Hapa Kepani

I feel like I should explain the title of my blog.  Hapa kepani means half Japanese in Hawaiian, and it is my ethnic/cultural identity.  The reason I use Hawaiian words to identify myself is because I spent nearly half my life in Hawaiʻi and its culture played a huge role in shaping my identity.  As for the rest, I am half Japanese (25% Japanese, 25% Okinawan if you want to get technical, as I often do because I am proud of my Okinawan roots) and half white (mostly German with a dash of Polish).  I used to call myself Gerjapokapolaneseanish or Japagerpol, but those are both quite a mouthful and they miss the Hawaiian aspect of my identity.  Now that I go to college on the mainland, I have realized just how much my island roots mean to me.  I do not like to think in racial terms, and I like to think that I'm colorblind when it comes to seeing other people, but I also feel that my ethnic and cultural identity gives me roots.  I want to understand how other people's ethnic roots have shaped them as well.  As colorblind as we want to be, we cannot ignore the fact that these things have an impact on us, and I am proud of my culture.

Model Minority

I went on a retreat this past weekend and we discussed the idea that Asian Americans are a "model minority."  What effects does this have on the Asian community?  What happens when we cannot live up to this idea?  Can we be emotionally damaged?  I say yes.  I've been successful so far and probably done my share to perpetuate this stereotype.  High school valedictorian, full tuition academic scholarship, Dean's list....the list goes on.  I like to think that model minority hasn't played a role in my successes, in my family's successes, but other people certainly seem to think it does.  I have gotten this comment on numerous occasions: "Oh, you did well because you're Asian."  Is this fair to me?  Is this fair to my fellow Asian Americans?  Is it fair to other minorities?

Multiracial Identity?

What does it mean to be multiracial on a college campus not known for its diversity?  I am still struggling to figure that out.  Identifying as multiracial at all is something unfamiliar to many Americans.  Just look at our new President.  Barack Obama is of mixed heritage, yet we hail him as the "first black president," not the first multiracial president.  Just glance at the Wikipedia article about Obama.  Yet which would really say more about how far we've come in American society?  I think that the emphasis on "black" and "African American" is very telling.

While interracial marriages have been legal throughout the United States since the 1967 Supreme Court ruling Loving v. Virginia, the children of these marriages (like myself), have only recently really had the opportunity to embrace a multiracial identity.  I really have only started to develop and carry this identity within the past year, and I am nearly 20.  I feel almost as though I have been cheated in always being forced to identify as either "Asian/Pacific Islander" or "White/Non-Hispanic" before.  It has almost always been a "check one" situation, not a "check all that apply."  I questioned this in school, knowing I was fifty-fifty and therefore one did not apply more than the other, but what could I do?  When "multiracial" options finally started appearing more regularly, I had been forced to choose for so long that I continued to select only "Asian."

Now that I am in college, identity is very important.  It is constantly discussed both within and outside of the classroom.  So what does it mean for me to say that I am multiracial here?  It means that I am rare, almost a novelty in a sense, and that people often do not understand what I have gone through.  It means that I still struggle to find acceptance, and so I still struggle with my identity.  It means that my university, with its separate Asian, Black, Latino, and Native Student Alliances, is still missing a key issue.  It means that I have my work cut out for me.

Is it right that my identity is an alien idea to may of my fellow students?