Paula Jung / Week 6 / ASA 115

This weeks topic dealt with “New Frontiers in Mixed Race Studies.” This week’s reading was from, “Emerging Paradigms in Critical Mixed Race Studies” by G. Reginald Daniel, Laura Kina, Wei Ming Dariotis, and Camilla Fojas. This paper deals with specifically critical mixed race studies in the past two decades, where many changes have been made. While America has had a long history of dismantling racist mixed race segregation laws since the 1950s, there is still much work that is currently happening. The paper focused on Barack Obama’s presidential election in the last decade and how the success of his campaign was in large part because of the progressiveness of mixed race rights. In the United States, mixed race people are more accepted, minorities are more accepted than before, and many racists laws have been dismantled. For example, Loving vs Virginia laws have almost been completely eradicated, Jim Crow laws, and these successes have actually allowed other minority groups such as the LGBTQ+ to also gain rights in their own movements in the United States. 

While this is an empowering and encouraging progress we have made, it is still upsetting we are still dealing with a few laws that still oppress and silence minorities. This is why critical studies of mixed race such as this paper, this class, and LGBTQ+ studies are highly important. I would like to see more of these types of classes offered in universities everywhere in America. A question I would have is, what kind of new challenges do mixed race people face in America? With the popularity of mixed race people being attractive, perhaps they feel their different cultures and heritages are being erased by the front of them being popular for surface level attention?

Attached is a photo of Glee star and actress, Naya Rivera, who is a quarter white, a quarter black, and half Puerto-Rican, who often speaks about being mixed race. She says she gets tired of people asking her "what she is" like she's a dog, and gets tired of the "exotic" narrative often applied to mixed race individuals.

Paula Jung / Week 5 / ASA 115

In this week’s reading, the theme is mixed race and Vietnamese American people fitting into society. In Professor Valverdes’ essay, “Doing the Mixed-Race Dance: Negotiating Social Spaces Within the Multiracial Vietnamese American Class Typology” she first shares her own personal experience of growing up Vietnamese-American and also mixed race. For the professor, she found her identity in being Vietnamese-American, but also felt a sense of otherness because of her mixed race heritage; her mother being Spanish-Vietnamese while her father being Vietnamese. She continues this essay by interviewing 30 people from the Bay Area mostly who identify as Vietnamese and engage in their personal experiences. 

Overall,  there are many types of people in the Vietnamese community in terms of age, sexuality, education level, class level. Professor Valverdes talks about how mixed race people are often seen as “inferior” to pure Vietnamese people. She describes it as a dance, the conversation between Vietnamese Americans and mixed race Vietnamese people because Vietnamese Americans take the lead in asking questions, while the mixed race people often follow the lead, with missteps, avoidance, and carefulness. These questions show the status of a mixed race person depending on various factors, and even so they will not be fully accepted as an equal but as accepted as a “different” or “novel.”

To me, this just shows the blatant racism and ignorance that still exists even today, even here in the modern Bay Area. A mixed race person is treated as inferior for no real reason and this infuriates me and needs to change. A question I might have is, how do we as a society bypass a person’s worth based on their ethnic backgrounds and accept them fully into a community regardless of class or race? Attached is a photo of the growing Vietnamese-American population in the United States. 

Paula Jung / Week 4 / ASA 115

In this week’s reading, we discovered more about the Amerasian experience especially of those of Vietnamese descent after the Vietnam War in 1975. Professor Valverdes talked extensively on this topic in class as well as the reading, which she wrote. The reading begins with the history of Amerasian people, how after the Vietnam War ended, there was a plethora of children from Vietnamese mothers and American fathers. Many of these children were abandoned, ostracized in their nations, and treated with racist, unjust treatment. Many children often felt unaccepted in both their heritages, both their nations, and felt overwhelmed by the two differing cultures and societies that they were apart of--but never fully accepted into. Many of these Amerasian children suffered from the hardships of life in Vietnam, while also suffering cultural differences in the United States afterwards faced with ignorant white Americans who often called them names, made racist laws against them, and failed to help them be included. 

A quote from Valverdes that stood out was, “The Vietnamese subjected Amerasians to racial abuse on a daily basis in the form of name-calling: con lai (half-breed), my lai (American mix), or my den (Black American). ‘I hear them calling me 'my lai' as I pass home from school every day, but I ignore it, keeping in mind that once home, I will be safe,’" commented an Amerasian woman. This woman was not only subjected to racist name-calling from her own country natives, but felt that she could not tell anyone about her pain and lived in pain alone, not even telling her own mother. 

