What Are You - Explaining Identity As A Goal of The Multiracial Hapa Movement

"What are You?
": Explaining Identity as a Goal of the Multiracial Hapa Movement

Author(s): Mary Bernstein, Marcie De la Cruz
Source: Social Problems, Vol. 56, No. 4 (November 2009), pp. 722-745
Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the Society for the Study of Social
Problems
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What are You?: Explaining Identity as a

Goal of the Multiracial Hapa Movement
Mary Bernstein, University of Connecticut
Marcie De la Cruz, Empirical Education Inc.
This article uses the Hapa movement as a case study in order to provide a framework for understanding
identity as a goal of social movements and to expand on a theoretical understanding of multiracial social movements. In contrast to current understandings of identity-based movements, this article argues that the Hapa movement seeks simultaneously to deconstruct traditional notions of (mono)racial identities and to secure recognition
for a multiracial Hapa identity. Movements that have identity as a goal are motivated by activists understandings of how categories are constituted and how those categories, codes, and ways of thinking serve as axes of
regulation and domination. The Hapa movement simultaneously challenges (mono)racial categories at both the
institutional level through targeting the state and at the micro level through challenging the quotidian enactment
of race and promulgating a Hapa identity. Activism by mixed-race individuals and organizations constitutes an
important challenge to power that has significant implications for racial categorization and classification in contemporary American society. Keywords: social movements, identity, goal, strategy, multiracial.
What are you? is a barely coded question used to find out a persons racial/ethnic
background. Increasingly, biracial and mixed-race activists are forming grassroots organizations designed to help them answer this seemingly innocuous question. Although
there is minimal research on identity as a goal of social movements (Bernstein 2008),
we can identify two models to explain movements that seek to establish new or to challenge existing identities. The first model, what we term a step model, views seeking
recognition for new identities as a first step to be followed by a second step where activists
deconstruct identities or abandon identity-based politics altogether (Epstein 1987; Hall
1989; Stein 1992). The second model, what we term a different venues model, sees a
politics of recognition and a deconstructive politics as taking place in different locations
(Gamson 1995), or simply sees these as competing strategies (Bower 1997; Halley 1994;
Rimmerman 2002). We challenge these models and argue, instead, that groups can do
both simultaneously.
Using the Hapa movement as a case study, we provide a framework for understanding
identity as a goal of social movements and expand on a theoretical understanding of multiracial social movements. We argue that the goals of the Hapa movement are to simultaneously
deconstruct traditional notions of exclusively (mono)racial identities and to secure recognition for a multiracial Hapa identity. Theoretically, we argue that in order to understand the
Hapa movement and identity as a goal, scholars must make explicit how activism around
identity is related to power. Following Michel Foucault (1978), we argue that this power is
often located in everyday discursive interactions that serve as forms of social regulation. We
The authors would like to thank Dan Myers, Nancy Naples, Stephen Valocchi, and Angie Beeman for their comments and input on earlier drafts of this article. Direct correspondence to: Mary Bernstein, Department of Sociology, University of Connecticut, 344 Mansfield Rd.; Storrs, CT 06269-2068. E-mail: Mary.Bernstein@uconn.edu; marcie.delacruz@
gmail.com.
Social Problems, Vol. 56, Issue 4, pp. 722745, ISSN 0037-7791, electronic ISSN 1533-8533. 2008 by Society for the Study of
Social Problems, Inc. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content
through the University of California Presss Rights and Permissions website at www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintinfo/asp.
DOI: 10.1525/sp.2008.56.4.722.
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Identity as a Goal of the Hapa Movement
723
argue that activism by mixed-race1 individuals and organizations is an important challenge to

power that has significant implications for racial categorization and classification in contemporary U.S. society. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first and only study to examine
either identity deployment by multiracial activists or the diverse ways that multiracial activists
seek identity as a goal.
In the following sections, we define Hapa and examine the literature on the multiracial
movement. Then we examine why seeking recognition constitutes a challenge to power and
provide a theoretical framework for understanding identity as a goal of social movements.
Next, we discuss Hapa activism at both the macro and micro levels and illustrate that activists
simultaneously seek to gain recognition for a new identity while also seeking to deconstruct
existing notions of identity. We conclude by suggesting the implications of our analysis for the
study of other social movements.
