics, I tend to consider myself fully American and, more specificially a Californian.
But then I look at "American" TV and movies and textbooks and I don't see my family in it. I see half of it - in a generalized, distant form - but I don't see the other half. [1848 Commodore Perry. 1907 Gentleman's Agreement. Immigration Quotas. Anti-Alien Land Laws. Pearl Harbor. Internnment Camps. Farewell to Manzanar. Someone by the name of Korematsu. Apologies.] And then...it stops. So I spent a lot of time getting to know Japanese American history, the experience, and the community that exists today...because that is the main ethnic community that I grew up in and I wanted to know more about it, needed to know more about it, if I was going to continue identifying myself as a Japanese American.
So I'm in solidarity with the rest of the JAs who wonder where our stories are in the story that we get told of "this is America, this is what it is to be American", wonder when it will reflect what ACTUAL Americans have expereinced, wonder when things won't automatically be presented from an Angl0-Saxon canon. I see my father's family's struggles written all over the pages of books that I accumulate on JA issues: farmers, picture brides, camps, "no-no", "yes-yes", shikataganai, shhhh don't talk about that, college is the key, cancer, gambling, improved socio-economic standing, children who don't learn Japanese, basketball, mochi.
But then there's my mom's family. They lived the American dream, yea? Great-grandpa came over to California during the depression, worked in the oil fields, had his one-room house. Two kids, boys. The war came and money comes pretty good. Great-grandpa's got a steady job and they add onto the house so the kids have a room to sleep in too. Grandpa marries grandma, in Vegas, he's 20 and she's 18, not an uncommon age at the time. 4 daughters and 9 grandchildren later, they're watching their retirements go up and down with the market but they've got their house at least. What kind of issues could this family possibly have?
Alcoholism, drugs, racism, all of the hot button issues - we sweep that under the rug more than any of my Japanese American family does. Take your prozac and put on your happy face at family gatherings, don't discuss the plurality of ethnicities and cultures and religions that have found their way into this family - be tolerant, but not accepting. I don't doubt that my family loves me. But it's hard to know if they truly accept all the parts of me when I've grown up hearing anti-Jewish, Mexican, Black, Middle-Eastern, gay, and Muslim comments. White priveledge means my family can face many of the same struggles, but one side is branded as more "normal" and higher up on the socioeconomic scale.
Truth be told though....I don't know the ins and outs of that part of my family very well. Bad things have happened and good things have happened and we got through it. Hey, that sounds familiar. shikataganai. Sometimes my maternal grandparents say things that my father would never allow, but how are they supposed to know any better? I know they love me. They don't mean it. You don't understand JA culture that well but you respect it. Hey, it's cool. I won't talk about my involvement on the Nihonmachi Street Fair committee. It's just a work thing, I'm working with the kids. What petition? I'm president of a club on campus that does some cultural stuff, but it's not a big deal. I bet they'd be surprised if, whenever they get a computer, my grandparents googled my name. Yeah, that asian print looks cool, I guess. When I go visit my grandparents, it's like a parallel reality. It always has been since I was 6 and mom explained that grandma and grandpa don't like fast food or theme parks. Yes, you have to eat your grandma's cooking. Maybe not the Miracle Whip though.
It's the same thing when I'm at home too. In public school, I was "Asian". That's why you're so smart. I skipped class for no reason, ate breakfast in Spanish even though the teacher repeatedly asked me not to, and was never ever seen as needing help in science because I could get by on my "Asian priveledge": a shiny 4.2 GPA. I owned that town because I could still get As, and damn the consequences that I would reap in college. Hey look it's "your" people. Nintendo is so cool! Do you look up to Michelle Wie?
Some people, on the other hand, rarely acknowledged my JA side. I was constantly downplaying my "asian-league basketball thing", the "family stuff" we do for New Years, and grumbling about Buddhist Church because I didn't really want to explain why my family does all of those things. I wasn't Mexican, and that was good enough for some people to just accept me as "like them". I was constantly, if subconsciously, navigating between these two continuums, and it worked for me. I don't talk about J-league with my high school teammates, and I don't tell my J-league teammates that some people question my involvement and legitimacy in the community. That some of those people are WITHIN the community.
So on the very few occasions that anyone has shown interest in knowing my personal family history, know "what am I" beyond the ethnic makeup of my family, I find myself unable to give a concise or even cohesive answer. I am a complicated, detailed mosaic of experiences and beliefs and to me, each and every one of those pieces has a distinct meaning for me. But I am usually met with confusion, or at least comments like "that is complicated" - before I've even gotten halfway done. I'm not sure whether it was to make things easier for everyone else, or whether it was to make things easier for myself, but I can essentialize my story based on what situation I'm in. I'm JA or I'm white or I'm American or I'm smart or I'm the farmer's daughter or I'm your ex-girlfriend. Put all that together and - well, I see myself most clearly. But for everyone else, it's just a jumbled mess.