It was upsetting to me to see that only a few decades ago there existed such racism, but this is our current reality and many mixed people still face discrimination today in different forms. I hope America continues to grow in a more accepting, and more educated manner and treat mixed race people with respect. My question is, how are mixed race people treated today compared to two decades ago? Mixed people are seen as popular now but in terms of their discrimination level, where do they stand compared to two decades ago?

This photo is an Amerasian child with a Vietnamese mother, and an American father.

Paula Jung / Week 3 / ASA 115

This week’s theme from the reading is policies and Anti-Miscegenation laws which deal with the history and policies that ruled from between the Civil War and the civil rights movement in the 1960s.   The reading from Deenesh Sohoni’s “Unsuitable Suitors: Anti-Miscegenation Laws, Naturalization Laws, and the Construction of Asian Identities,” specifically deals with Asian immigration during that time in America and how lawmakers and policymakers dealt, usually unfairly and in a discriminatory-like manner against incoming Asian immigrants and its history. The beginning of the reading talks about how Asian people were once seen as welcomed to the country, as they were a helpful force labor for building necessary items in the United States. However, affections toward them quickly turned hostile when white Americans were afraid Asian people would overtake their careers or receive equal pay to their white counterparts. 

During this time, there was still much segregation between white people and black people, and Asian people were not excluded. During the 1960s, not only was there conflict between white and black people, but in general a conflict between all white and non-white people. As more immigrants were coming into the United States, policymakers made racist laws prohibiting privileges against minorities for the sake of white superiority, white ‘purity,’ and even banned interracial marriages. 

For example, a case called The People v. George W. Hall (1854), the Supreme Court of California voted that, “a Chinese person could not testify against a white person because it violated state strictures in criminal proceedings that ‘No Black or Mulatto person, or Indian, shall be allowed to give evidence against a white man.’’’ This showed the apparent racist laws existing at the time to exclude all Asian and minority groups from white people, which infuriated me. It showed me there is still much to change and this racist history was only a century ago, and we still have much to progress in America. A question I have is: Are Asian people still considered a group welcomed into the United States, or rejected because of our immigrant/minority status today? 

Here is a video of one of the first Chinese-American marine officer, Lieutenant Chew-Een Lee who initially faced racist comments from his white soldiers. Yet he demanded respect and gained admiration from his colleagues. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDjzAIKe1Ms

Paula Jung / Week 2 / ASA 115

In week 2, the theme of the week was colorism and “situational identity,” a term Professor Valverdes used to describe a concept where mixed race people often identify with a race that most benefits their social situation. For example, in the readings for the week, “Part Asian, 100% Hapa: A Retrospective" by Kip Fulbeck, there are countless stories of ‘Hapas’ or mixed white-Asian people who share their stories of being mixed race. Originally started as half white and half Hawaiian, the term has evolved to include all Asian ethnicities. Fulbeck photographs participants around 10 years before he engages with them with their personal stories of living mixed race in a often-times mono-racial world. 

One example in the book that particularly stuck out to me was a half Asian-half Black woman who shared her stories of her hair. She exclaims, “It’s black hair, it’s Asian hair. It has its good days and bad days. With each day, I am learning to love it more! And take care of it! Please don’t define me by my hair!” Many people in the book share their thoughts that being racially diverse is more of a social construct and should not define who they are as people. “What am I? Shouldn’t you ask my name first?” one woman says also in the reading. 

Further pondering of this reading made me realize that oftentimes, we reduce people to their ethnic backgrounds instead of who they might be as a person; their personal interests, their hobbies, dislikes and likes. My question for the week would be: is race a social construct created for the sole purpose of keeping one race superior or more privileged than another? This is the kind of injustice I see in the world today. One race gaining more benefits and another receiving oppression due to the color of their skin, which is horribly wrong. 

A visual representation I found online that relates to our week’s reading is a video from As/Is called “The Struggle of Being Mixed Race” which interviews various people about their experiences. The concept that most sticks out from this video is the idea of being rejected, not fitting in, and wishing to be recognized fully, instantly, from others like others have the privilege of being recognized correctly. 

https://youtu.be/ob-qmfvnQVo