Understanding Hapa
The term hapa is a Native Hawaiian word. Its literal translation means part or mix,
with no racial or ethnic meaning. The term became widely used in Hawaii when Europeans
immigrated to the Islands and miscegenation began to occur. Hapa haole is also frequently
used in Hawaii to describe those of mixed heritage. Haole literally means foreign or foreigner, but is often used colloquially to describe foreigners from Europe or mainland America (Trask 1999). Locals typically use haole pejoratively to describe white or light-skinned
nonlocals. Thus, for locals in Hawaii, both hapa or hapa haole are used to depict people
of mixed-race heritage. As Japanese immigrants poured into Hawaii to work as plantation labor, they adopted the term mostly to refer to those of mixed Japanese and European
descent. As Japanese Hapas migrated from Hawaii to the western United States, the term
followed (Glenn 2002). Today, Hapa is used to describe any person of mixed Asian Pacific
American descent.
Although the term is used among many to symbolize unity and shared experiences, its
use has engendered resistance among the indigenous community.2 Some leaders of the Hawaiian sovereignty movement oppose the inappropriate use of the Hawaiian term hapa.
Indigenous activists suggest that the word hapa is not only used inaccurately, but represents
an extension of colonization. Despite heated debates over the appropriate use of hapa, some
members of the mixed-race Asian Pacific American community continue to identify with the
term. We acknowledge the validity of the arguments by indigenous Hawaiians, but present
the observed perspective and experiences of the Hapa movement.
Asian and Pacific Islanders are the largest nonwhite group to marry outside of their race
(Espiritu 2001:26; Hall and Turner 2001; Payson 1996). Over 6.8 million people, or 2.4 percent of Americans, identified with two or more racial groups in the 2000 Census (Harris
and Sim 2002). The 2000 Census indicates that over one in ten Asian Pacific Americans in
California are multiracial (Lieser 2002). The Hapa Issues Forum (HIF) was the only long-term
organization focused on multiracial people of Asian descent (DaCosta 2000).
1. We use the terms race, mixed race, and multiracial with the awareness that these terms do not refer to
any real biological property and that these terms, as this article illustrates, are socially constructed. We use the terms
to refer to individuals and organizations as those individuals and organizations use the terms. As this article demonstrates, Hapa activists are keenly aware of the tensions between acknowledging the constructedness of the term race
while also employing that term in order to organize. We omit quotations around the term race because other racial
and ethnic markers such as Asian or Asian American are also socially constructed. To be consistent, we would
need to put quotes around those and other similar terms as well, distracting from the text. Therefore, we omit quotation
marks.
2. See halvsie.com; hyphenmagazine.com; realhapas.com; Taniguchi and Heidenreich 2005.
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724
Bernstein/De la Cruz
Multiracial Activism as a Challenge to Power

There is scant sociological research on the multiracial movement. Existing research focuses on the emergence of the movement (DaCosta 2000, 2003, 2007; Williams 2003) or on
efforts to add a multiracial category to the 2000 Census (Spencer 1997; Spencer 1999) or to
other state-level data-gathering efforts (Williams 2001, 2006; Williams 2003), as if that is the
sole goal of multiracial activism (DaCosta 2000). Heather Dalmages (2004b) edited collection
primarily examines the link between efforts to obtain recognition for a multiracial category and
racial justice more generally. Focusing predominantly on activism designed to change official
racial classifications results in a skewed view of the movement, ignoring other types of activism (Daniel and Castaeda-Liles 2006) and other social movement related questions (DaCosta
2000). To the best of our knowledge, no one has examined the identity deployment strategies
of multiracial activists,3 how those strategies challenge power and culture, and how they can be
part of antiracist struggle. This article is a first step toward filling that lacuna in the literature.
The multiracial movement differs from other movements comprised of groups from different ethnic backgrounds. For example, Latinos in the United States may challenge the category Hispanic by working to change the substantive meaning associated with it, but they
are not challenging or deconstructing racial groupings per se. As with the pan-ethnic category Asians, Latinos are not trying to create a new identity outside of traditional racial
groupings. As Kimberly DaCosta (2000) argues, Unlike other groups requesting a shuffling
of their placement within the existing racial framework, self-identified multiracials claimed
to be a formerly unrecognized group challenging the framework itself (pp. 23). DaCostas
recent book (2007) focuses primarily on the emergence of a multiracial movement, examining diverse paths to activism, and how experiences of growing up in interracial families influence multiracial peoples desire to connect with and create a sense of community with other
multiracial people. While DaCosta focuses on the creation of community among multiracial
people as one dimension of challenging the dominant racial framework, this article differs
from DaCostas analysis by examining the external dimensions of Hapa tactics designed to challenge the dominant racial framework. This article also differs by applying and extending social
movement theory to explain Hapa strategies.
