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The Affects of Race: Millennial Mixed Race Identity in the United States

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The Affects of Race: Millennial Mixed Race Identity in the United States THE AFFECTS OF RACE: MILLENNIAL MIXED RACE IDENTITY IN THE UNITED STATES A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I AT MĀNOA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN ENGLSH MAY 2018 By Nicole Myoshi Rabin Dissertation Committee: Cynthia Franklin, Chairperson Cristina Bacchilega Monisha Das Gupta Ruth Y. Hsu S. Shankar Keywords: Mixed Race, Multiracial, Racial Identity, Affect Acknowledgments This dissertation would not have been possible without the generous comments and support from the members of my Dissertation Committee. Thank you to Cristina Bacchilega Ph.D., Monisha Das Gupta Ph.D., Ruth Y. Hsu Ph.D., and S. Shankar Ph.D. for their patience, time, and wisdom in seeing me through this process. I am especially grateful for the tireless commitment of my Dissertation Director, Cynthia Franklin Ph.D., who pushed me when I needed it, encouraged me when I wanted to give up, and always guided me through the difficult labor of this dissertation. This work would not have been able to realize its full potential without the insightful comments, patience, and generous wisdom of my Dissertation Director. I would also like to thank Cheryl Narumi Naruse, Ph.D. for always guiding me and offering her wisdom as a colleague and friend. Thank you to my cohort in the English Department at the University of Hawaii for going through this endeavor with me. Lastly, this project could not have been possible without the unwavering support of my family. Thank you to my parents for instilling in me a love for education and for supporting my pursuit. Thank you to my husband, Alex, for helping me to realize my goal, for keeping me on track, for giving me perspective when I lost sight of it, for showing me the real value of this pursuit, and for pushing me forward when I needed it the most. Thank you to my children, Cash and Wolf, for inspiring me every day to be the best version of myself. ii Abstract At the turn of the millennium, there has been a particular emergence of mixed race discourse in the United States concentrated on identity. While there has been a significant amount of criticism regarding Millennial Mixed Race Identities, there has been less attention given to the continued investments in these identities well into the new millennium. This dissertation implements Affect Theory as a means to better understand not only the development of the Mixed Race Identity Movement at the end of the twentieth century and the persistent desire for these types of identifications in the new millennium, but also as a means to reformulate mixed race identification to avoid complicity in structures of white supremacy and colonialism. A perspective of affect allows a more thorough understanding of how mixed race identities have been heavily influenced by the affective attachments to the people we surround ourselves with; the affective responses to our past experiences of race and racial encounter; the affective relief developed to combat past affective experiences; and the racial affects that continually circulate within a racialized society and attach to differently raced bodies during moments of encounter. Specifically looking at some of the major texts of the Mixed Race Identity Movement underscores the way in which affect heavily influences understandings of identity and the problems that arise from seeking out the state to solve affective conditions. Continuing with a more precise Millennial Mixed Race Identity, Hapa, this dissertation examines the continued investments in these more specific identities and what a politics of recognition based on affect can problematically produce or uphold. Lastly, this dissertation implements Affect Theory in an attempt to refocus mixed race identity formation as an iterative and recursive process shaped through the constant contact with other bodies, other spaces, and other times. Yet, unfortunately, despite the ways in which affect produces alternative perspectives on the iii development and investment in Millennial Mixed Race Identity, this perspective does not salvage mixed race discourse from being complicit in structures of colonialism or white supremacy in the new millennium. iv Table of Contents INTRODUCTION AFFECTING CRITICAL MIXED RACE STUDIES 1 CHAPTER 1 AFFECTIVE ASPIRATIONS: THE ROLE OF AFFECT AND STATE-SPONSORED RECOGNITION WITHIN THE MIXED RACE IDENTITY MOVEMENT 44 CHAPTER 2 AFFECTIVE OPERATIONS: AFFECT, RECOGNITION, AND HAPA IDENTITY IN THE POSTMILLENNIAL UNITED STATES 90 CHAPTER 3 AFFECTIVE REVELATIONS: RACIAL AFFECT AND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ENCOUNTER 134 CONCLUSION AFFECTIVE REORIENTATIONS: RETHINKING MILLENNIAL MIXED RACE IDENTITIES IN THE POST-MILLENNIUM 176 