After 15 Years, Hapa Issues Forum Disbands

BERKELEY — A nostalgic row of historic relics, from photographs and newsletters to quilts and flags, lined the wall of the U.C. Berkeley MLK Student Union this month as Hapa Issues Forum gathered to commemorate the closing of the oldest and largest nonprofit organization for multiethnic Asian or Pacific Islanders. “HIF’s Last Hurrah,” a collaborative project by the Berkeley Mixed Student Union, Swirl, iPride and Hapa Issues Forum, recognized the accomplishments of the organization and the people behind it.
The group began in 1992 as a response to the exclusion of multiethnic members from the Japanese American community. In a discussion at an undergraduate Japanese American history course at U.C. Berkeley, a guest lecturer scandalized multiracial students by implying Japanese women were marrying white men for social status. Eric Akira Tate, one the group’s founders, claimed that “what she was really doing was questioning our [hapa] experience and identity.”

That questioning of multiethnic people’s right to participate in the community was endemic to pan-Asian communities at the time, according to Chung. She says it was a part the dialogue that if “you’re not Asian enough, you’re diluting our numbers. …”

The Hapa Issues Forum encouraged understanding and inclusivity in Asian American communities, provided a space for people to feel comfortable about their identity and did political advocacy work on behalf of hapas. At its height, the group had seven chapters across California and worked in coalition with mixed-race groups across the country like Mavin, Swirl, iPride and AMEA. The group also enjoyed legislative victories, such as the “check-all-that-apply” rule for racial categories on the 2000 Census, and defeating California’s Proposition 54, Ward Connerly’s Racial Privacy Initiative, in 2003.

Sheila Chung, the group’s former executive director, gave the keynote speech, discussing its legacy and the closing. Chung said the group began in a different environment than that which exists for multiethnic Asians today. “There was a change in attitude in some [Asian American] communities and at least recognition that mixed-race people are part of those communities,” Chung said. She noted that multiethnic Asians no longer feel as abnormal or ostracized as in the past, as there has been “a huge surge in the number of multiracial organizations around the country.”

A second reason for the group’s closing was that it tried to span the diverse needs of its constituents. The group “tried to be everything to everyone,” Chung said. “Folks who had been around the organization for a long time wanted something different— they wanted to get more politicized, they wanted to start working on other issues besides talking about ourselves. When we tried to move in that direction and leave the identity piece behind, we ended up having a real rift of what the national organization wanted and what some of our chapters wanted — hapa 101 identity development.”

The event also featured the documentary From Their Own Voice by Anthony Yuen, also a former executive director of the group, and a panel discussion on the future of mixed-race organizing, featuring professor Wei Ming Dariotis from San Francisco State University, Tarah Fleming from iPride, Dorothy Jones-Davis from Swirl Bay Area and Ai-Ling Malone from the U.C. Berkeley Mixed Student Union.

Many agreed on the need to continue the group’s work. “We need an organization for mixed-race people who can speak for ourselves, not let extremist right-wing forces say we need a colorblind society, and mixed-race people are an example of where we’re headed,” said Chung. “And we need a [multiracial] group with an Asian Pacific American focus.”

Materials from the group’s archive will be on display at the National Japanese American Historical Society in San Francisco’s Japantown from April 1 to July 31, 2008. The group’s archives are now housed in the U.C. Berkeley Ethnic Studies Library.