Shape Shifters Borderlands and TransculTural Studies Series Editors: Pekka Hämäläinen Paul Spickard Edited by Lily Anne Y. Welty Tamai, Ingrid Dineen- Wimberly, and Paul Spickard Shape Shifters Journeys across Terrains of Race and Identity University of Nebraska Press | Lincoln © 2020 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Tamai, Lily Anne Y. Welty, editor. | Dineen- Wimberly, Ingrid, editor. | Spickard, Paul R., 1950– editor. Title: Shape shifters: journeys across terrains of race and identity / edited by Lily Anne Y. Welty Tamai, Ingrid Dineen- Wimberly, and Paul Spickard. Description: Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, [2020] | Series: Borderlands and transcultural studies | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers:lccn 2018050272 isbn 9781496206633 (cloth: alk. paper) isbn 9781496216984 (epub) isbn 9781496216991 (mobi) isbn 9781496217004 (pdf) Subjects: lcsh: Racially mixed people. | Ethnicity. | Group identity. Classification:lcc ht1523 .s465 2020 | ddc 305.8— dc23 lc record available at https:// lccn .loc .gov /2018050272 Set in Sabon Next lt Pro by Laura Ebbeka. in memory of: Amadou Diallo February 4, 1999 Rekia Boyd March 21, 2012 Malcolm Ferguson March 1, 2000 Kendrec McDade March 24, 2012 Prince Jones September 1, 2000 Tamon Robinson April 18, 2012 Kendra James May 5, 2003 Shantel Davis June 14, 2012 Alberta Spruill May 16, 2003 Chavis Carter July 29, 2012 Ousmane Zongo May 22, 2003 Reynaldo Cuevas September 7, 2012 Timothy Stansbury January 24, 2004 Malissa Williams November 29, 2012 Henry Glover September 2, 2005 Timothy Russell November 29, 2012 Ronald Madison September 4, 2005 Kimani Gray March 9, 2013 James Brisette September 4, 2005 Deion Fludd May 5, 2013 Kathryn Johnston November 21, 2006 Larry Eugene Jackson July 26, 2013 Sean Bell November 25, 2006 Carlos Alcis August 15, 2013 DeAunta Farrow July 22, 2007 Jonathan Ferrell September 14, 2013 Tarika Wilson January 4, 2008 Miriam Carey October 3, 2013 Oscar Grant January 1, 2009 Andy Lopez October 22, 2013 Shem Walker July 11, 2009 Jamar Clark November 16, 2013 Victor Steen October 3, 2009 Ervin Edwards November 26, 2013 Kiwane Carrington October 9, 2009 Jordan Baker January 16, 2014 Aaron Campbell January 29, 2010 McKenzie Cochran January 28, 2014 Aiyana Jones May 16, 2010 Yvette Smith February 16, 2014 Reginald Doucet January 14, 2011 Victor White III March 22, 2014 Ashley Alonzo July 18, 2011 Dontre Hamilton April 30, 2014 Ramarley Graham February 2, 2012 Eric Garner July 17, 2014 Manuel Loggins Jr. February 7, 2012 Tyree Woodson August 2, 2014 Trayvon Martin February 26, 2012 John Crawford August 4, 2014 Dante Price March 1, 2012 Michael Brown Jr. August 9, 2014 Wendell Allen March 7, 2012 Ezell Ford August 11, 2014 Shereese Francis March 15, 2012 Dante Parker August 12, 2014 Kajieme Powell August 19, 2014 Laquan McDonald October 20, 2014 Tanisha Anderson November 13, 2014 Akai Gurley November 20, 2014 Tamir Rice November 22, 2014 Rumain Brisbon December 2, 2014 Jermaine Reid December 30, 2014 Natasha McKenna February 3, 2015 Tony Robinson March 6, 2015 Philip White March 31, 2015 Eric Harris April 2, 2015 Walter Scott April 4, 2015 Thaddeus McCarroll April 17, 2015 Freddie Gray April 19, 2015 Brendon Glenn May 5, 2015 Samuel DuBose July 19, 2015 Christian Taylor August 7, 2015 Richard Perkins November 15, 2015 Jamar Clark November 15, 2015 Chandra Weaver November 17, 2015 Cornelius Brown November 18, 2015 Tiara Thomas November 18, 2015 Nathaniel Pickett November 19, 2015 Miguel Espinal December 8, 2015 Roy Nelson December 19, 2015 Leroy Browning December 20, 2015 Kevin Matthews December 23, 2015 Bettie Jones December 25, 2015 Keith Childress December 31, 2015 Gregory Gunn February 25, 2016 Akiel Denkins February 29, 2016 Alton Sterling July 5, 2016 Philando Castile July 6, 2016 Partial list, to be continued . Contents List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xi 1. Shape Shifting: Reflections on Racial Plasticity 1 Paul Spickard Part 1. Different Context, Different Identity 2. Places of Possibility: Shape Shifting in the Roman and Chinese Borderlands 57 Ryan R. Abrecht 3. Rabban Ṣauma: A Medieval Eurasian Shape Shifter 83 Colleen C. Ho 4. From Fan Gui to Friend: American Chinese, Social Identity, and the Quest for Subjectivity 123 David Torres- Rouff 5. Becoming Mixed Race: Northern California and the Production of Multiracial Identities 163 Alyssa M. Newman 6. “You Are the Shame of the Race”: Dynamics of Pain, Shame, and Violence in Shape Shifting Processes 189 Angelica Pesarini Part 2. Choosing Identity 7. William A. Leidesdorff: The Rise of a Shape Shifter and the Posthumous Fall from Grace of a Racial Imposter 219 Laura Moore 8. Indian, Civilizer, Slaveholder, and Politician: The Many Shapes of Peter Pitchlynn 253 Paul Barba 9. Half- Butterfly, Half- Caste: Sadakichi Hartmann and the Mixed- Japanese Drama “Osadda’s Revenge” 281 Rena M. Heinrich 10. Shape Shifting in the Transpacific Borderlands: Expressions of Japanese Chicano Culture and Identity 313 Maria Jose Plascencia and George