BIBLIOGRAPHY 182 v Introduction: Affecting Critical Mixed Race Studies When I was growing up the license plate on my mom’s Dodge minivan read: R3HAPAS. My mom explained to my sister, brother, and me that a Hapa was someone like us—mixed race. Although my mom’s explanation of what Hapa meant implied that there were other people in the world like me, when I looked around me in the predominately white and Jewish part of Los Angeles where I grew up there weren’t any other children who looked like me or families that resembled mine. When I was seven years old, I came home from Hebrew school crying because one of the other kids had pulled his eyes into slits chanting “Ching chong” as I walked by. He laughed and told me that I wasn’t really Jewish because I had “slanty” eyes and dark skin and didn’t look like any of the other Jewish kids at school. Not long after, I went with my mom to a Japanese Obon Festival to listen to folk songs and participate in traditional Japanese dances. I was so excited because we got to wear our kimonos with the big obo sashes around our waists and the little cherry blossom flower clips in our hair. When we arrived, I went over to a group of kids who were lined up to dance. They giggled as I approached and asked me if I was really Japanese. When I just stared at them, they giggled more and told me that I couldn’t be Japanese because I looked so white. I walked back to my mom and cried. These memories are seared into my mind because they made me feel different. In each instance, I perceived that I was asked to assert my ethnic/racial1 identity and then told that 1 I do not mean to conflate the terms race and ethnicity. However, for the purposes of this dissertation, I will be using racial identity in instances where it may seem to be more a question of ethnicity because in relation to Millennial Mixed Race Identity there is often a slippage between these two terms stemming from the establishment of the Office of Management and 1 particular identity did not really belong to me. As a child I was confused because I believed I was receiving different messages at home and in the outside world. In public spaces, I was interrogated about my racial identity with common questions like, “What are you?” or “Where are you from?” Over the years, I had various answers: hapa, mixed race, multiracial, half- Japanese and half-Caucasian, Eurasian, Jewish, my mother is Japanese and my father is white and Jewish. No matter what my answers have been, I have been met with responses such as, “But, you don’t look Japanese” or “Which of your parents is white?” Other comments have been: “But, were you raised Jewish?” or “I knew there was something different about you.” With each of these reactions, I felt increasingly isolated and unusual. By contrast, within the private space of my home, being racially mixed was not only unquestioned but also naturalized by not being discussed at all. I knew my parents did not look the same, their skin colors were different, and they were raised in different cultures and practiced different traditions. In our house, these cultural traditions were melded together seamlessly. We ate sticky rice with our brisket. We lit Hanukkah candles around the Christmas tree. In an attempt to combat the feelings of difference we experienced in the world around us, my mom’s license plate—and the identity it named—was a way in which my family attempted to make public that which was already unquestioned in private. When I was younger, identifying as Hapa gave me a sense of belonging and a sense of wholeness that I didn’t feel in the world around me; it offered me shelter, something “identifiable” and nameable, to combat the questions about my identity. Budget’s ethno-racial pentagon in its Directive 15 (which will be discussed in further detail later). 2 Thinking back to the text of the plate, I see now that the letters—the possessive “R”— were more about my parents than they were about my siblings or me. For my parents, an interracial couple whose own parents refused to attend their wedding, Hapa was a term of empowerment, pride, and creation—it embodied their family. Upon first glance, my siblings and I do not look like each other. I do not particularly look like my father or my mother. I notice people staring at me when I walk with my father trying to make sense of a white man and a young ambiguous woman. Hapa gave my parents a way to make visible the kinship that may not have been readily identifiable to outside eyes. Hapa gave them and me a way to reconcile all these feelings of difference. Recently, I asked my paternal aunt why my parents got together in the first place. Her response was shocking: “Well, your dad always had a thing for Asian women.” Once I was able to get over my initial offense, I realized that I am not that child in the minivan any longer sheltered by the supposedly harmonious identification of Hapa.
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