UC Berkeley Hosts Hapa Conference
By Joyce Nishioka

When Miriam Warren meets other Filipino Americans for the first time, even casual conversations can be marred by questions like, “You’re not full, right?” or statements like, “Oh my gosh, you’re not a bitch and you’re mixed.”

Half German and half Filipino, Warren is a hapa-a Hawaiian term that originally applied to half-Japanese, half-white people but is now used to describe anyone of part Asian ancestry. And as the definition has expanded, so have the quandaries facing Asian America’s most diverse community, the focus of the sixth annual Hapa Issues Forum conference at UC Berkeley this month.

No one knows exactly how many hapas there are worldwide—the Census next year will for the first time allow respondents to indicate mixed-race heritage. However, their numbers have exponentially increased since 1967, when it was illegal for a person of color to marry a Caucasian in 16 states. A decade later, however, about a quarter of all married Asian Americans had partners of a different ethnic background; of those, 90 percent were married to non-Asians, according to a 1979 study. In addition, between 1969 and 1989, Chinese-white births more than tripled. Worldwide, it is estimated that 6,000 Amerasian children were born in Japan between 1987 to 1992, and that in 1994, 50,000 Amerasians lived in the Philippines.

When the Hapa Issues Forum began more than six years ago, it focused on those of mixed-Japanese ancestry—who were then the dominant hapa group.

“It was a phenomena in the Japanese American community, and at that time, Japanese had the highest rate of outmarriage,” said Eric Tate, a cofounder of the group. In fact, in 1979, the rate of Japanese outmarriage in Los Angeles was 61 percent. In addition, a 1989 study found that for every 100 births in which both parents were Japanese, there were 139 Japanese-white births.

Other Asian American communities have also seen an increase in outmarriage. Sharon Lee, an associate professor of sociology at Portland State University, found that between 1980 and 1990 interracial marriage rate among native-born Asian Americans has increased, though for foreign-born Asians there has been a slight decrease. Still, she said: “Based on my research among the native born, because the trend shows an increase of 35 percent to over 40 percent and because the U.S.-born population will continue to grow, I predict this trend will increase.”

The oldest among the multiracial baby boom that began in the ‘70s has resulted is a generation of teenage and 20-something hapas, who have only recently begun to organize and to speak out. Unlike many Asian American groups, the Hapa Issues Forum has found it easy to become a multi-ethnic organization. “We have found it is very easy to have a pan-Asian group,” said Tate. “In the early meetings [we] just hung out together, talking about the similar foods we ate, like white sticky rice, things like that. Even though we were different Asian nationalities, there were still a lot of commonalities.”

Tate started the group with Greg Mayeda and Steve Ropp in 1992 after taking an Asian American studies course at UC Berkeley that delved into the issue of interracial dating. One woman “had a stereotypical view of the tragic life of [hapas]—the terrible things you go through,” said Tate, adding, “Everyone’s experience is different. None of us were confused. We were well adjusted. We loved it.”

Yet some participants in last month’s conference questioned the implications behind this year’s conference title: “Blurring the Boundaries: Racial Consciousness in the New Millennium.”

“The difficulty is that we don’t have a common culture,” said Wei Ming Dariotis, an ethnic studies instructor at San Francisco State University. “We don’t share things with each other that we share with our different ethnic groups, like language, food, mannerisms and accents. These daily things make it difficult to have a hapa culture.”

Though others said they believed their own diversity provided an unparalleled opportunity to foster acceptance and tolerance, many acknowledged that discrimination persists between and among hapas and other ethnic groups worldwide.

One reason behind the curiosity—and suspicion—Warren often faces might be rooted in the unwritten social hierachy based on skin color in the Philippines—a stratification that was built during hundreds of years of European colonialization and influence.”Every Filipino girl I meet thinks I’m trying to steal her boyfriend,” Warren said.

She noted, too, the menu choices before her when she went to a Filipino American friend’s house for dinner. “They made fish for everyone else and chicken nuggets for me,” she said, because they assumed she wouldn’t enjoy Filipino food.

As well, hapas often encounter mistaken assumptions about their own identity—some people might see them as Latino, or as all one race or the other.

“Many of us grew up in the dominant culture,” said Dariotis, who described how she was shunned by her Greek relatives once she began exploring her Asian heritage. Another woman shared similar experiences, saying she was always accepted by her white side until she started discussing issues of race. She felt their acceptance was conditional. “You must behave white and be loyal to the white side,” she said.