Searching for Women of Color

March 27, 2015 • Sharon Chang • advertising

I decided to run a little ‘Net-search experiment on women of color (WOC) the other day. I think we can all admit doing this kind of (re)searching to look at social issue climate is something almost everyone does. In some ways the Internet offers a lot of insight into the public imaginary and what’s going on people’s minds. But we do have to dig. A lot. And even then it’s near impossible to rummage through the multitudes of crap to get to just a fraction of what’s substantial online. That’s where search engines – which employ pretty powerful algorithms for searching the vast endless sea that is web content – become well, kind of irresistible. What happens when I Google this? What happens if I Google that? We really do live in the age of the Googlization of everything, as Siva Vaidhyanathan suggests. So, I wondered, has information about women of color been Googlized, too?

So this particular morning I was thinking about racialized gender bias; how women of color experience sexism if different racist ways. My memories rushed online as I thought back to all the articles and posts I’d read on WOC over the last months. Of course there’d been narrative patterns in what I’d read, but the webbed interconnectivity of those patterns, the outline, wasn’t always something I paid attention to in a big-picture way. And so then of course I couldn’t help it, I thought, “I wonder what happens if I Google labels like ‘Black women,’ ‘Native women,’ ‘Latina women,’ ‘Asian women’ and look at the results aside each other? What will I see?”

First some disclaimers. One, I fully recognize Google’s algorithms tailor to user history so what I got wouldn’t be the same as what you’d get. Two, I acknowledge Net searches are snapshots in time and results change by the probable millisecond so my results should not be understood as static by any means. Three, Google searching is not “formal” social science research so this post should not be taken as hard evidence but transformative discussion. And four, the goal here is not to create a suffer-meter for gauging “who has it worst.” Rather the point is that all women of color are painfully oppressed but their oppressions are constructed by oppressors in different ways.

Disclaimers now disclaimed. Here were the first-page results of my searches:

Unsurprisingly women of color were often understood, shaped (and objectified) through their appearance. For example, a search for “Black women” turned up these top three results: “The 30 Most Beautiful Black Women in History,” “Why Are Black Women Considered Unattractive?” and, “Beautiful Black Women.” Of all four WOC searches I conducted combined, 51 percent of results referred to physical appearance, beauty and sexuality. Before we continue though let’s make something abundantly clear. This so-called beauty and desirability is a mainstream construct made by predominantly a white, heterosexual, cis-gendered male gaze. Which perhaps explains what I discovered next.

Amongst these racialized beauty narratives there were flagrant patterns impossible to ignore. Results of a search for “Black women” produced only 30 percent referring to Black women’s physical appearance, beauty and sexuality; there were no ads for sex/dating/marriage. The results of a search for “Native women” produced only 9 percent referring to Native women’s physical appearance, beauty and sexuality and again, no ads for sex/dating/marriage. Regardless of the fact WOC are likely glad not to see sex/dating/marriage ads, the complete absence of said ads combined with the low number of references to attractiveness was glaring to me and seemed to indicate something about how dominant male gaze racializes away the desirability of Black and Native women in an erasing, subtracting, and negating manner.

I was forced to contemplate a colonial mindset that seemed to emerge. Black and Native American women are generally understood (rightfully so) as having been in America a long, long time. Did it follow then that dominant male perception of their beauty in a region already “conquered” seemed to trend toward disinterested, callous or uncaring? Consider that by contrast when I shifted my search to women typically stereotyped as immigrants and foreigners, male perception morphed into one that reveled in the mysterious and hungrily desired to own and devour it. The results of a search for “Latina women” produced 42 percent referring to physical appearance, beauty and sexuality and 25 percent ads for sex/dating/marriage. Elevated exoticization was blatantly revealed in titles like “Engage the Exotic – Spanish Women” and “Meet Latin Women for Marriage, and Exotic Latin Bride.”

The query for “Asian women” produced a particularly severe level of fetishization. This search turned up roughly twice as many results (23 for Asian women compared with 13 for Blacks, 11 for Natives and 12 for Latinas) but the extra results were accounted for by the fact that almost half of entries for Asian women were advertisements for sex, dating, and marriage. A whopping 87 percent of results referred to Asian women’s physical appearance, beauty, and sexuality and 48 percent were ads for sex/dating/marriage. The search for “Asian women” was the only one to list sex ads in the main result column first. Additionally their acute hyper-sexualization was the only one framed in especial relationship to white men: “Asian Women Want YOU NOW,” “42 Seriously Hot Asian Women To Get You Through Monday,” “Rules of Attraction: Why White Men Marry Asian Women…” and “Asian Women And White Men.”

Yet whether women face superficial racialized “undesirability” or fetishized “desirability” we must understand BOTH stereotypes are dominantly male-framed and as such BOTH are incredibly diminishing and oppressive to women of color. It is damaging and painful to have your natural beauty dismissed or cringed at. It is also damaging and scary to have your natural beauty treated like a strange fruit in need of rapid consumption. But either way – and this is the sexist piece for sure – too much time gets spent scrutinizing women’s appearance and then women by necessity are forced to do the same. I mean already the majority of this piece has been spent breaking down racialized beauty narratives. Case in point, when I ran my Google searches the number of results challenging stereotypes and identifying racial barriers while higher for Native women (63 percent), hovered at around half for Black and Native women and less than a third for Asian women. There was also a depressing dearth of results referring to women of color as leaders for progress and change: 38 percent for Black women, 36 percent for Native women, a small 17 percent for Latina women, and a miniscule 9 percent for Asian women.

Bringing us to the crux of the issue. What this little experiment confirmed to me was something I already knew; a Google search may be limited in its capacity/reliability as a research tool but there are some over-arching truths that exist everywhere. It’s undeniable that women of color in a sexist/racist society face very real, welded gender/racial barriers to thriving and succeeding holistically in their lives. It’s also undeniable that women of color often get reduced to their “looks” and when this happens, the pervasiveness of the gender/race-biased obstacles they actually face everyday — get reduced too.

Remembering Black Lives Unjustly Lost

November 26, 2014 • Sharon Chang • systemic racism

Yesterday morning after the Ferguson Grand Jury announcement that it would not indict officer Darren Wilson I woke up in a panic thinking the world was ending. I lay in bed buried in emotions and listened for sounds of the impending apocalypse outside my window. But it was quiet. At least, quiet where I live in an urban suburb of Seattle. To me this silence sat in jarring, atrocious contradiction to events of the night before and to the ongoing protests, outrage, and violence still happening all over the nation.

And I started thinking about disconnect. About how the racist system discourages human bonds because when we can’t empathize with each other, it makes it easier to keep us divided and the dominant hierarchy intact. It also makes it much, much harder to see the big picture: the systemic, pervasive nature of white-generated racism and its deep roots. We are pushed to be ahistorical and individualistic. If you scour the Internet right now, you can easily find boatloads of “I” pieces, posts, tweets, rants, etc. But how easy is it to find something that connects the dots across time and geography, and stirs within us some sort of visceral, heartfelt understanding that builds communal resistance?

I decided to launch a ten hour Twitter campaign during which I protest-tweeted every 15 minutes the face, name and age of an unarmed Black life taken by police or security since 1998, and it got some attention.

The method I used for this form of hashtag activism is worth mentioning for what it reveals about racism and visual narratives circulated through mainstream media and social media. I included place of death with the header ‘Unarmed. Shot. Killed’ under the hashtags #FergusonDecision #BlackLivesMatter. I used the same template for each tweet to show the continuous, connected and systemic nature of this violence. I also worked to use images of the victims that ran counter to stereotypical imaging of Black people – portrayed them as happy, educated, employed, family members, parents, human beings – to encourage not only person-to-person ties, but personal investment. What I discovered in locating these images was not very surprising. ‘Angry’ photos were used by social and new media far more frequently even though alternatives were available and if alternatives were used, signals of humanity were often cropped out rendering them more like mugshots.