The multiracial movement has experienced two waves of activism. The Hapa movement is
part of the first wave that began with the emergence of I-Pride in 1979 and grew through the
1980s and 1990s. The second wave emerged during the 2000s. The Hapa movement itself is distinct from other first-wave multiracial groups. The Hapa movement is made up of multiracial
people of partial Asian descent. In contrast, most first-wave groups were almost exclusively comprised of those in black-white interracial relationships and/or white women who are the mothers
of multiracial children and the leaders are white, middle class women living in suburbs (Williams 2004:90).4 The first-wave multiracial movement also varies in its goals. Some factions adopt
a color-blind ideology (Bonilla-Silva 2001) that denies the significance of race and wants to
eliminate racial categorization altogether. Other factions view discrimination against multiracial
individuals as the primary issue affecting the multiracial community. These factions seek official
adoption of a multiracial category on governmental forms and want to make multiracial a category
that can be protected from discrimination (Childs 2004).
3. The only study that we could find that dealt at all with issues of multiracial strategies was Daniel and CastaedaLiless (2006) comparison of whether or not multiracial organizations support the continued collection of data based on
race or seek to eliminate the collection of such data, thus articulating a color-blind political agenda.
4. As many analysts point out, given the legacy of slavery that entailed the widespread rape of black women by
white men, most African Americans could be defined as multiracial (e.g., Spencer 2004). And, of course, given that race
itself has no biological meaning, these terms are all socially constructed. In this article, we use the term multiracial as
activists and organizations use it to refer to themselves. Typically, it appears that today this term is used by people whose
parents are of different races, by organizations comprised of people in interracial relationships who have children who
are multiracial, or by monoracial parents who have adopted a child of another race.
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The Hapa movement is almost completely neglected in discussions of the first-wave multiracial movement and the color-blind factions are overrepresented in research (Daniel and
Castaeda-Liles 2006).5 As we illustrate below, the Hapa movement, in contrast to other factions of the first-wave multiracial movement, works on broader issues of racial justice with
communities of color as well as on issues of categorization in addition to developing a micropolitics designed to challenge the rule of hypodescent and the black-white binary.6
A second wave of multiracial organizing has emerged in the 2000s. Organizations such
as Swirl that began in 2000 and other pan-multiracial college groups have mobilized and
worked with groups of color to address social justice issues. These newer groups may share
similar goals and strategies with the Hapa movement, while differing significantly from other
first-wave organizations. Future research will have to analyze the similarities and differences
between first and second wave multiracial organizations.
Elizabeth Armstrong and Mary Bernstein (2008) argue that social movement research
should theorize how power functions in specific contexts in order to make theoretical sense of
activists strategic choices. Here, we theorize how power operates to uphold racial categories
that maintain hierarchies of inequality and why Hapa activism constitutes a challenge to these
interlocking systems of power. David Snow (2004) argues that social movements are collectivities acting with some degree of organization and continuity outside of institutional or
organizational channels for the purpose of challenging or defending extant authority, whether
it is institutionally or culturally based, in the group, organization, society, culture, or world
order of which they are a part (p. 11). Thus, authority does not lie only in the state and, with
this definition, it becomes understandable why social movements would also target cultural
systems of meaning.7
While the Hapa movement fits within the scope of Snows (2004) definition, his underlying assumptions about how power operates leaves his framework unable to fully account for
Hapa activism. Snow contends that challenges to authorities exist along two dimensions: First,
whether actors and actions are engaged in joint and coordinated action and, second, whether
the challenge is direct or indirect. Snow (2004) states:
Direct challenges include straightforward, undisguised, overt appeals and demands, such that the targeted authorities are aware of both the claims and their carriers; indirect challenges are those that are
either covert and/or ambiguouscovert in terms of the action and its carrier, and ambiguous in terms
of the action and the claimsor that seek to divest themselves of the authority by escaping it (p. 16).
Snows use of the term targeted authorities implies a modernist view of power as vested in
particular people or institutions. Hapa activism includes the creation of collective definitions
of Hapa identity to be deployed in individual-level interactions and does not necessarily target
particular authorities. Instead, Hapa activists target discursive systems that create truth regimes (Foucault 1978) about which categories are culturally intelligible and which are not.
