Eurasian

Tendrils of Colonial Power

Throughout the span of European empire in Asia, the term Eurasian was, and still is, an identity that channels fears and tensions regarding race, gender, and imperial and sexual power. Caught in a space between colonizer and colonized, [Page 841]Eurasian identity was a site of contestation both on an individual and a national scale. Different colonial institutions legislated the legal status of mixed Asian and white people differently, calling into question the stability of notions such as “citizen,” “race,” and cultural belonging. As a living symbol of the transgression of racial and cultural boundaries, as well as, usually, a colonial system structured to give white men sexual agency over women of color, “Eurasian” was for a long time synonymous with degeneracy, impurity, and loose morals.

The figure of the Eurasian has a long history in popular culture, often used as a parable for the tragic perils of miscegenation, carrying an implicit imperative to shore up the boundaries of race. Recurring frequently in English-language fiction in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Eurasian characters act as dangerous figures, close enough to both races to understand them intimately but never ultimately aligned with either one. These Eurasian characters usually yearn to obtain full whiteness but never can, and often end up dying by the narrative's end. This archetype is parallel to the “tragic mulatto” stock character in American fiction, who has both black and white racial ancestry and who usually dies after her secret black heritage has been revealed.

Beginning in the 1980s, however, the figure of the Eurasian began to take on a different connotation within popular culture. Coupled with the rising influence of Asian nations, particularly Japan, in the 1980s, the figure of the Eurasian began to reemerge in popular culture as someone who contained the “best” qualities of both races. As the 1990s saw a general shift toward cosmopolitanism, both as an ideology and as a marketable quality, Asian-descent multiracial people (most always Asian and white), were portrayed as literally embodying the cachet of being a globe-trotting citizen-of-the-world. Whereas before, tragic Eurasians were doomed to certain death for being unable to claim membership in either of their ancestral groups, in the 1990s and after, Asian-descent multiracial people were cast as models and actors who appealed to cosmopolitan sensibilities and diverse audiences around the globe. Notable figures included the actor Keanu Reeves, the model Devon Aoki, and the actress Maggie Q. Though this represented a recuperation of an identity that endured a long history of exclusion and prejudice, this trend was also criticized for putting a slightly “exotic” face on top of longstanding legacies of European economic and cultural domination, as well as for altering Asian standards of beauty to physically conform to hegemonic whiteness.

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