J. Sánchez 11. Betwixt and Between: A Personal Odyssey through the Twilight Zone 331 G. Reginald Daniel 12. Shape Shifting into Blackness in the Post– Civil Rights Era 361 Margaret Hunter Part 3. Compelled Identity 13. Mudrooroo: Aboriginal No More? 385 Paul Spickard Contributors 405 Index 411 Illustrations 1.1. George Bonga 16 1.2. P. B. S. Pinchback 19 1.3. Herb Jeffries 21 4.1. Three Chinese men, Los Angeles Chinatown, late 1890s 124 7.1. Portrait of William Leidesdorff, ca. 1845 220 9.1. Sadakichi Hartmann 303 10.1. Shin Miyata in Tokyo with the authors 327 13.1. Colin Johnson / Mudrooroo 388 Acknowledgments Many hands helped make this book. It began at a conference titled “Shape Shifters” at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in March 2016. Support for that conference came from Professor James Brooks; the History Department, led by Sharon Farmer; Executive Vice Chan- cellor David Marshall; the Mediterranean Borderlands Research Group, led by Beth DePalma Digeser; the Identity Research Focus Group, led by Adrienne Edgar and Cynthia Kaplan; Deans Melvin Oliver and John Majewski of the College of Letters and Science; Emily Zinn of the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center; Professor John Park of the Asian American Studies Department; the Black Studies Department, led by Jeffrey Stewart; the Center for Black Studies Research, led by Diane Fujino; and Chancellor Henry Yang. The editors are grateful to all these people and institutions for their encouragement and sup- port not only of this project but also of several others over the years. We are also grateful to Sarah Devoto, Lana Do, Ken Hough, Roxanne Houman, Jasmine Kelakay, Raymok Ketema, Bridget Kyeremateng, and Laura Moore for staff help. Several scholars helped us refine our thinking by chairing panels and moderating discussions: Debra Blumenthal, Marc Coronado, Adrienne Edgar, Karl Jacoby, Terence Keel, Luke Roberts, and Xiaowei Zheng. Several others contributed papers that spurred on our conversations, but their papers did not make it into this book: Grace Peña Delgado, Beth DePalma Digeser, Philip Deslippe, Greg Fisher, Mat- tie Harper, Kaily Heitz, Nam- lin Hur, Matt Kester, Sameer Pandya, John Park, Félix Racine, Dan Shao, and Kariann Yokota. We are grateful to them all for helping us find our way in this very new area of inquiry. Finally, we owe thanks to Matt Bokovoy, Heather Stauffer, and their colleagues at the University of Nebraska Press for being model editors. 1 Shape Shifting Reflections on Racial Plasticity Paul Spickard It has become a commonplace to note that racial identities are social constructions. Many scholars have rehearsed how Carolus Linnaeus, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, Georges Cuvier, Arthur de Gobineau, Paul Broca, Madison Grant, and others made these constructions at the level of philosophy, scholarship, and public advocacy.1 Very few scholars have traced how individuals, families, and small collectives have in fact gone about the work of constructing their identities. This book is about that process of racial identity formation, particularly racial identity transformation. There is a persistent trope that keeps popping up in the way people think about racial identities and interactions. They call it “passing.” The editors of this volume, and the contributors by and large, think it’s something else. In 1990 Ebony published a widely read article by Lynn Norment, a much- honored journalist, titled “Who’s Black and Who’s Not?” In it Norment accused a number of prominent people— many of them female entertainers— of trying to pretend they were not Black in order to reap social and financial benefits in a racist soci- ety that valued Whiteness over Blackness. Norment juxtaposed the people she regarded as self- deceiving wannabe Whites against the vir- tuous people who, despite also possessing multiracial ancestry and racial options, understood and embraced the fact, as it was in her view, that they were really and essentially Black. In the latter category, she 2 spickard featured prominently the American actor Jasmine Guy, whom she interviewed. Guy had one Black parent and one White parent. Then a star of the tv sitcom A Different World, Guy was quoted as saying: “I was never confused. Mine was a normal, happy childhood. I always knew that I was— and am— Black.”2 On the negative side of the ledger, Norment placed several peo- ple whom she regarded as racially self- deluded. Among them were actors Jennifer Beals and Rae Dawn Chong, figure skater Tai Babilo- nia, dancer Paula Abdul, and rock musician Lenny Kravitz, none of whom Norment seems to have interviewed. Norment charged them all with failing to own up to their true Black identities: “More and more individuals . who just a few years ago definitely would have been considered ‘Black’ are now calling themselves otherwise. Peo- ple who grew up in Black or mixed neighborhoods, who socialized with Blacks and who reflected the Black experience and culture, are now, having achieved success and fame, calling themselves anything but Black.