Armstrong and Bernstein (2008) provide a theory of society and power that can support
Snows definition of social movements while also helping to explain Hapa activism. Their
multi-institutional politics model argues that domination is organized around multiple sources
of power, each of which is simultaneously material and symbolic. This power is rooted in
multiple and contradictory institutions each of which is constituted by classificatory systems
5. For example the collection The Politics of Multiracialism (2004b), edited by Dalmage, contains only 1 chapter out
of 12 that discusses the Hapa movement. Brunsmas collection, Mixed Messages (2006), contains only 1 out of 21 chapters
devoted to the Hapa movement.
6. King-ORiain (2004) argues that demography, immigration, gender dynamics, and differences in the ways that
race is constructed in Japan account for differences in the politics of Hapas from other multiracial movement organizations. While explaining differences among multiracial organizations is an important issue, it lies beyond the scope of this
research.
7. For similar definitions of social movements see also, Blumer (1964), Crossley (2002:2-7), Della Porta and Diani
(1999), Eyerman and Jamison (1991:4), Melucci (1996), and Katzenstein (1998:7).
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and practices that concretize these systems (Armstrong and Bernstein 2008:83). These movements are motivated by activists understandings of how categories are constituted and how
those categories, codes, and ways of thinking serve as axes of regulation and domination
(Crossley 2002; Melucci 1996; Rochon 1998). Hapa activism directly challenges those discursive systems that help to uphold racial hierarchies in the United States.
Deconstructive movements have typically been associated with challenges to dominant understandings of gender and heterosexuality, but have not been analyzed in terms of challenges
to racial categories and hierarchies. For example, Judith Butler (1990) views the categories
male and female as socially constructed, created by performances that perpetuate the myth
that these categories reflect some real, inner core. Performances that gender bend become
protests against cultural sources of power (e.g., Rupp and Taylor 2003) and against the power
of the category to organize and regulate social life. However, such performative strategies, what
Bernstein (1997) terms identity deployment in a social movement context, have been considered irrelevant where issues of race are concerned. Christine Garza (1995) suggests that a
performative politics or a politics of deconstruction will not work for groups whose difference is
marked on the body (see also Collins 1998). But these critiques of postmodernist political strategies assume that race is written clearly (or clearly enough) on the body to require no explanation.
In fact posing the question, What are you? is an exercise in coercive power that requires a
discursive explanation or accounting of ones racial heritage for many multiracial individuals.
Seeking to establish new discourse and, in this case, new identities, represents an important social movement goal (Rochon 1998). Alberto Melucci (1996) posits that analysis of contemporary cultural struggles should be centered on the differentiation of positions that allot
power and specific control over master codes, or powerful symbolic resources that frame
information (p. 179). Cultural change can lead to political structural change just as policy
change can lead to cultural social acceptance, thus they are closely linked (Rochon 1998).
Domination in contemporary society reflects peoples continuous processes of self-identification, self-determination, self-reflection, and the construction and reconstruction of meanings;
power is embedded in the capacity to organize the minds of people (Melucci 1996:179).8
Systems of racial categorization, the rule of hypodescentthat is the one-drop rule
create a truth regime that renders multiracial individuals culturally unintelligible and prompts
questions such as What are you?9 One aspect of white racial privilege is the freedom from
having to explain ones racial identity.
A multiracial person who does not fit preconceived racial understandings can disorient
the onlooker (King and DaCosta 1996; Omi and Winant 1994). Similarly, Maureen Sullivan
(2001) argues that lesbian co-mothersthat is mothers who are not the biological mothers of
their childrenhave no recourse to extant familial categories (p. 231) and therefore must
explain their relationship to their child, thus violating a familial truth regime. She argues:
ignorance is the flip side of knowledge in assorted power/knowledge nexuses . . . ignorance may be
just as productive and efficacious as knowledge in its modes of manipulation and coercion, its opacities and most importantly its effects . . . The capacity of ignorance to appear innocent and passive
may well be an operation of its power, while the appearance itself of innocence and passivity may be
one of its effects (pp. 24243).
So rather than an innocent question to someone who is multiracial, What are you? becomes
an accusation of violating the racial truth regime. The quotidian enactment of race and the
policing of racial boundaries constitute an exercise in power.
8. We do not mean to minimize the importance of structural racism. We simply point out that beliefs, ideology, and
culture are constitutive of social structures.
9. There has been some sociological analysis of What are you? encounters as a process of doing race (e.g.,
King and DaCosta 1996; Williams 1996), much in the way that people can be said to do gender (West and Zimmerman
1987). But these interrogatory encounters have not been theorized as being part of a system of power nor have these
encounters been systematically linked to social movement activism and strategies.
