Hapa

Hapa

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What’s “Hapa”-ning:
The Development of Communities without Borders


“Alright everyone, stay in your seats. I want to try something different today.
Everyone that is not white can go and get their lunches first…Julia, you too.”
A day that could have passed like any other in my grade three class has since
become a memory that manifestly embodies the anxiety I have felt regarding my ethnic
and racial identity, both before and after that particular incident. I have rationalized that
the teacher’s intention was to illustrate to the class that those who are not white can “go
first,” presumably in circumstances other than retrieving their lunch. What her exercise
made clear in my eight year old mind, however, was that the world could be divided into
two groups; the white group and the other group. And I am not white; I am the “other.”
As a child, whenever I was confronted with the question “what are you?” I would
reply indignantly “Canadian,” which was usually followed by, “yeah, but what are you?”
At one time my answer to the second question would reduce me to a pie chart: “I am one-
half Japanese, one-quarter Ukrainian, one-eighth German, one-sixteenth Irish, one
sixteenth Welsh.” However, I was well aware that what I was actually being asked was
“why are you different?” because little interest was paid to anything I had said beyond “I
am one-half Japanese.” As a matter of expediency, I eventually took to the habit of
answering, “what are you?” and its deceptively less offensive cousin, “what is your
background?” with “half-Japanese.”
Although it wasn’t until recently that I became truly aware (I make no claims of
being truly informed) of the politicized nature of these questions, I was constantly
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unsettled by the need for others to put me racially in a particular context. (I often wonder
when someone asks immediately upon meeting me what my racial background is what
kinds of associations and...