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microaggressions

How My Parents Shaped My Mixed Race Identity

Parents are often the stewards of our development and the beacons of morality. So, how does one navigate themselves when their imparter does not share the same experience? My internal self-reflection of my own racial identity as a mixed race individual has been and will always be closely linked to my two monoracial parents, but I have also come to the realization that I did not have the same experiences as my parents growing up and they will not have the same experience as a mixed race individual despite their proximity to it. I believe this is important because this understanding of identity formation is not hard, fixed features like race, gender, class, or the intersection of thereof, but a continuous evolving amorphous object that changes over time. Many articles argue that locale of the minority parent as it relates to gender and to a smaller degree, if at all, social capital factor in the racial identification of mixed race individual (Xie, 1996; Schlabach, 2013), but I do believe that in the socioeconomic context of people’s lives parents play a part to children’s racial identity indirectly and directly (Heard, 2006).

My parents never married and had me at a relative young age (23 for my mom and 25 for my dad.) Both grew up with each other in suburbia Orange County in a city called Huntington Beach and knew each other through school. They suffered through teenage angst, suffocation and entrapment of the suburbs, and uncertainty to endure similar and different tragedies in their lives. My dad, who is white, was a military kid that never stayed in one place too long except for Huntington Beach and dealt with the family curse of alcoholism. My mom is Japanese American and she had to navigate a predominately white space while being a minority, unwind the historical trauma of internment and post-war Japan that my Nisei (2nd generation) grandfather and Issei (1st generation) grandmother carried, and negotiate the pressure of acculturation. In their inner circle of friends and family they had to deal with teenage pregnancy and suicide. This is important because it lays the context of having me at a young age, growing up while negotiating parenthood, and eventually my racial identity. It wasn’t until I understood this context that I began to really accept my mixed roots.

Shortly after my birth, my father’s whiteness opened an opportunity of upward social mobility by leaving his dead-end jobs in California and becoming trained as an airplane mechanic in Indiana. I ended up only seeing him during the summer and his presence was only felt through child support checks. I grew up mostly in his absence and because of that I understand the impact of the locality of the minority parent being a mother. During this time my mom eked a living on food stamps and medi-cal, while taking care of her children and my grandfather’s failing health. It was at that time I strongly identified with my Japanese side and became hyper-demonstrative to prove my “Japaneseness”. I understand when Martis wrote in a Salon article that she, “despised [her] father; his absence humiliated [her]. Not only did [she] loathe his withdrawn parenting, but I hated his genes. I inherited his dark skin and large nose” (Martis 2014). The absence of a parent for a mixed race individual can cause that individual to align themselves exclusively with their remaining parent’s racial identity.

T

he inescapability of your mixed identity despite your relationship with your parents become apparent through phenotypical markers like being branded by a tattoo. Your body becomes a signifier and an invitation for people to ask, “what are you/where are you from?” As Martis eloquently explains that she, “realized that inheritance is attributed with likeness; to belong to your family, you must look alike. Not alike in the eye shape, frown lines or smile, but alike in skin color. In our society, skin pigmentation is the greatest marker that sets us apart from one another. When a child looks different from her family members due to that pigmentation, her inheritance is questioned” (Martis 2014). Hair, body type, eyes, and skin color become a mosaic that links you to your parents and adds another layer to your racial identity. I was born with brownish curly hair that grew out to be black with slight curls only noticeable once it reaches a certain length. But those blonde/brownish hairs didn’t die at a young age, they occasionally pop-up as body hairs and in my mustache and beard as a little reminder to not forget my mixed roots. My hair and body type/ shape are imprints that link me to my father. My complexion, eyes, and other obvious features are things that I have inherited from my mother and embraced when I was younger because it was a tangible connection to being Japanese. Although Blackness and whiteness, therefore power, in American society is closely linked to the amount or lack of melanin in your skin, the one thing I didn’t overtly experience was colorism. I tended to be one of the darkest in my family; my color does change with the season and amount of time I spent outside. This was probably because my families grew up in Southern California with beaches and didn’t receive the same social cues or stigma to stay indoors or conform to white beauty standards. Understanding the relation of my body as it relates to my parents, along with self-love and body positivity, allowed me to accept my mixed race identity and challenge the notion of phenotype as a marker for race or ethnic background.