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Abby Ferber (2004) argues that white supremacist activists are obsessed with interracial
sexuality and view maintaining the purity of white borders as of paramount importance. Multiracial families and individuals threaten to dissolve those boundaries and thus force people
to question who is actually white. Thus, Ferber (2004) argues that racial classification, the
maintenance of racial boundaries, and racism are inexorably linked (p. 47). Stable boundaries are needed to secure white power and white privilege.
The one-drop rule introduces a peculiar dilemma for people of mixed-race. It shapes
racial thinking by constituting a truth regime that provides a cultural edifice in which racism
and racist practices can flourish and further undermines the recognition of mixed-race identities. Hapa activism is designed to challenge this truth regime at the interpersonal level through
identity deployment strategies as well as to challenge state policies about racial categorization.
Explaining Identity as a Goal

The concept identity has generated volumes of literature among philosophers, psychoanalytic theorists, social constructionists, and postmodernists among others.10 Reviewing all
theories of identity is beyond the scope of this article; we are interested in the relationship
between identity and social movements (Bernstein 2005; Polletta and Jasper 2001). Bernstein
(1997) argues that Identity movements have been defined as much by the goals they seek,
and the strategies they use, as by the fact that they are based on a shared characteristic such as
ethnicity or sex (p. 533), resulting in a lack of conceptual clarity in the study of identity and
social movements. We draw on Bernsteins (1997, 2002, 2008) political identity framework
to resolve this confusion. Bernstein argues that there are three separate and distinct levels of
identity as it relates to social movements. First, identity for empowerment refers to the creation of collective identity and the feeling that collective action is worth pursuing in order to
develop and mobilize a constituency. Second, identity can also be used as a strategy by social
movements. The term identity deployment means expressing identity to draw attention to
the group to which one belongs in order to achieve social change.
This article is concerned with the third analytic dimension of identity, identity as a goal
(Bernstein 1997). Hapa activism seeks identity as a goal. When identity is a goal of social
movements, activists may challenge stigmatized identities, seek recognition for new identities,
or deconstruct restrictive social categories such as man, woman, black, or white as
goals of collective action. Yet, identity as a goal has received little scholarly attention (Bernstein 2008).11 Existing research suggests that deconstructive movements operate along a different logic from movements that challenge stigma and/or seek recognition for new identities.
Movements with identity as a goal seek rights, benefits, and recognition based on membership in a particular category. For deconstructive movements, the existence of the categories
themselves is seen as creating the foundation for inequality and discrimination. Deconstructive movements challenge the cultural ways of doing business that create these categories
and position some groups as normal in contrast to deviant others (e.g., Butler 1990; Foucault
1978; Seidman 1993). Thus, challenging and ultimately eliminating these categories motivates
activism. But how are deconstructive movements and movements for recognition related to
10. Theories abound, for example, about how both groups and individuals construct their identities and how those
constructions change over time, about the extent to which internal and external material and ideological forces influence the creation and perception of identities, how collective identity is created and maintained (e.g., Nagel 1994; Taylor
and Whittier 1992), and the degree to which personal identity represents or reflects the interior self (e.g., Butler 1990;
Calhoun 1994). There are also very different trends regarding how to understand identity in psychology and sociology
(Stryker and Burke 2000). Future research could benefit by examining the implications of movements such as the Hapa
movement for social psychological theories of identity.
11. For example, in a recent edited book that utilizes Bernsteins political identity framework (Reger, Myers, and
Einwohner 2008), only two chapters even briefly touch on the issue (see Kaminski and Taylor 2008; Schroer 2008).
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one another? Are they necessarily separate and distinct? In this section, we identify two competing approaches to understanding identity as a goal of social movements, what we term a
step model and a different venue model. We outline these models, illustrate their limits, and
present an alternative that we term a simultaneity model.
Step models see movements for recognition as a first step in mobilization, where a preoccupation with identity and seeking recognition for that identity is paramount. Once that
identity is secure, then the movement can go on to make more global connections between
the concerns of a variety of groups (Hall 1989). The different venue model, in contrast, sees
deconstructive strategies as important for obtaining cultural changes, while seeking recognition is seen as important for obtaining changes in laws and policies. The seeds of both a venue
and a step model are apparent in Steven Epsteins early theorizing about the extent to which
identity is a goal of the lesbian and gay movement. Epstein (1987) argues that the history of
the American civil rights movement and the ways in which American political institutions
function makes it politically useful for the lesbian and gay movement to seek political recognition and rights based on a lesbian and gay ethnic identity. Although Epstein (1987) does
not mention a different venue where highlighting the constructedness of identity categories
would be strategically useful, he implies that seeking recognition may be a a politically defensible starting point from which the gay movement can evolve in a progressive [presumably
deconstructive] direction (pp. 2728).
