Declare your Independence

Two-hundred and thirty-two years ago, the Declaration of Independence was printed -- a document that started a literal revolution (although of course, there were things that were already in place before the printing and eventual signing even happened and before the big fighting broke out).

So in honor of July 4th, rather than just grilling some meat (or veggies for my non-meat eating friends) on the BBQ, why don't we each try to declare our independence from a tyrannizing force in our lives. I have already written about inner conflicts in a previous post, so what I will declare is that I'm putting my writing demons to bed. I am going to stop procrastinating and worrying about how much reading and research I have done. And I'm going to write. That's my job. It's a luxury and privilege I have--to engage intellectually with the ideas I'm working on. And rather than see them as a struggle, I should try to see them as ... well I'm coming up with a blank right now, but I'll try to see them as something other than a struggle (if you fellow writers in the blogosphere have any ideas about soothing writing demons and the perils of procrastination, I'm all ears).

Finally, let me leave you with the melodies of country western singer Kareem Salama. He was just featured this morning on the BBC Newshour (I love NPR). What could be more American than an Oklahoma born and bred Muslim-American country western singer being featured on the BBC on the Fourth of July?


["A Land Called Paradise"]

Inner conflicts

We all have them--those inner conflicts--the struggle inside ourselves between right and wrong, or more often than not just two different positions that seem antithetical (maybe they're not, maybe it's just a change in perspective or language that one needs).

Here are a few of mine right now--feel free to share your own:

*From both an ethical and environmental pov, it's better to eat less meat or eat no meat (certainly mammal flesh but I'd also add poultry and fish into this list), and yet I LOVE steak. I know I am contributing to the deaths, sometimes cruel and inhumane, of animals, but I continue to enjoy my ribeye steak rare.

*I really do enjoy playing golf, but I find the whole institution of golf to be sexist/elitist/racist/homophobic.

*I have no tolerance for intolerant people. I am bigoted towards bigots.

*I need to finish editing an article that is past its due date (I did get an extension, but as July 1 recedes into the distance, I recognize that I should get busy) yet here I am, spending time thinking of what I'm going to blog about.

Link Love for Anti-Racist & Multiracial Families

There are a few blogs that I have been meaning to plug for a while because I think that they're smart, interesting, and most importantly, they are great resources for parents and families (and quite frankly for anyone interested in our next generation--so that includes all educators and social justice activists and child advocates).

You are going to think that I'm getting paid to plug Tami, but the truth is, she is just fabulous and recently she's taken over as editor of Anti-Racist Parent (or ARP for short). It's a great site for anyone interested in anti-racist education--for adults and for children (truthfully, we all need to educate ourselves before we can educate kids--and the further truth is, we ALL need continuing ed when it comes to issues of anti-racism--persons of color and non-persons of color both need to keep open minds and try to have open dialogue, as painful as it can be sometimes).

ARP has an on-going feature where they answer letters from readers--and this one, "How Can White People Join the Anti-Racist Discussion," is a must read. Both the letter and the response are very honest, direct, heartfelt, and spot on.

A great educational tool is to get kids to think about giving back. And what better way to give back than to the teachers who are trying to do good work in the world. Rice Daddies--a blog of Asian American Dads, or largely Asian American Dads--is sponsoring a diversity challenge on the site DonorsChoose.org--a website that matches teachers in need of resources with donors who want to help out sorely underfunded teachers (I think they are largely public school teachers, although I'm sure there are a few independent school teachers in the mix). Anyway, if you are interested in helping teachers with multicultural education, stop by the "Rice Daddies Empowerment in Diversity Challenge" where you can read proposals from teachers and choose one (or more) to help fund. And if you're a parent, you can get your children involved, which seems like a double-bonus--help a teacher and help your child learn the value of giving back.

Finally, there's the Mixed Heritage Center (MHC). I've given a plug for them in a previous post, but I really want to encourage people to check out their site. In just six months it has truly grown and expanded and it really IS a great resource for mixed heritage topics and resources. And if you are a political junkie like me, you'll see that in their "links" section they have many devoted to mixed-race presidential candidate Barack Obama.

Mixed Race America--how does it begin?

I don't know if anyone has noticed, but I added this handy little widget on my blog that allows me to see how people arrived at this site. And as I suspected, most people get here by doing a google search--many of them typing in words and phrases related to mixed race people and subjects and/or inter-racial relationships.

