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Mixed Race Capital: Cultural Producers and Asian American Mixed Race Identity from the Late Nineteenth to Twentieth Century

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Mixed Race Capital: Cultural Producers and Asian American Mixed Race Identity from the Late Nineteenth to Twentieth Century MIXED RACE CAPITAL: CULTURAL PRODUCERS AND ASIAN AMERICAN MIXED RACE IDENTITY FROM THE LATE NINETEENTH TO TWENTIETH CENTURY A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF UNIVERSITY OF HAWAIʻI AT MĀNOA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN AMERICAN STUDIES MAY 2018 By Stacy Nojima Dissertation Committee: Vernadette V. Gonzalez, Chairperson Mari Yoshihara Elizabeth Colwill Brandy Nālani McDougall Ruth Hsu Keywords: Mixed Race, Asian American Culture, Merle Oberon, Sadakichi Hartmann, Winnifred Eaton, Bardu Ali Acknowledgements This dissertation was a journey that was nurtured and supported by several people. I would first like to thank my dissertation chair and mentor Vernadette Gonzalez, who challenged me to think more deeply and was able to encompass both compassion and force when life got in the way of writing. Thank you does not suffice for the amount of time, advice, and guidance she invested in me. I want to thank Mari Yoshihara and Elizabeth Colwill who offered feedback on multiple chapter drafts. Brandy Nālani McDougall always posited thoughtful questions that challenged me to see my project at various angles, and Ruth Hsu’s mentorship and course on Asian American literature helped to foster my early dissertation ideas. Along the way, I received invaluable assistance from the archive librarians at the University of Riverside, University of Calgary, and the Margaret Herrick Library in the Beverly Hills Motion Picture Museum. I am indebted to American Studies Department at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa for its support including the professors from whom I had the privilege of taking classes and shaping early iterations of my dissertation and the staff who shepherded me through the process and paperwork. My colleagues provided feedback on multiple drafts and versions of this dissertation and include Sanae Nakatani, Yu-Jung Lee, Yohei Sekiguchi, Keiko Fukunishi, Kim Compoc, Kevin Lim, Sean Trundle, Pahole Sookkasikon, Sarah Smorol, Leanne Sims, and Yanli Luo. Yuka Polovina and Billie Lee were in multiple writing groups that helped my academic growth and curiosity, with late night writing sessions and group text check-ins that kept me on track. Eriza Bareng provided constant and consistent motivation, both personally and professionally. Jeanette Hall was a crucial sounding board and running partner, fusing our marathon training and long runs as an opportunity to also think through ideas and arguments. She ii read numerous drafts and offered endless encouragement. Near the end of this dissertation, I moved to the Bay Area and Juliana Gratao and Miranda Wang helped me to stay focused on my writing, providing companionship in coffee study sessions. These are more than colleagues or friends. They are the strong intellectual women that continually awe and inspire me in my life. Thanks also goes to Raymon Gutierrez who supported and encouraged me through the last stage of this project. Undoubtedly, my greatest appreciation goes to my family: Steve, Marina, Owen, and Mason Nojima and most importantly, my parents, who provided unconditional love and support. My parents were always my biggest fan and never wavered in their commitment and belief in me. From an early age, their value in education paved the way for me to see getting a PhD turn from a dream into a goal, and now a reality. Words cannot express the gratitude I have for their support in this journey and in my life. This dissertation is dedicated to them—Kenji and Glynis Nojima. iii Abstract This dissertation traces and connects the contemporary scholarship of Asian American racial mixing to a longer historical story or genealogy, thematizing the stories of racial negotiation and mixed race capital by focusing on four Asian American mixed race cultural producers from the late nineteenth to twentieth century—bohemian poet and lecturer Sadakichi Hartmann, writer Winnifred Eaton, actress Merle Oberon, and musician Bardu Ali. Against the grain of discourses that proclaim the “birth” of multiraciality in the 1990s, this dissertation demonstrates that being racially mixed was an identity, a career, and an economic survival tactic that was stitched into the United States cultural fabric beginning as early as the late nineteenth century. This was a time of increased Asian immigration and parallel rise in legal restrictions, anti-immigration laws, and discourses of scientific racism used to restrict “undesirable” races from entering and becoming citizens in the United States. These cultural producers strategically capitalized on their racial ambivalence, re-packaging and marketing their racial identities in ways that enabled economic success and cultural legitimacy. iv Table of Contents Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………………......ii Abstract………………………………………………………………………………………..