Of the 40 Black lives I profiled, 65 percent were Black men under the age of thirty. Many were parents. More than we’d like to realize, were children. These profiles have gotten hundreds of retweets on Twitter so far and not nearly as many trolls as I would have thought. I have culled them together into a Storify slideshow below that frankly, really speaks for itself (scroll over the images to see text).

I hope you will join me in connecting with and sharing these stories, reflecting upon the profound unnecessary loss of life, and considering how far we still have to go in undoing racial inequity. In solidarity.

Systemic Racism and the Grading of AP Exams

July 1, 2014 • Sharon Chang • "model minority", Asian Americans, education

Just weeks ago in Salt Lake City the national grading/reading of the Advanced Placement World History Exam became something of a playground for deeply rooted anti-Asian racism thinly veiled as “light-hearted” humor. Did you hear about this? Bet you didn’t. Because barely anybody did. A brave handful of graders who were there protested, but MANY more (graders and non-graders) pushed back with abusive online bullying and what’s-the-big-deal-this-isn’t-even-racist rhetoric. So far only Angry Asian Man and Hyphen Magazine picked up the story. No major networks found it interesting. ETS and the College Board eventually issued a half apology. And then, silence. Crickets chirp. The nation waves away yet another heinous incident of Asian oppression as irritating ambient noise while presumably the glowing promise of a “model minority symphony” continues to ring loud, clear, and deafeningly across the land.

Advanced Placement Program

Advanced Placement (AP) is a program in the U.S. and Canada, created by the College Board (which also owns and publishes the SAT), offering college-level curricula and exams to high school students. The rigorous curricula for a wide variety of AP subjects is designed by a College Board panel of experts and college-level educators in each field of study. Standardized tests on this material are offered every May. In 2013, over 2 million students took almost 4 million of these exams (pdf). Those who perform well can receive course credit and/or advanced standing at thousands of universities worldwide. Exams are also written by The College Board but the proctoring, administering, and grading is farmed out externally to Educational Testing Service (ETS). AP tests contain a multiple-choice section scored by computer and a free-response section evaluated by an ETS employed team of some college professors and grad students but mostly high school AP teachers. In June this lineup of educated folk gather for a week to score student essays at what are known as AP Readings. AP Exam Readers are led by a Chief Reader, a college professor who has the responsibility of ensuring that students receive scores that accurately reflect college-level achievement.

What HAPPENED?

The 2014 document-based AP World History question (pdf) using 9 related/given documents, was to “…analyze the relationship between Chinese peasants and the Chinese Communist Party between circa 1925 and circa 1950.” According to Phil Yu of Angry Asian Man who heard from several attendees at this year’s AP World History Reading, this essay question “…apparently became an excuse for organizers to run wild with a week filled with all sorts of culturally insensitive jokes and anti-Asian imagery.” Yu further describes the Chief Reader allegedly, “made jokes about the Tianamen Square Massacre “Tank Man” (“You don’t want to be that guy.”) while wearing a Red Guard cap of the Cultural Revolution” and was “reportedly one of many people wearing such a cap that week.” And of course every Asian/Am-identifying person is flinching right now because we know all too well what it means to be the punchline.

(Image source)

This is “Tank Man”; one of the iconic images from the Tianamen Square Protests of 1989 which just saw their 25^th anniversary mid-April through early-June (literally days before the AP World History Reading). Okay moving on. Unfortunately it doesn’t get better. The AP World History Reading also annually offers for purchase a commemorative T-shirt loosely based on the same document-based essay question. According to Hannah Kim over at Hyphen Magazine a preview of the back of this year’s T-shirt was shown the first day. It featured appropriated Chinese communist imagery captioned with a “chop suey” font. Some attendees were offended and complained immediately. But despite assurances from ETS that the design would be reworked, the shirts were distributed end of the week unchanged. And lo and behold, on the front was yet another fun surprise; yellowface cartoon caricatures of the Chinese Communist “Party”:

T-shirt sold to commemorate the grading/reading of the 2014 AP World History Exam
(Image Source)

Kim relays sadly many AP World History teachers and academics present “were not put off by this racist imagery,” that “hundreds of educators purchased this shirt and wore it on the last day” [emphasis mine], and confirms Yu’s report that this was “just one of many instances of cultural insensitivity directed at Asian Americans during the week-long grading.”

Pushback, Paralysis, & I Don’t Get It

What was originally a smaller protest became a little larger and louder. But substantial pushback rose to the occasion with stop-being-so-sensitive-can’t-you-take-a-joke (and of course now every Asian/Am-identifying person is shaking their head sadly because we know all too well the experience of being told to calm down). The pushback morphed into widespread sometimes aggressive invalidation by others who really didn’t see what the problem was accompanied by total paralysis on the part of ETS HR (and by association the College Board).

Let’s be very clear here because really, it’s not that difficult. As sociologist Joe Feagin, Ph.D., writes in his 2010 book The White Racial Frame:

“Whites view Asians and Asian Americans as available targets for racial stereotyping, imagining, and hostility. Over the last century and more, Chinese, Japanese and other Asian Americans have been imaged and labeled in many areas of society as ‘the pollutant, the coolie, the deviant, the yellow peril, the model minority, and the gook…” [emphasis added] (Feagin 2010, p.113).

When the Chief Reader used serious political references to Chinese people/events in a mocking way while simultaneously alluding to oppressive tropes that have been used to discriminate against Asians in America for decades/centuries (i.e. model vs deviant behaviors + marks of foreignness “you don’t want to be that guy”), whether intentional or not he racialized his joking. He leveraged his position of power to microaggressively marginalize nonwhite peoples. Racialized joking is extremely problematic because it is a particular way people of color in this nation continue to experience discrimination and be demeaned, and therefore a key perpetrator in keeping racism alive today.

Similar scenario for the T-shirt’s Asian cartoon parody, which many also are still struggling to understand as anything other than innocuous, silly, or even benign. Again, it’s not that difficult. “Stereotypes, omissions, and distortions,” writes Beverly Daniel Tatum, Ph.D., in her well-known book Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? , “All contribute to the development of prejudice” (Tatum 1997, p.5).

