Asian American Studies, Mixed-Heritage

Background

Some people might call mixed-heritage Asian American studies (informally) Hapa Studies. However, there is currently a great deal of contention over the use of the word hapa as an ethnic label for mixed-heritage Asian Americans. Hapa is a Native Hawaiian term and has evolved from a word that once just meant mixed or part; it was shorthand for a longer phrase, usually (but not always) hapa haole, meaning part European, with the other “part” implied being Native Hawaiian.

The controversy lies in the fact that many who use the term hapa are not Native Hawaiian but rather Asian. In Hawai'i, Native Hawaiians are outnumbered by an Asian hegemony, and the use of the term hapa (often capitalized as an ethnic label) by Asians is seen by some Native Hawaiians as a “cultural appropriation” that parallels the appropriation of the Hawaiian Islands by non-Natives—both European and Asian American.

The 2000 census, due to the work of many mixed-heritage organizations such as the Hapa Issues Forum, allowed people to mark more than one box to indicate racial identity. Significantly, mixed-heritage Asian Americans, including those who identify as two or more “races” (e.g., Asian and African American) and those who identify as being of one “race” but more than one ethnicity (e.g., Taiwanese and Filipino), are second in number only to Chinese Americans. This means that the next generation of Asian Americans will have a significant proportion of mixed-heritage members.

Mixed-heritage organizations also typically include transracial adoptees. A significant proportion of transnational transracial adoptees are of Asian heritage (largely from Korea and China). Asian transracial adoptees are part of the mixed-heritage Asian American population.

[Page 102]Whereas mixed-heritage Asian Americans are sometimes seen as another Asian American ethnic group, they also cut across all group boundaries and will become even more diverse as they increase in the next generation of Okinawan Americans, Hmong Americans, Thai Americans, Iranian Americans, and the like.

Academic Programs

Mixed-heritage Asian American Studies has two homes: within the larger field of Mixed-Heritage Studies, where work on Asian Americans of mixed heritage is held in conjunction with work on African Americans, American Indians, and Latinos of mixed heritage, and in Asian American Studies, where mixed-heritage Asian American issues and experiences, including those of transracial adoptees, are examined both alongside and within those of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, South Asian, Southeast Asian, and other Asian American ethnic groups.

A current explosion of mixed-heritage Asian American creative writing and artwork means that future scholarship in the field will likely have a strong cultural studies component. Critical legal studies is another important area for mixed-heritage Asian American Studies, in particular given the history of antimiscegenation laws. This area of investigation also looks at laws relating to racial identity, for example, in connection with immigration and citizenship.

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