How do I feel about "hapa"?

Someone emailed me a few days ago, in response to the post I wrote about Hyphen Magazine, particularly about the link to the essay by Wei-Ming Dariotis, San Francisco State English professor and specialist in mixed-race Asian American, "hapa" studies, and asked me what I thought of the article.

In the essay, Professor Dariotis explains, very elegantly and powerfully, what the word "hapa" meant to her during her path from graduate school to professordom. And she also charts, clearly and concisely, why she can no longer embrace the term--because it is clouded with colonial implications for the mixed-race Asian Americans who use it, given the particular historic circumstances of Hawaiian colonization (both literal and cultural) and the various forms of appropriation by whites but particularly by Asian-ethnic settlers (like Japanese Americans, Chinese Americans, Filipino Americans, Korean Americans, who make up a racial majority in Hawaii--unlike the continental U.S., Asian Americans are the majority race (over 65%) in Hawaii and are also the power base there), of indigenous Hawaiian culture.

[12/23/12 Update: The link to the original hyphen essay no longer works, but you can find an updated version of the essay on the Mixed Heritage Center's site (click here)]

So what do I think about giving up the word "hapa" to describe mixed-race Asian Americans?

The truth is, I don't have a strong opinion. I can really see both sides. I respect Professor Dariotis and her rationale, but the truth is, I also know a lot of people who really identify, strongly, with the term and see it as a form of empowerment and do not see its colonial history or oppressive implications. And as someone who teaches English, I am aware of the flexibility of language--the way it mutates, and the way that it becomes appropriated by various groups, sometimes for good, sometimes for ill. Language, like people, is fluid--no one truly owns it. We take words out of the context of their original meanings, their original language, and we make them fit into our own linguistic system.

I am sensitive to the situation of indigenous Hawaiians--the ways in which they have been stripped of so much--land, government, culture--so that now taking this piece of their "language" seems like it could be another form of oppressive force.

But what I would also counter with is this: is there not another way to look at this? That instead of seeing the use of the term "hapa" by non Hawaiians as a form of oppression, it is, instead, a sign of respect and homage? If we go in with good intentions (these are never enough, but they can help), if we take this word "hapa" -- not "hapa-haole" (which has a definite historic connotation and context), but "hapa" or "half"--if a group of people who are, themselves, marginalized from mainstream American, English, discourse, finds this word, "hapa," finds that it speaks to them, gives them an identity, gives them a label of their choosing, gives them a home, so to speak, then is it really appropriation? Or can there be good forms of appropriation?

Sort've like the question: are there any benign forms of Orientalism?

I would respect an indigenous Hawaiian person telling me they are offended by my use of the word "hapa" to describe mixed-race Asian Americans. But I would also respect a mixed-race Asian American person who chooses to use "hapa" as an identity marker they take pride in.

Does anyone else want to weigh in?

Magazine Plug: Hyphen's Hybrid Issue

For those of you tuning in who wonder, "This blog is called Mixed Race America and while it talks a lot about race, I don't see a lot of focus on mixed-race people" fear not--here's my plug, at least for a magazine issue that covers mixed-race Asian Americans.

If you haven't checked out Hyphen Magazine, please go to their website (click here). Hyphen is an Asian American magazine based out of San Francisco and their latest issue, #13, is called the "Hybrid" issue and features a spectacular image of mixed-race/Hapa professor-artist-author Kip Fulbeck on the cover.


Kip Fulbeck is definitely someone to check out. I already put in a plug for his book, Part Asian*100% Hapa in an earlier post (click here). He also has a memoir, Paper Bullets that talks about his life growing up Chinese-Irish American in Southern California and his activist-artist work at UC San Diego. And he's got some really interesting films--you can find out more about him on his website, Seaweed Productions.

The Hyphen "Hybrid" issue looks like it has some interesting articles about mixed-race issues for Asian Americans, and you can also check out this essay by San Francisco State professor Wing-mei Dariotis and why she can no longer use the term "hapa" to describe herself or other mixed-race Asian Americans (click here).

I'm subscribing to Hyphen today--I hope some of you will too.

Little Buddha or Why Keanu Reeves should not be in this film

I finally got around to seeing the Bernardo Bertolucci film Little Buddha. Bertolucci's big American claim to fame was The Last Emperor, which won an academy award for best film in the late 1980s. Continuing his fascination with all things Asian, Bertolucci made an early 1990s film about an American couple in Seattle who are visited by a group of exiled Tibetan monks who believe that their son, Jesse, is the reincarnation of Lama Dogen, who is also the reincarnation of Sidhartha aka: Buddha.

The film features Bridget Fonda as the troubled white Mom. Rocker-singer Chris Isak as the troubled white Dad. Some Asian (perhaps American) actors as the beatific and wise Buddhist monks. And most inexplicably, Keanu Reeves, who plays Sidhartha through his pre-enlightenment days through his moment when he understands that he is "one" with the universe (ahhh...and how was Keanu to know that he really would be chosen to play "The One" one day).

I watched the film almost solely for the scenes with Keanu, which were all flashback scenes to Sidhartha's life in ancient Nepal. All other actors in these flashback scenes appear to be either South Asian or at the very least Southeast or even East Asian. Except for Keanu, whose skin is darkened and who speaks in this strange Indian accented English--sort've like a softened version of "Apu" on The Simpsons--but I mention Apu because it's almost that stereotypically bad an accent--as in, it's painfully bad.