Although I wouldn’t consider myself as white passing, the socioeconomic differences between my dad’s life in Indiana and my mom’s in California taught me about white privilege and your association to whiteness. Even though race is socially constructed, we live in a system in which race plays a key role in power, accessibility of upward social mobility, and interpersonal interactions/ level of microaggressions. For example, my father had access to product signifiers of middle class America; He didn’t need to worry about food insecurity and could afford to buy brand names and the standard iphone/ipod/other products that help define the middle class. That was not the same lived experience as my mom, who hustled to get things on sale. I would get the occasional stares and comments, “who’s the Chinese kid with that guy?” but my proximity to my dad’s whiteness shielded me from far worse microaggressions. People in Indiana were friendly, kind, and hospitable to me.

 

It took me till I was 23 years old developing my career, that I developed an appreciation of what my father and mother did for me. Though I would have wish things were different and my father was around more often, I could not imagine having a kid before 25 and making a tough decisions regarding career and providing for a child. This allowed me to let go of my resentment towards him and acceptance of my mixed race identity. In looking back he did ease the racial divide the best he could. He spent time in Japan growing up while my grandfather was stationed there, even going to elementary school which bridged the gap. There was shoyu and furikake always on hand and our go to places to eat out was sushi. We always connected through baseball, despite him being a Yankee fan and me an Angel fan. I’m grateful for what my mother and father did for me, even though they are no longer together. It lead me to a deeper understanding of myself and how parent and child relationships affect the development of racial consciousness and identity formation. If this story connects with you, please comment or share your own experience on how your relationship with your parent(s) or chosen family shaped your identity.

 

Sources

  • Heard, H. and Bratter, J. 2006. “Racial and Ethnic Differences In Parent-Child Relationships: Does Mixed Race Matter?”Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America. <http://paa2006.princeton.edu/papers/61875 >
  • Martis, Eternity E. “Owning my mixed-race identity: Why I don’t have to choose sides.” Salon. N.p., 13 Mar. 2014. Web. 07 Aug. 2017.
  • Schlabach, S. (2013), The Importance of Family, Race, and Gender for Multiracial Adolescent Well-being. Fam Relat, 62: 154–174. doi:10.1111/j.1741-3729.2012.00758.x
  • Xie Y, Goyette K. The racial identification of biracial children with one Asian parent: Evidence from the 1990 Census. Social Forces. 1997; 76:547– 570.

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Chris Weir is a haifu (half Japanese half white) community organizer that is part of KmB Pro-people youth (a progressive grassroots organization in Historical Filipinotown in Los Angeles) and Nikkei Progressives (a progressive organization based in Little Tokyo). Chris is an avid cyclist and his next project is organizing bike rides in Japantowns in Southern California with the hope to share local Nikkei histories, link communities together through biking, support local businesses and community programs, and share a vision for equitable and sustainable development and transportation. Professionally Chris works at APAIT (a local non-profit HIV/AIDS service organization that works to positively impact medical underserved communities through culturally competent and linguistically relevant programs) as an Outreach and Testing specialist. On his free time Chris likes to run, play with his Australian cattle dog named Kora, and try new things.

How Historical Trauma and Acculturation Affect my Haifu Identity Formation

The incarceration of 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans left an indelible mark on America’s history and the narrative of WWII, but the repercussions reverberates within the Japanese American community today. The historical trauma of economic loss of jobs and houses, displacement, subjugation to a loyalty questionnaire, being drafted out of the camps, the no-no boys, draft resisters and “specific cultural values that shaped their internment coping included gaman (persevering through hardships), shikata ga nai (a fatalistic attitude of “it cannot be helped”), enryo (self restraint/reserve that discourages emotional expression)” have been documented in papers and films (Homma-True, 1997 as cited by Nagata 2007). Underlying this tragedy was a pressure cooker of acculturation. When American society viewed Japanese Americans as un-American and purposefully imprisoned them people based on their cultural background, there was an undue amount of pressure to demonstrate their American-’ness’ and melt into America’s melting pot, despite internal and external pressures of racism and concerns of national security raising the heat of the pot. This can be seen when 33,000 Nisei served in the military (442nd regional combat team, 100th Infantry battalion, and Military Intelligence Service) risking their lives and becoming one of the most decorated units of that time, despite having their family incarcerated (Niiya 2014). Even those who resisted the draft or said no-no to the loyalty questionnaire were exercising their constitutional freedoms and patriotism despite having being stripped of their civil liberties (Nagata 2015). The height of assimilation seemed to be achieved as Japanese Americans were crowned as the “model minority,” achieving success despite decades of racial prejudice (rise of Asiatic Exclusion League, segregation in San Francisco public schools, Gentlemen’s agreement, Alien Land Law, 1924 Immigration Act, and Internment during WWII). As Nagata writes, the historical trauma of incarceration should be viewed throughout time based on the “interaction of personal, intergenerational, and social forces” (Nagata 2015). The interconnections of our experiences and politics as it relates to microaggressions and institutionalized racism are stitched into the next generation and progress can only be seen when the next generation exposes it and heals from it.