(Image source)

Like all race stories, America has a long, long history of anti-Asian propaganda that has promulgated itself through the use of degrading caricatures. If you don’t believe me, Google anti-Asian propaganda. Perhaps no one has said it better than Asian American graphic novelist Gene Luen Yang in describing his choice to strategically employ offensive Asian stereotyping for character Chin-Kee in American Born Chinese:

Cousin Chin-Kee isn’t meant to be funny. He’s meant to come off the page and slap you in the face. If you’re laughing at him, I want you to do so with a knot in your stomach and a dry throat…You see, Cousin Chin-Kee is no more my creation than the Monkey King. I yanked him, every last detail about him, straight out of American pop culture…Cousin Chin-Kee just keeps coming back to visit. In the 80’s, he showed up as Long Duk Dong in Sixteen Candles. More recently, he reared his ugly head in movie critic Rex Reed’s review of the Korean film Old Boy. When the American public caught a glimps of him in William Hung’s American Idol performance, Hung was promptly made the most recognizable Asian-American male in the world. Every time Asian America thinks it’s finally time to breathe easy, the doorbell rings and we find Cousin Chin-Kee on the doorstep with a piece of take-out box luggage in each hand. America simply isn’t sensitive to modern slurs against Asian Americans.” —Gene Luen Yang

What’s Really Going On

What’s really going on here is something that has been going on for generations and which perseveres in adaptively replicating itself across time. ETS and the College Board have since published a statement and apology condemning the incidents. In it they come clean about what happened using powerful words to describe the events: “unacceptable,” “inappropriate,” “offensive” and “toxic.” I applaud this move. BUT if you read the statement a few more times, in, under, and over the lines, you might notice another thread: “Neither ETS nor the College Board has any involvement,” “College Board officials were notified of these incidents after the AP World History Reading was over,” “the College Board has asked ETS to discipline any responsible individuals” [emphasis mine], and then over on Twitter, “We didn’t sponsor, create, or distribute the offensive materials, which we find truly appalling.” This duck-and-cover-not-our-fault subtext deflects blame onto a pathologized individual (or few individuals) and completely avoids institutional accountability. “Equating racism with pathology,” writes Derald Wing Sue, Ph.D., in his also well-known work Microaggressions in Everyday Life, “Diminishes its widespread nature by fostering an illusion that good, normal, moral, and decent human beings do not harbor racist attitudes and beliefs” (Sue 2010, p.146).

This is what we mean when we talk about systemic racism. A historically-rooted pervasive set of beliefs, actions, and inactions by individuals and institutions that all together continue to keep the racial order in place. There were many people involved here either intentionally or unintentionally, through force of will or willful ignorance, denial and complicity. ETS and the College Board completely disassociate themselves from supposed guilty individual(s) but offer no discussion around how they were the ones who hired said person(s) into positions of power to begin with. What is their hiring and training process? Do they fold in anti-bias practices? How did the T-shirt (which ETS and the College Board claim “one person” made though that seems highly unlikely) ever make it out the gates? “There was ample opportunity to prevent this from happening,” wrote a Twitter user, “It should have never been sold in the first place.” Once out the gates, why did hundreds of high school teachers and college professors buy the T-shirt and wear it? Then when word of this entire debacle did finally get round — something affecting not only our nation’s educational system, but children and families, our FUTURE — why do so few seem to care? And how do we just know the fact that it was Asians who were targeted in an academic setting is significant when we consider the anemic aftermath and overall lack of visibility?

These are tough and deeply uncomfortable questions. They hurt. They suck. They make me tired, overwhelmed and completely exhausted. Given these feelings and the particular climate around this incident I suspect far more people are putting in earplugs, slipping on blinders and singing “LA LA LA” really loudly than anything else right now. Nevertheless. I know some of us are still engaged. I hope more of us can become so. If we keep asking, keep challenging, keep demanding accountability and creatively seeking solutions, I really do believe we can do better by ourselves and our children.

Mixed or Not, Why Are We Still Taking Pictures of “Race”?

April 13, 2014 • Sharon Chang • multiracial, racism

Just days ago PolicyMic put up a piece entitled “National Geographic Concludes What Americans Will Look Like in 2050, and It’s Beautiful.” In it writer Zak Cheney-Rice attempts to address the so-called rise of multiracial peoples which has captured/enchanted the public eye and with which the media has become deeply enamored. He spotlights a retrospective and admiring look at National Geographic’s “The Changing Face of America” project of last year featuring a series of multiracial portraits by well-known German photographer Martin Schoeller, and also peripherally cites some statistics/graphs that demonstrate the explosion of the mixed-race population.

(Image source)

“In a matter of years,” Cheney-Rice writes, “We’ll have Tindered, OKCupid-ed and otherwise sexed ourselves into one giant amalgamated mega-race.” Despite admitting racial inequity persists, he still flirts with the idea of an “end” approaching (presumably to race and by association racism), and suggests while we’re waiting for things to get better, we might “…applaud these growing rates of intermixing for what they are: An encouraging symbol of a rapidly changing America. 2050 remains decades away, but if these images are any preview, it’s definitely a year worth waiting for.” We are then perhaps left with this rather unfortunate centerpiece of his statement, “Here’s how the ‘average American’ will look by the year 2050”:

Not surprisingly, the Net erupted in controversy/debate; some standing by and championing the purported beauty of race-mixing as hope for a post-race future; many others pointing out the absurdity of a multiracial=postracial equation, angrily accusing the article of privileging light-skinned mixes thereby centering whiteness and upholding an age-old white dominant race hierarchy. NPR blogger Gene Demby @GeeDee215 tweeted, “Dunno what to do with the fact that the idea we’ll screw racism out of existence is considered a serious position.” A day later Jia Tolentino wrote a rebuttal on the hairpin in which she calls the piece “dumb,” “shallow,” “shortcut-minded,” and charges it with appearing “researched and progressive while actually eliding all of the underlying structural concerns that will always influence what race (and attendant opportunity) means in America far more than the distracting visual pleasure of a girl that looks like Rashida Jones.” She too also unfortunately comes to rest again on this particular portrait, “Look at this freckled, green-eyed future. Look at how beautiful it is to see everything diluted that we used to hate”:

I have been thinking a lot about this face which, thanks to National Geographic and PolicyMic, is now flying around the World Wide Web and has become the stage for much heated race-arguing. What is particularly striking to me, and what I have written on before, is that this person is an actual living, breathing human being — but she is not being treated as such. She is being wielded as a tool, a device, maybe even a weapon? Her physical body is used as a site for others to play out their racial theorizing while her own voice and story remain conspicuously absent.

What I think is incredibly important here (and doesn’t seem to have come up in the ensuing disputes) is why portraits designed to quantify/quality racialized appearance were taken with such intent in the first place? Photography which captures a person’s image for the sole and express purpose of measuring then discussing their supposed race is not new and frankly, like pretty much everything race-related, has a long and insidious history. It’s known as racial-type photography and it was popularized in the late 19th century by white pseudo-scientists to “prove” the superiority of some races, and the inferiority of others. Anthropologists used photography to make anatomical comparisons, then racially classify and rank human subjects on an evolutionary scale “seeming to confirm that some peoples were less evolved than others and would therefore benefit from imperial control” (Picture Imperfect: Photography and Eugenics, 1879-1940 by Anne Maxwell, p.21). One of first scientists to use photography to record the anatomy of different races was Swiss-born zoologist and anthropologist Louis Agassiz who lived in America and in 1865 was the nation’s most celebrated naturalist. Agassiz, along with the help of portrait photographer Thomas Zealy, produced some of the earliest racial-type photographs of African slaves to appear in the US. He “wanted to see if the distinct traits of African-born slaves survived in American-born offspring. This would prove his theory that environmental factors wrought very few changes to the type, which by and large remained stable over time.” He staked his whole scientific career on the belief that the different races were created separately by God and in accordance with a divine, preordained plan (Maxwell, pp.23-24):

(1850) photograph of an enslaved woman in South Carolina by Thomas Zealy for Louis Agassiz

Other influential examples of racial-type photography include: those produced by “British anthropologists Thomas Henry Huxley and John Lanprey [who] developed guidelines for the anthropometrical photographing of native subjects” (Maxell, p.29), those produced in 1871 Germany by the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory which “set out to assemble anthropological images from around the world, with the eventual purpose of disseminating these to scientific institutions in Germany and Britain” (Maxwell, p.39), and those by Australian photographer Paul Foelsche, “among the best examples of photographs of colonized peoples taken under oppressive conditions” (Maxwell, p.35):