[aside--one of the more disturbing combinations that I've found used a google search and the words "Michelle Obama looks like a monkey" and it deposited this person on my post "Now introducing: Michelle Obama" and I'd like to hope that this person learned something--namely how accomplished and poised and intelligent and beautiful Michelle is--because when I saw this google search I got ANGRY and felt a surge of RAGE that someone actually thought to type this combination of words into a google search--I mean, I know racism is alive and well but seeing it in google form just pisses me off to no end! And it reminded me of "The Land of the Not-So-Calm's" post about finding someone who found her site by typing "how do i return children i've adopted"--which is another google search phrase you never want to see]

So, since I know many of you non-regular readers may well expect, want, and wish to see a blog called "Mixed Race America" talk more directly about people who identify as "mixed-race" or "mixed-race" issues (beyond the everyday issues of race in America and the corollaries that go with it), let me start by talking about how we get to racial mixtures, namely inter-racial relationships.

[Second aside--I do research on race and mixed-race issues, and I've written about these topics elsewhere in this blog (and in my professional life) so I want to acknowledge that I'm not trying to reinforce the idea of pure "races" by talking about "mixed-race" because in many ways we are ALL part of a mixed-race America (or mixed-race world for those visitors outside the Americas). But because in the U.S. we are largely guided by the racial pentagram (white-black or Caucasian-African American- Asian American-American Indian or Native American-Hispanic (or my preference) Latino) and because anti-miscegenation (a pejorative term in our day and age) was a guiding force in American life, I am going to treat mixed-race as a real entity, in a sort've "common-sense" way. So while once upon a time a Japanese American and Filipino immigrant were seen to be in an inter-racial relationship (and while we may think of them as such today in certain circles) most likely this couple would be seen to be in an inter-ethnic relationship--as would an Irish American married to a Greek or a Jamaican American married to a person from Kenya.]

Although I don't like to get into many personal details on this blog, I will acknowledge that I've only dated one Chinese American man in my life. Which means that almost all of my dating habits have been inter-racial (and some inter-ethnic)--and many of them have been with white men.

I'm acutely aware of demographics and politics related to being an Asian American woman dating a white man. While I was an undergrad at Santa Barbara I received plenty of dirty looks and a few comments by Asian American men when I was seen walking with white guys (whether they were romantically linked to me or not). Another friend, who is Filipina, received the same kind of treatment by African American female peers when she and her African American boyfriend now husband (who is actually mixed-race himself: his mother is white-Jewish and his father is black) were seen walking across campus. And then there are the hard looks I've received here in "The South" when I've left the small circle of my university town--most recently it happened about 20 minutes from where I live at a Citgo gas station at midnight. Southern Man and I were returning from a party in a semi-rural area and we stopped at a gas station since prices were about a dime less than in town, and when I got out of the car, I swear that it felt like everyone was staring at us--not necessarily in a hostile way but in a way in which I felt on display--as if my boyfriend and I were a living and walking example of miscegenation--although there was a car with African American patrons, all other cars (and oddly enough it was a fairly happening spot at midnight) were white--and no cars appeared to have people of different races inside.

I understand that in terms of the Asian American men and African American women at my alma mater, the racial and gender pairing of my friend and myself was an affront to a sense of racial solidarity. Probing further, I'd also say that there is a fear, perhaps more on the part of the Asian American female-white male pairing that an attention to racism and an anti-racist perspective will be lost (since I think that may be what is motivating charges of "selling out your race"). For the patrons at the gas station, I wonder if it has to do with fear of change--that seeing an inter-racial couple is a signal that there is a sea change going on in terms of society and culture. Because the real fear is never the couple itself but the family they will create -- the mixed-race children that will come from the inter-racial couple--or even when thinking of adoption, the fact that the child, regardless of his/her race, will be raised by parents who look different from one another--who come from different cultures, different perspectives.

The truth is, stats for inter-racial couples and mixed-race people are still pretty small when looking at a national picture. I don't have the stats at my fingertips, but I think it's less than 10% of the population checked off more than one box on the 2000 census in terms of race/ethnicity. And I think inter-racial relationships make up about the same percentage (just under 10%). If anyone out there has hard numbers I'd be interested--they are buried in my research files somewhere, so hopefully I'll trip across them and post them soon.