….iv List of Figures…………………………………………………………………………………….vi Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………..…1 Chapter 1: “Sadakichi Hartmann—Genius? or Charlatan?”: Performing Race in New York’s Bohemia……………………………………………………………………………………….…29 Chapter 2: Domesticity and the Science of Mixed Race in the Writing of Winnifred Eaton……77 Chapter 3: Merle Oberon: The Gendered Marketing and Consumption of Mixed Race in Hollywood ……………………………………………………………………………………...108 Chapter 4: Mixed Race and the Politics of Performer Bardu Ali in Black Entertainment…..…148 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...………182 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………190 v List of Figures Fig. 1.1 Carl Sadakichi Hartmann marriage certificate to Elizabeth Blanche Walsh, 44 New York, 1891, New York City Department of Records Fig. 1.2 “Sadakichi Hartmann: The Famous Japanese-German-American” flyer, 49 undated, Sadakichi Hartmann Papers, collection 068, box 24, courtesy of Tomás Rivera Library at the University of California, Riverside Fig. 1.3 “Japan as it Really Is” Flyer, undated, Sadakichi Hartmann Papers, 50 collection 068, box 28, courtesy of Tomás Rivera Library at the University of California, Riverside Fig. 1.4 Photograph of Sadakichi Hartmann in “Mikado garb,” 1889, Sadakichi 54 Hartmann Papers, collection 068, box 49, folder 2, courtesy of Tomás Rivera Library at the University of California, Riverside Fig. 2.1 Baptismal certificate, Estelle Merle Thompson, Emmanuel Church, 110 Bombay, India, Mar. 16, 1911, National British Library, copyright British Library board, N/3/105/27 Fig. 3.1 Screenshot of Bardu Ali, Sanford and Son, “Here comes the bride, there 149 goes the bride,” S01 E03, Jan. 28, 1972, YouTube, accessed Dec. 27, 2017 vi Introduction In the typical chronology of mixed race, the 1967 Supreme Court decision of Loving v. Virginia and the 2000 census stand out as seminal points in United States history. Loving v. Virginia dismantled restrictions against interracial marriage and drastically shifted ideas of interracial mixing by increasing the visibility of mixed race peoples and communities, and spurred a growth of community activism and groups that coalesced around a mixed race identity. Those identifying as mixed race jumped from 500,000 in the mid-1960s to over 2 million in the 1990s.1 This increased visibility and advocacy also led to another landmark decision for multiracial rights: the ability to mark more than one racial category on the 2000 census. Mothers of multiracial children advocated for a separate multiracial identity to be recognized by the government.2 Scholar Kimberly DaCosta contends that “telling the story of how multiracials were ‘made’ requires a discussion of the census classification debate of the 1990s during which self-described spokespersons for ‘the multiracial community’ sought to create, quite literally, a new social category.”3 Despite the increasingly vocal argument for it, a separate multiracial category was not created. Instead, multiple racial categories could be marked. These two changes, Loving v. Virginia and the 2000 census “mark one or more,” are often seen as the “birth” of multiracials as subjects. 1 These numbers were based on counting children from married parents of different races. See Naomi Zack, “American Mixed Race: The United States 2000 Census and Related Issues,” in Mixing it Up: Multiracial Subjects, ed. SanSan Kwan and Kenneth Speirs (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004), 23. Mixed race visibility also increased through involvement with, and membership in, community and activist groups. 2 Kimberly McClain DaCosta, Making Multiracials: State, Family, and Market in the Redrawing of the Color Line (Stanford: Stanford UP, 2007). 3 Ibid., 12. 1 While these two cases represent the pursuit of political recognition, the increased visibility of mixed race was also being recognized within United States culture. Another key moment in contemporary mixed race history was the Time cover in 1993 that illustrated a computer-generated image of a racially mixed woman with the headline “The New Face of America.” The word “new” suggested that racial mixing was a recent phenomenon. The computer-generated face as the Time cover produced an image of the future direction of America’s multicultural society in a celebration of diversity. However, these contemporary examples flatten mixed race representation in the pursuit of using racial mixing to forward political agendas. For instance, liberals used ideas of mixed race to propel the argument that the United States was making progressive steps against racism and that white power was being diminished. For conservatives, racial mixing was evidence that racial tensions no longer existed
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