(1870) untitled portrait by Paul Foelsche

Of course the overt, blatant racism in this older practice of racial-type photography would not be acceptable today. But has the practice of “photographing race” then gone away completely? Has our need to scan and declare the racial appearance of others for the purpose of valuation diminished? Apparently not. We’ve now got National Geographic’s 2013 endeavor (photographed by a white man through a racialized lens no less). We also have Time Magazine’s infamous 1993 cover “The New Face of America: How Immigrants Are Shaping the World’s First Multicultural Society” which was the computer generated face of a mixed-race woman created by merging people from various racial/ethnic backgrounds and who I have read her creators subsequently sort of fell in love with Pygmalion-style:

(1993) Time Magazine cover, “The New Face of America”

And we have Kip Fulbeck’s 2001 photo project of over 1200 volunteer subjects who self-identified as “Hapa” meant to promote awareness, recognition and give voice to the millions of multiracial/multiethnic individuals of Asian and Pacific Islander descent. Though Kip Fulbeck is aware of racial-type photographic history and acknowledges/challenges it in his book Half Asian 100% Hapa some feel his attempt to stand old forms on their heads, doesn’t work. He himself is a person of mixed-race Asian descent and certainly being a person of color behind the camera lends credence to the idea of reclamation and redefinition. Nevertheless at the end of the day, we are still left with a collection of photographs meant to capture race in some formation.

Apparently now we are comfortable shifting the practice of race-scanning and many of its same foundational values onto the ambiguous appearance of “different” looking people. Racism is incredibly adaptive and morphs to fit the times. I suggest that while modern race-photography believes itself to be celebrating the dismantling of race, it may actually be fooling us (and itself) with a fantastically complicated show of smoke and mirrors. What a critical mixed race view can offer at this juncture is something so crucial. We need to continually challenge and examine our desire to racially file people. We need to lift our eyes from the ground and take off the rose-colored glasses. We need to put away the headphones, turn off the music and turn on our ears. We need to make much, MUCH more space for something ultimately pretty simple — the stories of actual people themselves which in the end, will paint the real picture.

~ Guest blogger Sharon Chang writes at the blog MultiAsian Families.

Disney, Children and Race

March 27, 2014 • Sharon Chang • popular culture

(from left to right) Robert Lopez, Idina Menzel & Demi Levato; the talent behind “Elsa” of Frozen

I don’t pay much attention to the Academy Awards anymore for various reasons among them racial inequity, emphasis on commercialization, consumerism, and wealth, as well as the perpetuation of harmful normative stereotypes about practically everything from gender roles and sexual orientation, to class, culture and language. And of course I’m the mother of a young child and just don’t have time to watch movies. That said there was one win that especially caught my multiracial eye this year. Robert Lopez along with his wife nabbed Best Original Song for their wildly popular ballad “Let It Go” from Disney’s Frozen. Significantly, the award catapulted multiracial Filipino Robert Lopez to rare status, the 12^th and youngest EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony) winner ever. I do pay attention to something like that because my mixed race Asian son has so, so, so few racial role models that hold a solid standing in the public image. As he grows up I want to be able to point out leaders to him and say, “See! YOU can be a songwriter, politician, Olympian, CEO, activist, author, actor, etc. too!” But that’s really hard to do right now when I can barely find children’s books that reflect his racial image.

Hadn’t heard the song yet, but certainly made a point to after that. Screened it on YouTube thinking for sure I’d show it to kiddo. But then some other uncomfortable things quickly caught my eye. For one, multiracial Asian Robert Lopez penned the song, it was voiced-over by Ashkenazi Jew Idina Menzel and rendered (for the credits) by Mexican-American pop star Demi Levato, but in the actual film? The tune is sung by the character “Elsa” who is drawn incredibly white. Not only that, but in the movie as the sequence progresses from her being depressed and constrained to enlightened and empowered, she magically morphs from wearing dark clothing (in the dark) to, as she becomes more “free,” wearing a bright-white-sky-blue snow royalty dress (at gleaming sunrise):

Then in subsequently watching Levato’s music video for her pop version of the same, I was deeply disturbed to see that the multiracial singer (yep she’s mixed too) had had her hair lightened to blonde and that the exact same clothing/lighting transition from dark-to-light is used again:

I’m sorry but no way in hell am I going to let my brown son, who has already shown strong signs of internalizing/normalizing white phenotype at the expense of rejecting his own (http://multiasianfamilies.blogspot.com/2013/05/mirror-mirror.html), watch these videos or become enchanted with them in any form. Nobody really has “white” or “black” skin – we are shades of browns, tans, pinks, peaches, etc. – nor do we have “white” or “black” souls. Yet these polarized colors supposedly signal not only a person’s race but also diametrically opposed measures of their inherent value and worth? This was a concept developed by English settlers of America 4 centuries ago to build a rational for the devastation of indigenous and dark-skinned peoples:

“[English colonists]…had the power to shape the everyday terminology used in interaction with one another and with those they oppressed. Increasingly, skin color was linked to older color meanings in English. In Old English, the word ‘black’ meant sooted, while the word ‘white’ meant to gleam brightly, as for a candle. In line with earlier Christian usage, the word ‘black’ was used by the English colonists to describe sin and the devil. Old images of darkness and blackness as sinister were transferred to the darker-skinned peoples exploited in the system of slavery” (Racist America: Roots, Current Realities, And Future Reparations by Joe Feagin, 2014, p. 68).

But unbelievably our kids still receive these same strong messages today about race and who does or does not matter. This stuff runs really, really deep. “White is right” is still all over the place in ways we adults have become so used to, we may not even notice. Take for instance Pixar’s 2009 film Up which featured Asian American Boy Scout “Russell,” one of very few animated films to ever feature an Asian character. Not only is Russell a total do-gooder-over-achiever (model minority), but he’s overweight (“unattractive”), has a speech impediment/accent (forever foreigner), looks nothing like his voice-over talent Jordan Nagai (invisible) AND ultimately is saved by a white man who acts as a surrogate-substitute father (China remains #1 source of internationally adopted US children) to replace his absent Asian father (Asian men = emasculated).

Jordon Nagai with “Russell” of Pixar’s Up

By contrast, consider some of the other white film children of Pixar (which was acquired by Disney in 2006 for $7.4 billion): “Andy” of the Toy Story franchise is essentially the center of the movie’s universe and is completely idolized by his toys who would lay their lives down for him. “Boo” of Monsters, Inc and her laughter revolutionize Monster University’s approach to harnessing good energy. “Violet” of The Incredibles is a sullen tween/teen who can vanish, cast powerful force fields and discovers her astounding inner beauty throughout the course of the film. Also of The Incredibles, “Dash” can run really, really fast and see truths his family find difficult to see:

(clockwise from upper left): “Andy” of Toy Story, “Boo” of Monsters, Inc., “Dash” and “Violet” of The Incredibles)

And I’m only scratching the surface here. Where also are strong non-stereotypical depictions of Black, American Indian, Latina/o, mixed race, etc. children who identify as nonwhite? I do firmly believe all of us have an obligation to pay responsible, critical and intelligent attention to this disproportionate, skewed racial messaging still being spoon-fed younger generations. To be clear, I absolutely am not arguing that white children (or people) should be devalued. But I am arguing that no child should be elevated in a way that results in other children feeling less worthwhile. Here is the core truth folks, racism dehumanizes us all. Until we can see that every child/person has true, innate beauty that deserves recognition and support — we have a long way to go.

~ This post was written by Sharon H Chang and originally appeared at her blog MultiAsianFamilies.

Why isn’t College for Learning About Mixed-Race Identities?