So I suppose the question is this: Is Keanu in yellowface? Or maybe more accurately, brownface? When he was cast as the Buddha, and was interviewed about the appropriateness of a white man playing the enlightened one, Keanu busted out his Asian credentials and claimed a hapa identity for himself as half Hawaiian-Chinese and therefore uniquely qualified to play an Asian. And yet...watching him, there's something really wrong with his portrayal, and I'm not just talking about the bad acting.

Hapa Fever

This weekend I've been reading a lot about hapa issues. Hapa, for those unfamiliar with this term, is the Hawaiian word for "half" and generally speaking refers to anyone who is mixed race, with part of that mixture being of "Asian" origins. This is rather loosely taken in Kip Fulbeck's book, Part Asian*100% Hapa, since some of the participants don't seem to have any Asian ancestry (there is one person who is half African American, half Native American and there is a Japanese-Korean person, which would seem to make this person inter-ethnic Asian rather than hapa, but perhaps I'm splitting hairs since all participants in the book are self-identified, and if you tell me you are hapa I will believe you). It's a great book--and I'd encourage anyone interested in mixed-race issues to find a copy (you can easily get it on Amazon.com). Fulbeck says it's the book he wishes he had growing up, and I see why--it's a simple book of portraits from the collar-bone up of various self-identified hapas and their answers to the question: What are you?

I also just finished a memoir by May-lee Chai called Hapa Girl (a fairly page-turning memoir, although I found the instances of naked racism in South Dakota hard to stomach--although important to remember that it went on in the 1980s and probably still does today), and in the NY Times this weekend there was an announcement that Sarah Gore, the youngest of the Gore daughters, was married to Bill Lee, a Los Angeles businessman. It wasn't until I saw this item repeated in the Angry Asian Man blog and then found a photo that I realized that Lee is Chinese American. Which means that the bio babies of Sarah and Bill will be hapa--and Al Gore will soon have non-white grandchildren (of course, perhaps he already does since his other daughters are also married and may have adopted children from other countries and heck, maybe their spouses are also non-white--surnames are misleading).

And I guess what impresses me about the quick google search I did for info on Lee & Gore's wedding was that only one site made mention of his ethnicity--and it only said that she was marrying a Chinese American businessman.

Anyway, is this a tide we're turning--that there is now a coffee table photo book, a memoir, and the man who may help stem the tide of global warming is going to be a global granddad within his own family? Or are we just proof that the model minority myth isn't so mythical and that mixing with Asians has just never been as controversial as crossing the black-white color line?

[Amendment--July 21, 2008: Since I've written this post I've had a few thoughts about the use of the term "hapa" which has come to be seen as a controversial adjective/label within the mixed-Asian community. For more, see this post on my thoughts about the use of "hapa"]

Is Tiger black?

I was in the gym the other day reading a special issue of Sports Illustrated--one primed for the US Open (it was an old copy). And there was an editorial from an African American sports journalist about Tiger Woods--specifically, lamenting Tiger's lack of political activism around issues of race (and I would add gender). The gist of the editorial was that this black journalist was, like many African Americans, initially enthused and supportive of Tiger's golf career--seeing him as someone who had made it into the most hallowed and whitest of institutions--the PGA--and that he could lead a race revolution in the world of golf. And yet, it hasn't happened. Tiger remains the only black PGA golfer in the tour, there are no up and coming new African American golfers set to rival Tiger's record--there are not scores of African American golf athletes infiltrating lily white university golf programs, and Tiger has not taken a stand on key race issues in the public domain. In other words, he's no Jackie Robinson.

And I know I've had similar critiques about Tiger's lack of politicization--and also speculating about how fair that is--for me to want and to demand that Tiger become a political spokesperson for racial justice and gender equity. After all, we are not making these demands on Ernie Els or Jim Furyk or Phil Mickelson. Or even Vijay Singh. They get to be "just golfers" and they have their respective charities and corporate sponsors, and yes they are under scrutiny, but none of them have the pressures to be a symbol in the way that Tiger so clearly is under a media and world microscope.

Yet there was something else about the editorial that troubled me. The dismissiveness of Tiger's claim to be "Cablinasian." There was much "to-do" made when he first coined the word and when he tried to show that he was not simply an African American golfer but a person who had many different racial and ethnic strains in his ancestry. And there have been many people who have called him on his apparent lack of black pride for not claiming a mono-racial African American identity. But Tiger himself said it best when he explained that to claim a black identity would be to disavow his mother and her life, her influence, on him. His Thai mother. Which makes Tiger as much Asian American as African American.

So is Tiger black? I'm not saying he's not because the truth is, he's identified by others and perceived to be "black" because he *looks* black. In other words, if he had more Asian features, if he favored his mother's side of the family more than his father's, phenotypically, perhaps we would be calling him an Asian American or at least a mixed race, hapa, golfer and not simply a black golfer.

I actually do think that Tiger is a black golfer. It's just that he's not only black. He's also Asian American and mixed race and hapa and Cablinasian. He is a multitude and he's got a killer golf swing and so we want him to infiltrate the bastion, the fortress of white privilege--the country club--to lay waste to their belief systems and herald in a new age of racial tolerance and acceptance--to get them where they sleep, so to speak--on the fairway.

Maybe he'll do it one day. Maybe he'll stick it to "the man" and take a political stand and support a cause that is contrary to his Nike endorsement and the galleries that watch him. Maybe not. At any rate, maybe we can start by recognizing that Tiger is both black and not black and that there's nothing wrong in acknowledging the complexity of who he is, just as one day perhaps he will also recognize and embrace and act on that complexity.