Anyway, the more telling statistic is that every ten years, the number of children living in households where their parents are not of the same race has doubled. In 1970 it was 460,000, in 1980 it was 996,070, and in 1990 it was 1,937,496--and I'm sure it more than doubled by 2000. So what we do know is that people who self-identify as mixed-race and being in mixed-race families exponentially increases every 10 years. Which means mixed-race families and children and people -- those who are choosing a mixed-race identification -- will continue to grow as we get to the next census count in 2010.

Why you should care about golf

I know I have written about my appreciation (dare I say love?) for golf elsewhere in this blog, but I want to take a moment and talk about why you should care about golf.


[This is a course in Whistler, British Columbia]

First of all, I'm not trying to argue that golf is problem free or that anyone should be enamored of golf. For many, watching golf on tv is about as stimulating as watching paint dry. For others, going out once on the fairways and having the most frustrating time hitting a tiny ball with a thin stick was an exercise in pointlessness that they never want to repeat. And for the socially conscientious among us, how can we sanction a game (and for many, this is a game and not a sport--begging questions of athleticism and physical prowess) that has all sorts of "-isms" associated with it? Elitism, sexism, racism, anti-environmentalism, and homophobia (OK, last one didn't end in "-ism" but I think you get my point).

I was reminded of all these issues when I read this entry in Poplicks' blog titled "Equality at any cost?" The post was about the recent flap at Phoenix Country Club over the inequitable status of their female members--recently The New York Times reported on this case of gender discrimination at elite golf clubs (click here).

[By the way, if the topic of gender discrimination and elite golf courses rings any bells in your subconscious, it's because around 2002-2003 there was a BIG FLAP about Augusta National, host of the annual Masters tournament (what some in golf circles believes is THE premiere golf major of the four majors--U.S. Open, British Open, and PGA Championship). Martha Burk, chair of the National Council of Women's Organizations, organized a boycott of Augusta National due to their discriminatory practices--specifically, they do not allow women to join the club. If you want a thorough and fairly unbiased account of this issue read Alan Shipnuck's The Battle for Augusta National: Hootie, Martha, and the Masters of the Universe. What I can tell you as a golfer and as someone who just finished the book, is that the Masters continues to be held every April; Augusta National continues to bar women from its club; and most people seem to have forgotten about all of this...except maybe we shouldn't have.]

Poplicks asks:

"Is equality always worth striving and fighting for in principle even when one struggle for equality still reifies or leaves untouched other structures of inequality?"

And my answer is yes.

Because if you don't think your life is touched by what goes on at a golf course, particularly an elite golf course, think again. Most major business deals happen on golf courses. Most executives in Fortune 500 companies golf. Corporate sponsors of golf tournaments proliferate on the PGA and LPGA. Unless you are living totally off the grid in the U.S., your life is touched and impacted by corporate America in a fairly significant way. Where you bank, where you shop, the car you drive, the bank that holds the mortgage on your home (or the home you rent), the television you watch--this is all corporate America. And the people who sit on the boards of these companies, who make decisions about finances and environmental issues and who to hire and more importantly promote within the upper ranks of their businesses--these people golf.

We want, we NEED the people at the top levels of corporate America to be conscientious of women, people of color, working-class and poor people, queer people, the environment and so many other issues that impact the lives of people who are not in a position of power and influence. If corporate America continues to discriminate, on and off the golf course, this is NOT good for any of us, regardless of whether you identify with a disenfranchised group,, because we are ALL impacted by discrimination and at bare minimum, how could you perpetuate sexism when all of us must have at least one kick-ass woman (hopefully a mother/grandmother/sister/daughter/niece/aunt) in your life that you would never want to see discriminated against.

I'm not trying to overstate the case--like golf is a means of mind control for the elite (like the Borg in Star Trek--they are trying to assimilate you one fairway at a time) but I am trying to demonstrate that the culture of Corporate America is tied up into golf -- that golf functions more like an institution than a mere game. And so as an institution with power--especially a diffuse and nebulous power (which makes it all the more tricky to pin down) the kinds of discrimination that continue in elite clubs and on golf courses is something we need to combat.

Putting aside issues of race (although there are HUGE inequities of race going on at elite courses) and looking at gender discrimination, there are some telling quotes by academics who study the link between that damn glass ceiling that women bump their head into in Corporate America:

"In the course of our study of issues confronting top executive women, we would ask women what, if anything, they saw as a barrier to further advancemet in senior management, in rainmaking success, in gaining membership in The Club. Over and over again, we heard variations on the same theme: golf" (162).