March 8, 2014 • Sharon Chang • academic, Asian Americans, education, Internet, multiracial, whites

Learning

There are some incredible opportunities out there right now to get certificates, higher ed and even advanced degrees specializing in the experience of Americans of color. Want a degree in Asian American Studies? Sure. How about African American, Native or American Indian, Latin American, Mexican American or Chicano studies? Absolutely. Google all of these and you’ll find brilliant choices to be credentialed in these heritage experiences at very fine colleges and universities.

But what if you ID as mixed-race multicultural across any of these racial lines? Is there a degree for that?

“Not that I’m aware of,” writes Steven F. Riley of MixedRaceStudies.org (46), “The vast majority of courses on mixed-race studies are within the disciplines of Sociology, Psychology, History and Literature, etc.” Despite the fact that the crop of students moving through college today is the largest group of self-identified mixed-race people ever to come of age in the U.S., “In traditional Ethnic Studies,” writes University of California, Berkeley: Center for Race and Gender, “Mixed race scholarship has often been marginalized, misappropriated, tokenized or simply left out.”

Indeed it has only been in recent history that an arena for multi-race discourse has even forcibly begun construction mostly due to multiracials themselves. In the US this is because we have (a) not only a history of denying mixed race which persists but (b) a habit of continuing to operate under the assumption that race can be easily identified and filed away. Anyone who can’t be instantly categorized by visual scanning either gets shoved into something that kinda sorta fits, shows up as a mere blip on the cognitive-radar screen or flies under it completely. Case in point, whether by choice or lack of choice, some of the more visible mixed-race Asian scholars/authors right now are embedded in other departments at their campuses: Laura Kina (Art, Media, & Design, DePaul University), Leilani Nishime (Dept of Communication, University of Washington), Stephen Shigematsu-Murphy (Asian American Studies, Stanford University), Rebecca Chiyoko King-O’Riain (Sociology, University of Ireland).

I woke up one morning and had this great idea to write a post on multiracial studies, classes and programs in higher ed. The first day I sat in front of the screen I naively believed I could come up with some sort of beginner, working list through a neat Google Search. Within 15 minutes I had searched about five or six variations of “mixed race studies,” found shockingly little, threw up my hands, and was so irritated I gave up. In fact after that quarter hour I was pretty sure I didn’t want to write this post at all. I supposed stuff was out there but felt confounded to find it without launching an epic dissertation-level exhaustive research project.

“Well,” I thought to myself, “Why don’t I just leave it to college counselors, professors and academics who have the inside scoop.” But then I thought twice. What about the exploding number of young people such as mixed race high schoolers (one day my son) who are starting to think about college, have a blossoming awareness of their multiraciality and would like to be in an environment that supports them, even allows them to pursue degrees along those lines? For that matter, what about any number of mixed race folk wanting to pursue professional certificates or advanced degrees along those lines, or the millions of others increasingly vested in mixed race issues? Are any of these folks going to sit at a computer for hours on a fruitless wild-goose chase that dead-ends in needing to rely on others “more in the know”?

Now I’m not talking student interest clubs and groups here. Those seem to abound and admittedly, are deeply important. But such involvement may or may not be resume material and, let’s be honest, in our society extracurricular certainly doesn’t hold the weight of alphabet soup like B.A. M.A. Ph.D. etc. I also suspect such groups centrally revolve around offering social support, which is of course extremely critical, but may not offer the mixed young person academic space to round-out by learning deeply and reflecting critically upon the construction of race mixing in the US. No. What I’m talking about is also giving mixed race students the space/option to explore their history and identity in their studies, and to become credentialed experts of their own experience.

So what happens when the historically overlooked and unrecognized mixed-race person hops on Google to figure out if they can spend thousands of dollars (they probably don’t have) on an education that would enrich their existence in a racially policed/divided world? It’s not good, people. It’s not good. The average Google Search garners 92% of all its traffic on Page 1. Page 2 only sees about 5%, Page 3 about 1%, and by Page 4 – well, just forget it. In the interest of posterity, let’s take a look at the critical first page of my Google Searching for mixed race studies at college and university campuses across the US:

Search phrase: degree mixed race studies

Of 10 first page results**: The top 3 results turned up this hub, a seriously great and well-known hub of mixed race research. But a quick perusal does not immediately show a listing of places to pursue such research and as we saw earlier, Riley himself states very clearly that he knows of no specific mixed race degree program. Following the top third, 2 results turned up a fairly new endeavor spearheaded by Laura Kina (among others) out of De Paul Unviersity. It is an expanding multiracial academic community that currently includes a biannual conference and academic journal. The website certainly lists organizations and hubs but again, I didn’t see a list of schools to pursue studies.

Following this, 2 search results turned up San Francisco State University’s Master’s in Ethnic Studies which is “increasingly concerned with mixed race studies” but obviously not a mixed race degree. Of the remaining, 1 search result was a write-up of the first Critical Mixed Race Studies postgraduate symposium ever offered at the University of Leeds in May of this year, 1 search result was a graduate thesis, 1 search result was a graduate student bio and 1 search result was a listing for a design-you-own-Master’s at Southern Methodist University.

Of course we see the obvious inability to obtain a specific critical mixed-race studies degree. But also notice the heavy, heavy emphasis on graduate, postgraduate and doctoral level research. In my view this does not allow very accessible entry points into the field of multiracial studies at all. We see a possible end result – but how to even begin? And what if a person does not aspire to become a researcher? Can there be an option to learn without the pressure to contribute to a growing body of mixed-race scholarship that’s struggling to exist? Search phrases like degree multi-ethnic studies or degree multiracial studies and the outcome isn’t much better. Personally I love researching and am excited by finding any results at all. But as the mother of a mixed race child who may or may not follow in his mother’s footsteps, I always have an eye to his future and best interests too. If my 4 year old goes to college one day, I want to feel less nervous and way more comfortable that wherever he goes as a new “legal” adult and young person existing across racial lines, he will find a place to learn more about himself in a life-giving way. I think we’re headed there but we still have a long way to go. I hope to see before my son fills out his first college application (aside from maybe no racial checkboxes to deal with), at least one campus that boasts an entire Critical Mixed Race Department. Pipe dream? We’ll see…

**(Note: I recognize that Google Search results change rapidly and the first page I analyze here is only a snapshot. Subsequent searches by others may turn up different, even very different results.) See my blog, too.

Backlash for Article in Asian Fortune Magazine

February 5, 2014 • Sharon Chang • Asian Americans

Just as I thought it was going alright

I found out I’m wrong, when I thought I was right

It’s always the same

It’s just a shame

That’s all

I could say day

And you would say night

Tell me it’s black when I know that it’s white

Always the same

It’s just a shame

That’s all

— “That’s All” by Genesis

In December (2013), I was contacted by Asian Fortune Magazine to be interviewed for an article on what they called H.A.P.A. “half Asian Pacific American” (a mostly unused acronym in the mixed race Asian community). I immediately said yes because exploring multiracial Asian identity and giving that exploration a voice is centrally what I do. I was excited at the chance to speak and be heard. But the experience quickly deteriorated into a racial nightmare, and one that just wouldn’t leave me alone. On my blog I wrote about the saga twice. First about the red flags I saw, how I sabotaged my own inclusion and tried to warn editor Jenny Chen. Then when I saw the published result which was awfully titled “Growing Up Asian Half Asian American: Curse or Gift?” used divisive/dichotomous language, did not include non-white mixes, expressed white ownership of multiraciality (via lookism and white/non-white framing) and perpetuated harmful multiracial Asian stereotypes, I felt as a multiracial community advocate I had to say something and wrote a rebuttal. Many activists and multiracials online resonated with my words and rallied around my critique. But Asian Fortune offered only an empty apology so I got ready to walk away. I felt at that point whatever work could be done, had been done.