Arlene Stein (1992) more fully articulates the step model. Using the lesbian movement as
her exemplar, she hopes to explain the trajectory of identity-based movements more generally:
In any politicization of marginal groups, [Hall] says, there are two phases. The first comprises a rediscovery of roots, and implies a preoccupation with identity. Only when this local identity is in
place can a consideration of more global questions and connections begin. For many lesbians in this
country, the first phase of this movement has already occurred. We may now be seeing the arrival
of the second (p. 53).
Presumably, at the more advanced stage two, either identity is no longer a goal of social
movements or movements will attempt to deconstruct identity categories. However, Steven
Seidmans (1993) analysis of the history of the lesbian and gay movement shows that gay
liberation, which sought to deconstruct both straight and gay identities, gave way to a movement for recognition and rights that once again gave way to efforts at deconstruction by
groups such as Queer Nation. Seidmans study suggests that the step model is too simplistic
and that the centrality of deconstruction, recognition, or seeking other types of outcomes varies considerably over time.
Joshua Gamson (1995) most clearly articulates the venue model. Like Epstein (1987),
Gamson (1995) argues that political structures direct movements toward making ethnic-like
interest group claims in the name of well-defined categories and requires therefore solid proofs
of authentic ethnic membership (the immutability of sexual orientation, for example) . . .
(p. 402). In other words, political structures are one venue for political action that necessitate a politics of recognition. In contrast, Gamson argues that cultural sources of oppression
are better challenged by loosening and deconstructing categories. Because socially produced
binaries . . . [are] the basis of oppression (Gamson 1995:391), the only way to challenge oppression is to undermine and eliminate the categories themselves.
Other versions of the venue model, from the traditions of queer theory, queer legal theory,
or poststructuralism also view politics and culture as separate venues that require different strategies, but add an evaluative dimension to the analysis. These studies equate the recognition
strategies necessary for engagement in the political realm with assimilationism and the desire
to obtain limited policy gains. Cultural strategies that deconstruct categories are seen as the
vanguard of a transformative politics designed to reconstitute culture. These versions of the different venues model contend that movements that seek political recognition and rights based on
identity categories reify hierarchical systems of inequality (Bower 1997; Rimmerman 2002).
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Deconstructive movements confront their own difficulties, facing what Gamson (1995)
terms the queer dilemmathat is, the organizational dilemma faced by activists whose collective identity is predicated on the existence of social categories, when the goals of the movement are to undermine those same categories. Rainier Spencer (2004) points out that a
deconstructionist multiracial movement dismantles the preconditions of its own existence
(p. 115). As Judith Lorber (1999) argues, We want to erase the boundaries between categories of race, gender, and sexuality, but to do so, we have to use them, for without clear categories, you can have neither a politics of identity nor a politics of transgression. Categories are
needed for group power and boundaries are needed to transgress against (p. 363). However,
as we illustrate below, rather than being mutually exclusive, activists that seek identity as a
goal simultaneously seek to deconstruct certain categories of identity while demanding recognition for new categories that undermine existing ways of thinking. In this way, Hapa activists
resolve the queer dilemma by creating a new Hapa identity, even as they challenge existing
racial classification systems.
Pan-ethnic groups, in contrast, do not face the queer dilemma. In her discussion of how
individuals negotiate ethnic boundaries, Joane Nagel (1994) describes a layering of ethnic
identity that takes place among Latinos, Native Americans, Asian Americans, and African
Americans, depending on the audience (e.g., other Asian Americans or the larger society)
and on the perceived strategic utility and symbolic appropriateness of the identities in different settings and audiences (p. 155). Thus, the issue for these groups is not to deconstruct or
question the existence of racial/ethnic frameworks but rather to utilize them strategically to
self-identify and gain power.