"'I finally learned how to play. Golf's not so hard, but thd problem is the country clubs. They are the most sexist, and don't allow women to play at the times the men are playing. One day I had three male clients from Detroit flying in to play golf with me. They arrived at ten A.M. and we had to sit around until we were allowed to tee off at one-thirty'" (162).

"Jane Blalock [former pro-golfer and president of a sports marketing firm] is well aware of the final reason many women have not yet caught the golf fever: the discriminatory attitude of many country clubs toward women players" (166).

[Above quotes taken from Members of the Club: The Coming of Age in Executive Women by Dawn-Marie Driscoll and Carol R. Goldberg, New York: The Free Press, 1993]

"In a study of executives who manage 'corporate-government affairs,' Denise Benoit Scott found that the women in such positions 'share meals with staff members and other government relations officials but never play golf.' In contrast, men in such positions 'play golf with a broad range of peole in business and government, including legislators and top corporate executives.' As one of the women she interviewed put it: 'I wish I played golf. I think golf is the key. If you want to make it, you have to play golf.'" (52-53).

"A few months before Bill Clinton was elected president, his future secretary of energy had some pertinent comments about the importance of fitting into corporate culture and the relevance of playing golf. 'Without losing your own personality, said Hazel O'Leary, then an executive vice president at Northern States Power in Minnesota, 'it's important to be part of the prevailing corporate culture. At this company, it's golf. I've resisted learning to play golf all my life, but I finally had to admit I was missing something that way.' She took up golf" (53-54).

[Above quotes taken from Diversity in the Power Elite: Have Women and Minorities Reached the Top? by Richard L. Zweigenhaft and G. William Domhoff, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998]

I'm not suggesting that everyone run out and learn to play golf (although I do enjoy it myself) but I do think that we should care about whether or not Phoenix and Augusta and Burning Tree and other clubs are excluding women. And just as you can't pull apart race and gender, I guarantee that clubs that act in a discriminatory fashion towards women are not exactly rolling out the welcome mat for non-white players.

A totally partisan film short

A friend of mine sent this to me--some of you may have already seen it since it has gone "viral"--but apparently the filmmaker is an alum of Southern U. so I feel compelled to give it a plug here--and because I am a dyed-in-the-wool-true-blue-Democrat. Just be forewarned: there is nothing nuanced about this film short--it's totally partisan:

I'm Voting Republican:


I'm surprised that the filmmakers didn't take up the issue of immigration, since of all issues "protecting our borders" strikes me as being a very red Republican platform as in anti-immigration/lets-seal-off-the-borders/ship 'em home kind of mentality. And yes, I'm being hyperbolic, and yes, I'm talking to YOU Lou Dobbs! Then there's always the tried and true bugbear of terrorism...maybe they'll make a sequel--it would also allow them to get more representation of Middle-Eastern/Arab Americans and Latino/Mexican Americans in the frame--because there's nothing that spells self-loathing like Republican. You only have to look at Michelle Malkin and her support of racial profiling and the incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII to see that being Asian American, for her, only goes so far in terms of cross-ethnic identification.

[For more on the film, go to the website "I'm Voting Republican."]

Thoughts on Buffalo Boy and Geronimo

Back in late April I began a series of posts mulling over the definition of Asian American literature--specifically thinking about the boundaries of Asian American literature and the expansion of that term. My musings were prompted by the announcement that James Janko's novel Buffalo Boy and Geronimo had won an Asian American book award. If you want to read my initial post on this issue, click here.

I had promised to give a review of Janko's book once I finished it, and I had actually finished it a while ago but got side tracked by other issues and projects. However, a recent comment by a friend of Janko (click here) made me realize I should revisit this subject and weigh in on Janko's novel.


The first thing I'll say is that Janko is a gifted writer. His descriptions of the natural landscape of Viet Nam--the animals and plants and insects of the region of Viet Nam along the Cambodian border--truly made the novel come alive and gave a perspective to the war in Viet Nam (the American war as those in SouthEast Asia refer to this conflict) sorely lacking from other narratives (I hope someone will work on the novel in terms of eco-criticism and/or environmental justice). The novel follows two narratives, Nguyen Lu, the titular "Buffalo Boy" and Antonio Conchola, "Geronimo," whose lives eventually intersect. I'm not going to provide a summary here, if you want to know what follows you should read the book, it's a worthwhile read. What I will say is that I enjoyed the story and will be interested in Janko's other writings, if he continues his literary career, because I think he has a good eye for detail.