But then this weekend I received a hateful email from the piece’s original writer, Tamara Treichel. After positioning herself as a very serious, accomplished writer, she then accused me of “clowning around,” “making a fool of myself,” being “unprofessional” and someone she didn’t have time for. She informed me my “talk about race” was “just an excuse” because I was miffed at not being included, pointed at reverse racism, that she’d written a complaint to her publisher/editor and never wanted to work with me again. The harshness in her message was very palpable. In my view, she leveraged all her power as a white woman, published author and professional journalist to imply I was lesser than herself and to attempt to lower my self-worth. This is the very essence of race which leaves some feeling entitled and others voiceless or punishable for voicing dissent. Perhaps Treichel doesn’t realize the dominant overtones of her choice not to listen, but even that in and of itself is a hallmark of white privilege.

I sat with Treichel’s email for a good 48 hours waiting for it all to just go away. But again, it just wouldn’t leave me alone. And as I found myself in rutted in ongoing rumination I realized why it continued to be a thorn in my side — because it speaks to something so much larger. This woman’s damaging way of looking at race through an uninterrogated white lens has been published and is potentially about to be published again (she is currently working on a book about her expat experiences in China). She has the distinct opportunity to be heard. And yet, while she seems to consider herself somewhat of an authority on cross-cultural issues, when challenged by a multiracial person of color who embodies crossed cultures and races, she was unreceptive and became aggressively defensive. Meanwhile voices of color and their stories continue to be marginalized and go widely unheard ranging from the infantilizing/silencing of adult transracial adoptees to the shocking underrpresentation of color in children’s literature. This stark juxtaposition of easy volume versus forced quiet is one of the cornerstones of inequity in this nation.

I am less interested in this specific writer and more interested in what I see here as some profound truths. One is the necessary acknowledgement that racism continues to minimize people of color but now in a contemporary way that is often veiled and covert. For instance, I was very struck by Treichel’s choice to abrasively criticize me in private instead of engaging in a space where others could weigh in. Especially considering the original piece was public and that she has the freedom of many choices in today’s digital world. Community conversations and debate can be so powerful and yet she chose one-on-one. Also, I think this experience shows so painfully how mixed race people are not transcending nor breaking down race as many believe. “Just because race has become more subtle and clever does not mean that it is less significant,” writes mixed race scholar Rebecca Chiyoko King-O’Riain in her 2006 book Pure Beauty: Judging Race in Japanese American Beauty Pageants, “The mixed-race body then does not destroy race, but leads to a repoliticization and problematization of race” (Rebecca Chiyoko King-O’Riain. Pure Beauty: Judging Race in Japanese American Beauty Pageants. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006. Print. p.22).

While multiracials may fly under the radar or seem to have access to certain advantages, in fact such “privileges” are only honorarily given and may be swept out from under our feet at any point if we step out of line. For instance, as Laura Kina & Wei Ming Dariotis point out in their new 2013 book War Baby / Love Child: Mixed Race Asian Art, mixed race itself “implies that there are separable ‘races’” and it is because and within this context that we need to form a “critical multiraciality” as part of an “anti-racist struggle” (Laura Kina & Wei Ming Dariotis. War Baby / Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2013. Print. p.xv.).

Age-old race thinking persists and until we can really deconstruct it, things may only shift and not change as much as we hope. I make a call here for continued group dialogue critically dissecting race concepts that continue to intrude upon our thinking and a perpetual reminder that even those of us who straddle color lines need to be included.

~ Guest blogger Sharon H Chang writes at the MultiAsianFamilies blog.

Sidelined in the #NotYourAsianSidekick Discussion

January 19, 2014 • Sharon Chang • Asian Americans

In December of last year an Asian feminist conversation took Twitter by storm under the hashtag #NotYourAsianSidekick. Designed to create much-needed but difficult-to-find space for discussing justice in the Asian American community, participants tweeted about everything from “media representation of Asian women to the way the prison industrial complex erases Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in its demographic tracking”. A groundwell of interest caused the hashtag to go viral globally, garnering 45,000 tweets within 24 hours, appearing in 95 million feeds across the next 3 days. Tanya Maria Golash-Boza covered it for Racism Review here, noting some of the social science evidence about discrimination against Asian Americans.

A month later, the hashtag is still trending. In fact the discussion has so deeply shown its importance that it has transformed into something of a movement with its own website and hosted forums that aim to continue “bringing conversations between artists, activists, and academics” about “everything from using Twitter as a platform for agitation to interracial solidarity to disability to queerness.” It has since generated widespread and well-deserved attention much of which you can easily locate and peruse via Google search.

Yes, it’s true. I’m on Twitter @multiasianfams. I have a love-hate relationship with social media but in my view there’s simply too much happening around race in that arena and online to ignore it. Case in point, I happened to hear about #NotYourAsianSideKick before it launched and participated at the very beginning for an hour. Something that got quickly lost in the explosive hype surrounding the trend (which has since been solely credited to activist Suey Park) was that it was originally co-hosted by Park and fellow activist Juliet Shen. To get the convo going, the 2 friends threw out a series of thoughtful questions with Park first up and Shen quickly following. Now while I think overall #NotYourAsianSidekick was and is a gorgeous and deeply needed movement to be heard, and even though plenty of mixed race people chimed in throughout – honestly I felt on the fringes of the conversation before it even began (as I usually do) being a multiracial person who can’t align fully with mono- categories like Asian. There was really only one moment that jumped off the screen at me and really connected to my lived/mixed experience, when Shen asked:

In fact hers was the only question that specifically addressed issues of interraciality possibly cracking the door to include a broader discussion of multiraciality in the hashtag and the Asian community at large. But sadly just a handful of women (including Park & Shen) responded before the discussion dashed off in another direction:

I thought #NotYourAsianSideKick moved away from this topic too quickly and decided to to contact some of the brave women who had spoken up for a deeper exploration. Interviews with several of these women follow, all words and images used here with their permission.

Juliet Shen @Juliet_Shen, Activist/Writer
identifies as: Asian American, 2^nd generation Chinese

“When I date interracially friends, especially within the Asian American community, are quick to criticize or judge. There’s often that split second after I tell them the race of my partner that I see this change occur on their expression. I suddenly lose credibility as a writer, activist, and member of the community. Strangers are even worse. Because I blog, contacting me is easier than for the average person. I usually get about 1 piece of hate mail a week, often more if I write on something ‘controversial’ such as interracial relationships. The hate mail will range from disappointment to violent threats, to name calling, to everything negative under the sun. I have been called a race traitor, a house slave, and many more horrible things…I [still] see much criticism and backlash against interracial relationships…there is much work to be done.”

Lindsey Yoo @LindseyYoo, Activist/Writer
identifies as: Korean American

“I’ve dated interracially enough that my [Korean American] family is no longer shocked when I introduce them to non-Korean partners. But my extended family in Korea has told me more than once to at least stick to white or Asian men; they want me to stay away from ‘darker’ men. They assume that non-white and non-Asian men are sexually and morally deviant — especially Black men… Some friends have commented on ‘how cute’ my mixed kids would be if my boyfriend and I ever decide to have a family, and others have pointed out to me that the existence of relationships like mine show how improved race relations have become in our country. It’s always awkward trying to point out the problematic assumptions in those types of reactions — especially since they’re presented as appreciative statements and compliments…Interracial relationships might be more commonplace and more accepted, but Asian men and Black women are still the least likely to out-marry, and they are the least desired demographics in studies of online dating activity and behavior.”