We argue that the problem with the venue and step models, both theoretically and empirically, lies in the assumption that deconstructive movements can actually eliminate identities. As Seidman (1993) argues, If the issue is not identity versus nonidentity, if subjects
and social formations cannot elude categories of identity if, indeed, identity categories have
enabling, self- and socially enriching qualities, then the issue lies less in their affirmation or
subversion than analyzing the kinds of identities that are socially produced and their manifold
social significance (p. 134). More concretely, we argue that through the process of deconstruction, new identities are constructed. This can take place through engaging with the state,
institutions, or by contesting systems of cultural authority.
Therefore, we propose a simultaneity model, whereby movements with identity as a goal
should be understood as simultaneously deconstructing existing identities while fostering new
identities. Whether these new identities and systems of regulations that are created are more
progressive, conservative, liberatory, or some combination thereof then becomes an empirical question. Below, we illustrate the utility of the simultaneity model for explaining Hapa
activism.
Methods
This article emerged out of a collaboration between the two co-authors, who were interested in: (1) testing the validity of the step and different venues models; (2) explaining the
ways in which identity was a goal of multiracial activism; and (3) understanding the strategies
used to attain that goal. De la Cruz had extensive experience in the Hapa movement, both as
an activist and as a researcher. She participated in the Asian and Pacific Islander community
with multiple student-run organizations at UCLA, worked with other Hapas to organize protests against the Racial Privacy Initiative, and was a member of the progressive collective Concerned Asian Pacific-Islander Students for Action and the UCLA Hapa Club for two years. She
attended HIFs tenth anniversary conference and the special exhibition opening gala for Kip
Fulbecks Part Asian, 100% Hapa (2006). During her time as a student activist, De la Cruz took
field notes and held formal and informal interviews with members of the Hapa community for
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730
other research projects about mixed-raced experience and produced the short documentary
film, Los Angeles Filipinos of Mixed Heritage. She was also a panelist in several mixed-race
conferences.12
Based on this breadth of experience with the Hapa movement, we had reason to doubt the
validity of the step and venue models. However, De la Cruzs previous research and participation did not in and of itself provide sufficient evidence to test the step and venue models or to
understand identity as a goal of social movements. Most importantly, we wanted to determine
the extent to which achieving identity as a goal was a conscious, thought-out movement aim
and what strategies were marshaled to that end. In other words, we wanted to know if there
was any concrete historical evidence to support or refute our hypothesis that the movement
actively sought to gain recognition for a new identity while also seeking to deconstruct existing notions of identity and, if so, how they thought that mission would be accomplished.
With this as our goal, we decided to analyze official statements of Hapa movement organizations, the views of leaders as presented and documented in interviews, official statements
on movement Web sites, social movement documents, secondary sources, and leaders own
writing. We examined any documents that were related to the theme of identity. Clear themes
related to both strategies and goals emerged. We chose not to conduct post-hoc interviews
where hindsight could attribute intent to certain strategies that might not have been clearly
articulated at the time. While others have investigated the ways in which individuals strategically disclose their racial and ethnic identities depending on a variety of factors (e.g., Brubaker
2004; Jimnez 2004; Lee and Bean 2007; Pollock 2004), scholars have not looked at identity
deployment among multiracial activists as a strategic form of collective action utilized by social movements for specific purposes. We also wanted to investigate how identity strategies
played out in two of the most visible political issues that the Hapa movement was involved
in, the struggle to defeat the Racial Privacy Initiative and the challenge to the way the Census
categorizes race (Leach 2009).
Therefore, we chose to analyze all news coverage of the HIF, the Racial Privacy Initiative,
and the campaign to change categories on the 2000 Census in both mainstream newspapers
through Lexis/Nexis and in the archives of AsianWeek.com, the voice of Asian America, as
well as the Web sites of the HIF, and all Hapa groups with Web sites that we could find, including Hapa groups at Cornell, UCI, Berkeley, Stanford, UCLA, and Harvard, and of the Association of Multiethnic Americans (AMEA), an umbrella organization that is comprised of a
variety of multiracial and multiethnic organizations, with whom HIF worked closely.
As we discuss below, we found consistent historical evidence regarding identity as a strategy and a goal that challenged the step and venue models and that illustrated how the movement thought that identity deployment strategies would challenge existing systems of racial
categorization while creating new identities. Our examination of official statements of HIF
and various Hapa clubs and their leaders related to the theme of identity provides sufficient
evidence to support the simultaneity model and to understand identity as a goal and a strategy
of the Hapa movement.
