Not keeping up appearances? Mixed race Asian Americans and the use of racial language

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Title Not keeping up appearances? Mixed race Asian Americans and the use of racial language
Publication Type thesis
School or College College of Education
Department Education, Culture & Society
Author Humbert-Fisk, Paul Charles
Date 2009-05-18
Description There has been a movement to proclaim that mixed race (biracial or multiracial) individuals transcend race or bring about an end to race and racism. In the U.S., many people also believe that they know race when they see it and that race can easily be pointed to, defined, and labeled. This language of race (which I am calling realist racial language) frames racial and ethnic identities as homogeneous, static, and as uncontested in terms of group membership. Many texts written by and about mixed race Asian Americans challenge both of these discourses about race. In this paper, I contend that the way race is commonly talked and written about is harmful to mixed race individuals. I examined the Pacific Citizen newspaper and the books What are you? and Part Asian: 100% Hapa for how mixed race Asian Americans narrate their experiences and contest, question, and subvert common sense notions of race. For many mixed race individuals, questions about race do not go away and instead race becomes pervasive in their lives. I use Foucault's concept of surveillance to help understand the close scrutiny placed on mixed race individuals, through actions like asking "What are you?" I draw on Trinh Minh-ha's approach by attempting to highlight and interrupt how "Truth" and validity are discursively created about race through the rules and regulations of (academic) disciplines. I believe that if teachers and scholars continue to rearticulate realist racial language in their discussions and analyses of race, they will continue to create problematic and deficit views of mixed race individuals.
Type Text
Publisher University of Utah
Subject Racially mixed people; Categorization (Psychology)
Dissertation Institution University of Utah
Dissertation Name MS
Language eng
Relation is Version of Digital reproduction of "Not keeping up appearances? Mixed race Asian Americans and the use of racial language" J. Willard Marriott Library Special Collections HT57.5 2009 .H85
Rights Management © Paul Charles Humbert-Fisk
Format application/pdf
Format Medium application/pdf
Format Extent 53,179 bytes
Identifier us-etd2,123113
Source Original: University of Utah J. Willard Marriott Library Special Collections
Conversion Specifications Original scanned on Epson GT-30000 as 400 dpi to pdf using ABBYY FineReader 9.0 Professional Edition.
ARK ark:/87278/s6tb1nfg
Setname ir_etd
ID 192867
Reference URL https://collections.lib.utah.edu/ark:/87278/s6tb1nfg
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