Maureen Ahmed @maureen_ahmed, Activist/Writer
identifies as: South Asian, Muslim – American

“When a South Asian woman dates outside of her race, or when a Muslim woman dates outside of her religion, her society will negatively respond (the severity of which changes from individual to individual). These trends stem from patriarchal expectations that a woman is responsible for continuing the heritage of her ancestors in a foreign land…Once she leaves her community, her children (because after all, she is expected to have them) will seldom be able to carry on those traditions, because…the male [is] responsible [for passing] on his customs to the family…While I think society as a whole has exceedingly become more welcoming towards interracial relationships, I believe there is still great resistance in smaller ethnic and religious enclaves throughout the United States. While new wave of immigrants continue to bring rich and vibrant traditions to this country, they often at times also bring with them racial prejudices against other communities besides their own.”

We can see through the testimonials of these young women that interracial mixing is sometimes still viewed very harshly which has obvious implications for children that may come later. It is an important subject that should be addressed in every community. Yet interracial/multiracial got bumped off its chair pretty early at the #NotYourAsianSidekick table. I can’t say I’m surprised. I keep seeing this happen despite the fact, as I have mentioned before, multiracial is the fastest growing youth group in the US; something of especially significance for the API community which has the highest rate of outmarriage (interracial and interethnic).

The struggle for racial equality in this nation which has historically coalesced around mono-aligned groups is now also struggling to know what to do with the growing visibility of multiracials. In its confusion, and often the faulty assumption that maybe race just doesn’t apply, mixed race peoples are frequently just left out altogether. But more and more young people are beginning to identify outside traditionally defined single designations begging the question, are we going to stick with a handful of racial categories and if so, who do we allow in them? Who qualifies as “Asian”? The simple truth is — we need to make more space for inter- and multi-in race discourse. Great convos about “the now” without a nod to “what’s next” aren’t fully prepared for the future that’s imminent, and waiting on our doorstep.*

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the women who were willing to share their experiences and identities with us here. Speaking up is dangerous trailblazing work. Their willingness to do so paves a path for others to be heard. I ask that readers please receive their testimonials with respect and listen to their words without being predatory.

*Note: A multiracial Asian forum has since been proposed to Suey Park who was very open to the idea and will likely do so in the near future.

~ Guest blogger Sharon H Chang writes at the MultiAsian Famillies blog.

Where “Old” and “New” World Color Meet in Multiracial Asian America

November 18, 2013 • Sharon Chang • "model minority", Asian Americans

(Image source)

“Rare indeed is the Asian American who has not heard an aunt or grandmother say something like; ‘Don’t go out in the sun. You’ll get too dark’…[Asian countries have] had long-standing preferences for light skin, especially in women.”

— Is Lighter Better? Skin-Tone Discrimination Among Asian Americans

In my continuing research examining the lives of young multiracial Asian children, it has become pretty clear pretty quick that colorism (skin color discrimination of individuals falling within the same racial group) is a major theme. This isn’t a surprise to me, a multiracial Asian woman who grew up constantly scrutinized and measured as more European looking against other Asian peoples. I launched an Amazon hunt and as usual, found very little. In fact almost nothing; only one book addressing colorism in the Asian American community: Is Lighter Better? Skin-Tone Discrimination Among Asian Americans by Joanne L. Rondilla and Paul Spickard (2007) (if you know of more, please send to me).

According to Rondilla & Spickard, colorism in Asia is less about wanting to look European and more a class imperative. “To be light is to be rich, for dark skin comes from working outside in the sun…the yearning to be light is a desire to look like rich Asians, not like Whites” (Rondilla & Spickard, 2007, p.4). A preference for light-skinned beauty existed long before serious encounters with Europeans and Americans, and this desire deeply persists. Though not visibly common in the US, skin lightening products are loudly advertised and mass-consumed all over Asia. And sales are rising. Two million units of skin lightening soap are sold annually in the Philippines. Today, every major cosmetics company has some form of skin lightener (Rondilla & Spickard, 2007).

So what happens when huge numbers of Asian immigrants (430,000 in 2010) and students (6 in 10 international students are from Asia) start arriving Stateside and their colorist/class values meet US racism which has aggressively devalued and violently oppressed dark-skinned people for hundreds of years? What happens when White Perfect (above) meets Jim Crow? “Less yellowish” meets Yellow Peril?

(Image source)

On the one hand, it’s a complicated catch-22. Overlay the former with the latter and we certainly get a compounded but also confused effect. As Rosalind S. Chou and Joe R. Feagin note in their book The Myth of the Model Minority: Asian Americans Facing Racism, “Asian Americans frequently embrace stereotypes created by whites about other groups, as well as the racist notions that whites have created for Asians” (p.138).

Asian Americans often manifest “old world” inspired, “new world” enhanced colorism at the same time they find themselves victimized by the same system; targeted as people of color. Rock and a hard place, right? Take for instance American born Lucy Liu, still one of the few Asian TV and film stars, who has publicly bemoaned racism in Hollywood yet stirred controversy last year when she let slip a disparaging remark about Filipino skin color on Jay Leno.

On the other hand, the oppression of dark-skinned people, whether in Asia or America, is exactly what it is — the oppression of dark-skinned people. I often run into folks who try to differentiate the two histories of discrimination as totally disparate, unrelated and incompatible things. Sometimes to excuse immigrant colorist behaviors as eccentric or somehow less offensive because they technically aren’t rooted in racism. Sometimes to dismiss the possibility of any compounded and damaging internalized effects to Asian American children through their combination. But in our increasingly interdependent world, how can we pretend the cultural values of one continent are not influenced and impacted by the values of the other? When I was a young girl my father told me if I ever married a Black man he’d disown me. Even that young I remember being totally shocked by his unapologetic and vocal bias, something I continued to live with and object to my entire youth (though my protests always seemed to fall on deaf ears). My father was born and raised in Taiwan, a place that was and still mostly remains pretty Asian-homogenous. He immigrated to the United States when he was in his 20s at which point he’d had very little exposure to any kind of Black be it African, Afro-Brazilian, Afro-Cuban, African American, whatever. Yet despite his limited exposure to racial diversity growing up and the fact he himself was often targeted as an immigrant/person of color later living in the US, as an adult he harbored very extreme American prejudices against historically targeted American racial groups.

(Image source)

Chou & Feagin point out Asian immigrants often have preconceived stereotypes about Blacks before they even immigrate because of contact with American mainstream media operating overseas, a major source of negative typecasting for Mexican and African Americans (among others) (Chou & Feagin, 2010):

The impact of U.S. racism is not confined to the borders of the United States. Indeed, U.S. economic, political, military, and mass media power makes the country very important, indeed often dominant, in many global settings. The United States not only exports commercial goods but also propagates important ideals and ideas as well. The U.S. media are very influential and perpetuate important aspects of the white racial frame to many countries around the world. Certain U.S.-oriented products and their advertising also spread a U.S. racial framing (Chou & Feagin, 2010, pp.170-171).