However, I never doubted the literary merit of this work--it's not why I was disturbed by the book winning this award (although I have to be honest and say that a book that was eligible for the award, Lois-Ann Yamanaka's novel Behold the Many is a stronger story; her voice is lyrical and haunting and polished (this is her sixth novel I believe), whereas Janko, as a first time writer, has a few places where I think he could use some more editing and revision). Let me repeat something I wrote in my April 28 blog post: I believe that writers should be free to write whatever subjects they choose. My criticism of this novel winning an Asian American literary award isn't about Janko's right to author a novel where he does not "match" the identity of his protagonist or any other "authenticity" arguments. Nor am I trying to impugn Mr. Janko's character--as his friend noted in the comments section of the April 28 post, Janko seems to be a man respectful of Vietnamese culture and Asian American politics.

What I am concerned about--what I already voiced in the April 28 post, is what the conferring of an Asian American literary award to a novel set in Viet Nam with a main character of Chicano background written by a white American man signals for the expansion of the category "Asian American literature."

Because after reading this novel, it is not clear to me what exactly qualified it for the status of "Asian American" other than the fact that one of its main characters is "Asian" (ie: Vietnamese) and the other is "American" (ie: Mexican American specifically) and that it is set in Viet Nam (an Asian country).

So this begs the question: what does it mean for a work of literature to possess an "Asian American aesthetics" because that's essentially what troubles me about this novel winning this award. It's not that I think the novel was poorly written or uninteresting or without literary merit. But in thinking specifically about issues of race, there are many questions I am left with that remain unanswered either by the novel itself or by the novel winning this particular award:

*Why was the American medic made to be a Chicano man? His ethnicity seemed to be important--the fact that he was not a white American. In fact, I interpreted both the reference to Germonimo as well as the continued references to Spanish and other aspects of California Chicano culture to be significant to understanding the character's personality and motivation, and a partial reason he is targeted by a white American troop member. So race seems to be playing a role in this novel--a recognition of racism if you will. But how this gets translated into an "Asian American" issue seems to puzzle me--not to say that Asian Americans shouldn't be interested in other forms of racism and race outside of their community, but in terms of marking or signaling a concern that is "Asian American" there seems to be no hint of that in the novel itself.

*Why the reference to Germonimo? Cross-racial and cross-cultural identifications abound in the novel--but I am not sure I understand the purpose of these markings and what the author is trying to demonstrate with them, other than an attention to marginalization and perhaps stereotyping/myth making.

*If there is no "Asian American" content per se in this novel, why was it up for consideration? Is Asian American literature now to be understood as any type of literature set in Asia that features an American character or penned by an American author? In which case, are novels written by Pearl Buck now to be understood as Asian American? Or Mark Salzman's The Laughing Sutra?
[By the way, Mark Salzman is a great writer and I love The Laughing Sutra as well as another one of his novel's Lying Awake--although I wouldn't consider either of them Asian American].

Ultimately what I think is bothering me is the power of representation. It's not that I believe my "voice" is any more "authentic" than a non-Asian American person's--especially given the fact that I often feel that some of my experiences are not necessarily typically understood as "Asian American" (ie: large extended maternal family from Jamaica that identifies as mixed heritage or in some instances mixed-race), even while others seem to be typically Asian American (childhood in the SF Bay Area). It's that finally we're at a moment when we, the Asian American community, as imperfect a group as that is, is trying to make itself understood, legible if you will, within the larger American (read mainstream white) culture and society--and understood in a way in which we are not simply the standard stereotypes of foreign immigrants or insulated and insular ethnic communities.

So having a book that seems not to have any discernible or explicable or legible Asian American content written by someone who does not "identify" as Asian American win an Asian American book award given by an Asian American association begs the question:

What does it mean to be Asian American?

And if the category has become so broad that affiliation with something Asian and something American qualifies, than what does this do for the state of Asian American political enfranchisement and social/cultural awareness in the U.S.?

Poem of the day: "Looking Out"

"Looking Out"

It must be odd
to be a minority
he was saying.
I looked around
and didn’t see any.
So I said
Yeah
it must be.
-- Mitsuye Yamada

from Camp Notes and Other Writings, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992.

For more on Mitsuye Yamada, click here. To order her book of poems (and other writings), which deal, in part, with her experience incarcerated in an American concentration camp during World War II (aka: The Japanese American Internment), click here.