As a haifu/ hapa/ biracial (half white and half Japanese) individual I not only have trouble balancing my mixed racial identity, but often find myself filling in the gaps of my family’s historical trauma of incarceration and war in Japan (my grandfather was incarcerated and my grandmother was in Japan during WWII) and navigating the pressure of acculturation. I’m starting to realize that my social interactions and identity are often performative and I have to ask myself if it’s because I’m trying to be ‘Japanese’ enough or fit in as an ‘American’. Growing up playing baseball, my favorite player was Ichiro Suzuki and I tried to play with a certain flavor that reflected Japanese side in an American pastime sport; playing smallball, being strong defensively, and fit in as much as I can as a team player. In terms of language I haven’t necessarily felt comfortable speaking English or Japanese. In elementary school I spent years in speech therapy because I couldn’t pronounce certain consonants sounds and I was navigating school as well as intergenerational communication with my grandmother with a thick accent that couldn’t make those same consonant sounds. Also, despite years of Japanese courses in high school and part of college, I am not fluent nor comfortable enough to carry a conversation in Japanese. I find my work in community organizing and attending community events as a way to fill the gaps in my own family history, by listening to stories and experiences that I wished I had the chance to ask my grandfather before he passed. Being self-reflective of your intentions of your actions is a skill set you develop to navigate a complex world, but becomes even more important when your haifu and have to navigate your intersectional identity while balancing historical trauma and acculturation.

Being mixed raced and/or bi-racial, we straddle a thin line between their ethnic/cultural identities and physically as well as emotionally know the tolls of acculturation and historic trauma. My experiences have demonstrated that both the rat race to assimilate and/or melt your unique individual identities into the white hetero cisgender hegemonic melting pot (America’s hegemonic narrative) as well as the hyper demonstrative of your “otherness”, can lead to a hole in your physical and spiritual self that manifests itself as mental and physical health disparities, such as depression, suicide, increase risk for cardiovascular disease, ulcers, and etc (Nagata 2015). Mixed race individuals can facilitate these conversations of how acculturation and historical trauma are linked, the health disparities that arise from dissociation of one’s identity, and process of healing.

If this is something that resonates with you, please comment or share your personal stories of assimilating/fitting in and how it may be connected to your family history as it relates to trauma (war displacement, genocide, transmigration, economic instability, and etc.)

 

Sources:

  1. Nagata, D. K., Tsuru, G.K. (2007). Psychosocial Correlates of Self-Reported Coping Among Japanese Americans Interned During World War II. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, Vol. 77 No.2, 221-230.
  2. Niiya, Brian. “Japanese Americans in military during World War II.” Densho Encyclopedia. 5 Mar 2014, 16:43 PST. 30 Jul 2017, 16:32 <http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Japanese%20Americans%20in%20military%20during%20World%20War%20II/>.
  3. Nagata, D. K., Kim, J.H.J., Nguyen, T. U. (2015). Processing Cultural Trauma: Intergenerational Effects of the Japanese American Incarceration. Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 71 No.2, 356-370.

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Chris Weir is a haifu (half Japanese half white) community organizer that is part of KmB Pro-people youth (a progressive grassroots organization in Historical Filipinotown in Los Angeles) and Nikkei Progressives (a progressive organization based in Little Tokyo). Chris is an avid cyclist and his next project is organizing bike rides in Japantowns in Southern California with the hope to share local Nikkei histories, link communities together through biking, support local businesses and community programs, and share a vision for equitable and sustainable development and transportation. Professionally Chris works at APAIT (a local non-profit HIV/AIDS service organization that works to positively impact medical underserved communities through culturally competent and linguistically relevant programs) as an Outreach and Testing specialist. On his free time Chris likes to run, play with his Australian cattle dog named Kora, and try new things.