Where does this leave multiracial Asian Americans born into these overlapping frameworks? I’m afraid that as multiracial Asian Americans, this leaves us poised very precariously at times. Despite what you might imagine, with the recent influx of Asian immigration and Asians marrying out of their ethnic group at a higher rate than any other racial group, multiracial Asian children are not actually that far removed from “old world” prejudices and are often second generation Americans like myself. I have been constantly scanned for Asian versus white features by Asian immigrants and proclaimed “the best of both worlds” leaving me with the uncomfortable, highly racialized feeling there’s something I did or didn’t get that I should be glad about but that one or both of my halves might resent. In my October post “Mixed Heritage and Knowing We Still Have Work To Do,” I described the race challenges shared by a quarter Asian youth panelist (Black/Asian/white) as part of a local mixed heritage dialogue. Despite identifying strongly as Blasian:

12 yo Saiyana, a child of our future and proud of her mixed heritage, showed us that race mythologies/oppressions persist. She related being profiled by a museum security guard who identified her as Black at the same time Black peers at school refuse to acknowledge her multiraciality.

Even in Rondilla & Spickard’s well-researched book something funny around mixed race people seems to be happening. In their study, they asked participants asked to respond to pictures of 3 different women of varying skin tones from lightest to darkest. The “fairest of them all,” as designated by the researchers, appears to be multiracial, something alluded to, but not confirmed in the book. The other two do not appear to be multiracial.

Why would only one woman be mixed race? Why not choose either 3 mixed race Asian woman OR 3 monoracial Asian women? And if only one mixed race woman was going to be chosen, why would she be the light one?

There is a conversation we aren’t having about specifically colorism in Asian America and the way it impacts the lives of mixed race children. For example, how are darker-skinned Black/Asians versus lighter-skinned white/Asians received within their families, within the Asian American community, and society at large?

In her book Pure Beauty: Judging Race in Japanese American Beauty Pageants, Rebecca Chiyoko King-O’Riain points out that despite growing acceptance of mixed race children in the Japanese American community:

The idea of racial hierarchies perpetuated by the Japanese American community is evidenced in the community beauty pageants. There have been few if any African American/Japanese American mixed-race queen candidates and none has been successfully chosen to be queen (King-O’Riain, 2006, p.38).

How do phenotype and issues of blood quantum complicate this conversation? What is it like for children like Saiyana who are a quarter or less Asian and may not wear Asian racial markers that signal loudly to others, yet who identify strongly as being so? Given that multiracial Asian is a fast-growing demographic and will soon constitute a larger and larger portion of our population, I think we have to ask ourselves these hard questions. Certainly not at the exclusion of other discussions central to multiraciality but definitely as an important part of the larger conversation.

What is it like for multiracial Asians with different skin colors/heritages sitting at a crossroads where “old world” Asian colorism and “new world” US racism meet?

~ Guest blogger Sharon Chang writes regularly at MultiAsian Families.

Are We Really So Different? The AAA Exhibit on “Race”

October 19, 2013 • Sharon Chang • academic, Americans of color, multiracial, race, white racial frame

Did you know there’s a national exhibit that’s been traveling the US since 2007 entitled RACE: Are We So Different by the American Anthropological Association (AAA)? When I heard about it my thinking went something like this, “Oh good. A credible entity getting behind race discourse. Oh no. Why are they asking if race really makes us that different?”

National Exhibition [Source: Exhibit at Museum of Man – discovers.com]

As a multiracial woman often scrutinized for being “ethnically ambiguous” my experience of race is of something absolutely differentiating at the same time I find myself constantly butting up against people who deny its salience. So I felt invalidated then worried that an exhibit choosing to lead with the question, “Are we so different?” might prove unhelpful. Studies have found that when misinformed people were exposed to corrected facts they (a) rarely changed their minds, (b) often became even more strongly set in their beliefs , and (c) did so without recognizing how their own desires influenced them. We live in an era when undoing racism means battling avoidance, denial and the inability to understand another point of view. If people see what they want to see, might a national science exhibit questioning the salience of race run the risk of reinforcing rather than challenging the colorblind ideologies that plague us today? Here’s what I mean…

Simply Human?

As I first entered the exhibit at Seattle’s Science Center, a panel entitled Race Off offered me this, “There is no biological evidence that supports racial categories…What are we? The answer is simple – human.” This is something I run into a lot in my research and has become a trigger for me as a multiracial woman and mother. Check out what trailblazing scholar Maria P. P. Root has to say about this kind of language when it comes to our children:

If a child brings up a racial incident at school and meets with an abstract response from her parents, such as, “We’re all members of the human race,” “Race doesn’t matter,” or “We all bleed the same color,” the child gets no help from these pat answers and will be unequipped to deal with hazing, name calling, racial attacks, or other bullying…most children do not want to be confronted by their parent’s lack of competence in an area in which they need a role model (Maria P. P. Root as cited in Nakazawa, Donna Jackson. Does Anybody Else Look Like Me? A Parent’s Guide to Raising Multiracial Children. Cambridge: Da Capo Lifelong Books, 2003. Print.).

134 Brazilian Alternatives

I believe to demonstrate how arbitrary our concept of race can be, a panel against the East wall pointed out that Brazilians don’t identify racially in the same way Americans do. Instead, Brazilians align with a multitude of skin-shades rather than a handful of prescribed races. To illustrate the point, the panel gives an impressive list of 134 “Brazilian Terms for Skin Color.” While I was standing there wondering if this was being presented as a solution to our problems, two white women stepped up and admiringly commented, “Wow! This is amazing. We should do this here.” Now there is certainly a point to be made about the importance of discussing skin color but this long list, while different, does not mean Brazil has transcended issues of race. In fact quite the opposite – a reality the panel only lightly alludes to. Brazil, a nation to which 4.9 million African slaves were shipped during the slave trade (versus 400,000 to the US), struggles greatly with its own form of racism/colorism. Brazil was the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery and did nothing to turn former slaves into citizens. According to their 2010 Census, the income of whites was slightly more than double that of black or brown Brazilians and more than half the people in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas (slums) are black compared to just 7% in richer districts. Sound familiar?

Who Gets to be “Mixed”?

Wrapping up my visit I found myself in a corner dedicated specifically to Kip Fulbeck’s The Hapa Project. Fulbeck’s work has been incredibly influential in defining the multiracial experience and bringing visibility to a very underrepresented demographic. But I got the uncomfortable feeling RACE was trying to use it as a voicebox for how all mixed race peoples choose to face questions of racial identity today.

I became alarmed. Why? Because choosing to be recognized as mixed race in America is still not something all multiracial people get to do. We must always remember our insidious history of oppressing especially mixed-race Blacks and Natives for holding a few drops of said blood (e.g. shutting them out of white and its associated privileges, relegating them instead to “lesser” categories of color). And this legacy persists. Do mixed Black children want or even get to identify as multiracial now? Case in point, our very own mixed race President Obama (who is “half” white) checked “Black” as his race on the 2010 Census. Any discussion of mixed-race identity needs to include a conversation about how this idea exists differently across racial lines. I immediately hunted down the exhibit’s content expert and asked if they had a panel explicitly featuring an exploration of the “One Drop Rule” and issues of blood quantum as a juxtaposition to the Kip Fulbeck corner. Guess what the answer was.

Now before I bring the full wrath of the AAA and America’s science museums down upon me let me say there is a lot this exhibit does well. But while RACE is incredibly researched and offers important information we should all know, it ultimately struggles to reconcile its driving science-based theme that we aren’t so different with a very strong demonstration that we definitely are. And this is where the exhibit did itself a great disservice. By trying to remain neutral on a completely non-neutral issue it not only left itself vulnerable to racial messaging but also positioned itself precisely in the danger zone; a place where the race-matters camp finds plenty of fuel for their fire, but the colorblind-postracial camp does too. And everybody leaves the room possibly having discussed nothing and gotten nowhere.

~ You can read more of guest blogger Sharon Chang at her MultiAsian Families blog.