Adopting a culture and an identity: Scott Fujita

In the different blogs that I periodically read, there are often debates about how appropriate it is to show your love and respect from a culture/ethnicity not of your own heritage. When does your fondness cross a line from appreciation to appropriation?



I was reminded about these kinds of conversations and debates when I first heard about Scott Fujita [tip of the hat to Angry Asian Man]. Fujita is a linebacker with the now Superbowl champion New Orleans Saints. And while it might be surprising that someone with the last name Fujita is large enough to be a lineman, what is more surprising is that Fujita is the adopted son of a Japanese American man and a white woman, with no biological or genetic ties to Japanese ancestry whatsoever.

[Aside: 2/8/10, 5:02pm: In re-reading the above sentence, I'm cringing at the stereotype I just evoked of Japanese (and/or Asian) Americans as being small or at least not large enough to qualify as lineman status (which I associate with being over 200 lbs). As anyone who is familiar with sumo culture in Japan knows, there ARE Japanese men big enough to be linebackers. Sigh. My apologies for this blunder--again, it just goes to show you that as much as you think you are savvy and sensitive to issues of race, even the best of us flub it now and again]

Yet, in countless interviews he has claimed that while he may not look Japanese or be biologically Japanese he identifies with Japanese culture and feels Japanese. Or, as he says in this piece below: he is Japanese in his heart.



What I find most intriguing about Fujita isn't just his cross-ethnic identity, it's his fight for social justice issues, especially ones that do not seem to be part and parcel of being an NFL player. Like his support of LGBTQ issues (last year he supported the National Equality March) and against anti-choice activitsts, most recently he spoke out very directly but respectfully against the Superbowl PSA sponsored by Focus on the Family that had an anti-choice message at its heart (click here and here to read about Fujita's principled stances).

Perhaps it's being a graduate of Cal-Berkeley--after all, Berkeley, even if you're a walk-on football player, is still a hotbed of liberal-progressive-radical beliefs (at least most of the country would like to think so. I don't think's it's as radical as others make it out to be, although there was the Naked Guy who went to class there in the late 1980s, and that was definitely left of mainstream). But really, I think it was the example of his family and their internment during WWII. His grandparents married quickly in the days leading to Executive Order 9066 so that they wouldn't be separated when they put people in camps (unlike in Canada, the U.S. actually did try to keep families together, somewhat). His grandfather ended up enlisting in the famed 442nd regiment (the most decorated unit of its size with one of the highest attrition rates) and his father was born in Gila River Internment camp in Arizona. Because of the war, the Fujitas couldn't pay the mortgage on their family farm in Ventura County and lost it. As I've written elsewhere, the Japanese American internment is one of the most shameful and under-recorded/unknown points of American history. Scott Fujita clearly understands how his family has been impacted by the internment and clearly feels the injustice of what happened to his family. But what seems remarkable is that he also seems to have channeled that sense of injustice into a larger sense of social justice for others, as an ally.

I know that there are folks from all ethnicities who will be troubled by Scott Fujita claiming a Japanese American identity. But take a step back and think about the radical potential of not just what his adoption shows but why he identifies as he does. His adoption of a Japanese American identity isn't just about eating white rice (as he says in the above video) or about having Asian aesthetic objects in his home (as this ESPN piece was surprised that he doesn't, until getting to his home office and seeing a large sculpture). Scott Fujita's adoption of a Japanese American identity seems as much rooted in a history of social justice causes as a celebration of culture, born out of his deep love and connection with his family.

And that is, perhaps, what makes Fujita's identity of being Japanese American one that has transformative potential. Because it's not just about the food. In the articles and interviews done about him, it's clear that he understands that it's about the history. Fujita seems to really get that that because of what you look like or who you love or your gender you could have basic rights taken away and that's simply wrong, and this seems to be a lesson he learned, in part, from his Japanese American family.