Message from gtyau

[Anonymous]

Reading the Marsh's article about interracial marriage in Guanzhou in conjunction with the two articles about immigration in Japan (Yoshida & Smith) made me think about this: http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/9/9/hafu-in-japan-mixed-race.html

I'm not exactly sure where I'm going with this post, but just wanted to share a connection. The idea of mixed-race, or "hapa" (in the pidgin vernacular from Hawaii where I grew up), is something that really hasn't permeated the zeitgeist as much as I thought it would. We're still very much stuck in a binary discussion of race (ethnic), despite taking huge steps in terms of gender. Nationalism allows discussions about race to sometimes stay to the surface too much, keeping members of the discussion emotionally safe.

Something I would pose to my class is to invite my students to self-identify their "race" but distinctly separating ethnicity from culture. Then I would ask them which one is more valuable? What's better, being "American" or "_____ American", or "_________" without an American tag? Where are those who might have multiple nationalities in the conversation?

I also really want my students to develop more awareness of the hierarchy that they are a part of, ethnically and culturally speaking, and how socio-economic diversity is directly linked with (for lack of better words) skin tone, in a lot of areas of the world. Then I want to challenge them to really think about who benefits from the race vs. post-race discussions we're starting to have.