I have gone almost 24 years without ever being a “white girl”. Today for the first time, a friend called me a “white girl” and I had to remind myself, “there’s nothing wrong with being white.”
Growing up in the SF bay area, culture and diversity is something to take pride in. However, growing up in such a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural community I implicitly learned that “White culture” is really just the lack-of culture. I began believing that I am “Only half” Japanese and the other half of me was not something to proudly claim. In the past few years I have found that merely being purposeful about our use of vocabulary and the underlying assumptions behind certain words can minimize these implicit messages which underlay the prejudices passed on through American culture.
For example, the term “White washed” originally meant to wipe clean and start from scratch. Now, “White washed” means to have been wiped clean of our ethnic culture and become like a White person. What is the implied message from the use of this term today? The implied message is that White people are without culture. Another term used for those of multi-ethnic individuals like myself is to categorize ourselves in percentages, “half” being a highly common term. I will address the term “Hapa” later, but for now let’s focus on the main-land use of this term. By using the term “half”, there is an implied “Whole”. Is “Whole” better than “Half?” In American culture, more is always better, and 100% on anything is almost universally something to congratulate. We can look at a person as see what facial characteristics seem of a certain ethnic origin, but one cannot say how much percent a person’s dna is influenced by one ethnicity versus another; that is not how genetics works. There is a complex interaction between dominant and recessive genes, only some of which are externally seen.
Another thing to consider when using the term “half” for those who are mixed White and Non-white is to consider what the implication is for these individuals when society claims that white people do not have culture in comparison to non-White individuals. Do the individual’s who are White and non-white have less culture? When I am with people of Asian descent, I am often viewed as White and not Asian because I am “only half” Asian. Do they know that I was raised by my Japanese Parent? No. It is assumed I am “less” Asian because I am more than one ethnicity. Terms like “half” and “only half” should not be used to describe a person of multiple ethnic backgrounds.
Vocabulary is definitely something to be considered when trying to rid American of racial prejudices (or any prejudice).
MyHapaLife.com 