INTERRACIAL VOICE - Essay 11/16/2005 03:37 PM

Essay
"On Being Blackanese"
By Mitzi Uehara-Carter

"Umm. . .excuse me. Where are you from?"

"I'm from Houston, Texas."

"Oh...but your parents, where are they from?"

(Hmm. Should I continue to play stupid or just tell them.)

"My dad is from Houston, and my mom is from Okinawa, Japan"

"And your dad is black then?"

"Yup"

"So do you speak Japanese?"

"Some."

"Wow. Say something."

This is not a rare conversation. I cannot count the number of time I've pulled this script out to rehearse with
random people who have accosted me in the past. "That's so exotic, so cool that you're mixed." It's not that
these questions or comments bother me or that I am offended by their bluntness. I think it's more of the
attitudes of bewilderment and the exoticism of my being and even the slight bossiness to do something
"exotic" that annoy me. I think I am also annoyed because I am still exploring what it means to be both
Japanese and Black and still have difficulty trying to express what that means to others.

In many ways and for many years I have grappled with the idea of being a product of two cultures brought
together by an unwanted colonization of American military bases on my mother's homeland of Okinawa.
Author of "In the Realm of a Dying Emperor," Norma Field expressed these sentiments more clearly than I
ever could. "Many years into my growing up, I thought I had understood the awkward piquancy of biracial
children with the formulation, they are nothing if not the embodiment of sex itself; now, I modify it to, the
biracial offspring of war are at once more offensive and intriguing because they bear the imprint of sex as
domination." Of course this is not how I feel about myself all the time, but rather it is the invisible bug that
itches under my skin every now and then. It itches when I read about Okinawan girls being raped by U.S.
Servicemen, when I see mail order bride ads, when I notice the high divorce or separation rate among Asian
women and GI's who were married a few years after WWII, when I see the half-way hidden looks of disgust
at my mother by other Japanese women when I walk by her side as a daughter. Our bodies, our presence,
our reality is a nuisance to some because we defy a definite and demarcated set of boundaries. We confuse
those who are trying to organize ethnic groups by highlighting these boundaries because they don't know
how to include us or exclude us. We are blackanese, hapas, eurasians, multiracial..

My mother has been the center of jokes and derogatory comments since my older sister was born. She was
the one who took my sister by the hand and led her through the streets of Bangkok and Okinawa as eyes
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INTERRACIAL VOICE - Essay 11/16/2005 03:37 PM

the one who took my sister by the hand and led her through the streets of Bangkok and Okinawa as eyes
stared and people gathered to talk about the sambo baby. She was the one who took all my siblings to the
grocery stores, the malls, the park, school, Burger King, hospitals, church. In each of these public arenas we
were stared at either in fascination because we were a new "sight" or stared at with a look of disgust or
both. Nigga-chink, Black-Jap, Black-Japanese mutt. The neighborhood kids, friends, and adults labeled my
siblings and me with these terms especially after they recognized that my mother was completely intent on
making us learn about Okinawan culture. On New Year's Day, we had black eyed peas and mochi. We
cleaned the house to start the year fresh and clean. "Don't laugh with your mouth too wide and show yo
teeth too much," my mom would always tell us. "Be like a woman." I had not realized that I covered my
mouth each time I laughed until someone pointed it out in my freshman year in college. When we disobeyed
my mother's rule or screamed, we were being too "American." If I ever left the house with rollers in my
hair, my mom would say I shouldn't do American things. "Agijibiyo. . .Where you learn this from? You are
Okinawan too. Dame desuyo. Don't talk so much like Americans; listen first." There were several other
cultural traits and values that I had inevitably inherited (and cherish) being raised by a Japanese mother.

Growing up in an all black neighborhood and attending predominately Black and Latino schools until
college influenced my identity also. I was definitely not accepted in the Japanese circles as Japanese for
several reasons, but that introduces another subject on acceptance into Japanese communities. Now this is
not to say that the Black community I associated with embraced me as Blackanese, even though I think it is
more accepting of multiracial people than probably any other group (because of the one-drop rule, etc.).
There is still an exclusion for those who wish to encompass all parts of their heritage with equal weight, and
there is also a subtle push to identify more with one's black heritage than the other part because "society
won't see you as mixed or Japanese but BLACK." I can't count the number of times I have heard this
argument. What I do know is that no society can tell me that I am more of one culture than another because
of the way someone else defines me. I am Blackanese -- a mixture of the two in ways that cannot be
divided. My body and mentality is not split down the middle where half is black and the other half is
Japanese. I have taken the aspects of both worlds to create my own worldview and identity. Like Anna Vale
said in Itabari Njeri's article "Sushi and Grits," my mother raised me the best way she knew how, "to be a
good Japanese daughter."

My father on the otherhand never constantly sat down to "teach" us about being Black. We were surrounded
by Blackness and lived it. He was always tired when he came home from work. He'd sit back in his sofa and
blast his jazz. My mom would be in the kitchen with her little tape player listening to her Japanese and
Okinawan tapes my aunt sent every other month from California. My siblings and I would stay at my
grandmother's house once in a while (she cooked the best collard greens), and when my mom came to pick
us up she'd teach her how to cook a southern meal for my father. Our meals were somewhat of an indicator
of how much my mom held onto her traditions. My father would make his requests for chicken, steak or
okra and my mom had learned to cook these things, but we always had Japanese rice on the side with nori
and tofu and fishcake with these really noisome beans that are supposed to be good for you (according to
my mom. I swear she knows what every Japanese magazine has to say about food and health). It was my
mother who told us that we would be discriminated against because of our color, and it was my Japanese
mother to whom we ran when we were called niggers at the public swimming pool in Houston. To say to
this woman, "Mom, we are just black" would be a disrespectful slap in the face. The woman who raised us
and cried for years from her family's coldness and rejection because of her decision to marry interracialy,
cried when my father's sister wouldn't let her be a part of the family picture because she was a "Jap." This
woman who happens to be my mother will never hear "Mom, I'm just Black" from my mouth because I'm
not and no person -- society or government -- will force me to do that and deny my reality and my being, no
matter how offensive I am to their country or how much of a nuisance I am to their cause. I am Blackanese.
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INTERRACIAL VOICE - Essay 11/16/2005 03:37 PM

matter how offensive I am to their country or how much of a nuisance I am to their cause. I am Blackanese.

At the time she wrote this, Mitzi was a senior at Duke University.

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