We suggest that future research on this subject could benefit from gathering ethnographic
or interview data to document how multiracial activists challenge the U.S. racial truth regime
in their daily interactions. Such a study could also investigate the emotional dimensions of
identity strategies used by multiracial activists. But for our purposes, we wanted to test the step
and venue models by seeing if there was sufficient historical evidence about the strategic use
of identity by the Hapa movement as a deliberate strategy designed to deconstruct dominant
understandings of race and to secure recognition for a new Hapa identity. It should also be
noted that we were not interested in documenting the full range of Hapa movement activities,
12. De la Cruz was a panelist in The Multiracial Lens: Visual Explorations of Asian American (Association for Asian
American Studies West and Pacific Regional Conference California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, 2003) and
Crossing Lines: Race and Mixed Race Across the Geohistorical Divide (UC Santa Barbara, 2002).
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nor do we make any claims regarding the relative importance of achieving identity as a goal
over other movement goals such as creating community (e.g., DaCosta 2007); such an analysis is a worthy goal, but is beyond the scope of this article.
In the next section, we provide an overview of the Hapa movement. We illustrate the
ways in which Hapa activists simultaneously seek to secure recognition for a new identity
and to deconstruct exclusively (mono)racial ways of thinking. We first examine challenges
directed at the state and then we examine the micro-politics of the Hapa movement.
The Politics of Categories: HIF and the Movement

HIF is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to enrich the lives of Asian Pacific Islanders of mixed heritage and to develop communities that value diversity.13 The HIF was started
at UC-Berkeley in 1992. During a Japanese-American history class, a graduate student made
disparaging comments about mixed marriages and provoked anger among other students in
the class, including Greg Mayeda, Eric Tate, and Steve Ropp (Nishioka 1999). These students
began to meet on a weekly basis and quickly formed the HIF. Since then, chapters of college
students and other Hapas have formed in Los Angeles, UC Irvine, UC Los Angeles, UC San
Diego, Cornell, Harvard, and Stanford. Emily Leach (2009) notes that At its height, the group
had seven chapters across California and worked in coalition with mixed-race groups across
the country. Hapas organized as people of mixed-Asian descent separate from other mixedrace organizations because of the perception that mixed-race tends to be subsumed in the
black-white binary. HIF also sought to directly address the Asian American community (DaCosta 2000:252). HIF conducts discussions about shared experiences that center on identity,
but also focuses on diversity awareness, leadership development, and community building
(Leach 2009; Lieser 2002). Intellectual and cultural production by Hapa activists, including
books and art, is also an important part of the movement. We argue that by striving to gain
recognition and acceptance of mixed-race identities, the Hapa movement is simultaneously
deconstructing an exclusively (mono)racial way of thinking, celebrating its multiplicity, and
maintaining ties to communities of color.
Race is an institutionalized, socially meaningful concept that is a catalyst for segregation and discrimination and is a dimension that defines communities and associations, and
shapes both private, personal interactions and public, institutional interactions. Physical attributes give cues to others. These cues evoke previously identified and defined characteristics
about race and interaction can perpetuate or reformulate these perceptions (Omi and Winant
1994). On an institutional level, information on race gathered from the U.S. Census Bureau
and other state agencies enforces a broad set of public policies, including those that revolve
around equal opportunity law, medicine and public health, income, housing, and education
(Goldstein and Morning 2000; Payson 1996). Therefore, Hapa activists employ strategies that
challenge the maintenance of (mono)racial categories, on both the micro and macro levels.
Categorization and the State

U.S. Census Bureau
One of the most significant political challenges for multiracial activists was the campaign
to change the U.S. Census Bureaus approach to racial categorization. From the purview of
the step model, such a campaign would indicate a concern with identity and therefore would
13. Hapa Issues Forum (http://www.hif.org/about_hif/index.html; now see http://web.archive.org/web/20001202
131300/www.hapaissuesforum.org/org.html). The Hapa Issues Forum Web site no longer exists, but can be accessed
through http://web.archive.org/web/. We list the Web address where we initially accessed the data.
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be indicative that the movement was in phase one. The step model would expect that the
integrity and naturalness of categories would be maintained in the Census campaign and that
transforming dominant ways of thinking would not be a relevant goal. Similarly, the venue
model assumes that engagement in the political realm requires shoring up identity categories
and thus dominant ways of thinking rather than challenging them. In contrast to both models,
we argue that Hapa activists, in their state-oriented activism, seek policy change and cultural
change, recognition and deconstruction.
Prior to 2000, the Census Bureau was guided by the Office of Management and Budgets
1977 Statistical Directive No. 15 that underscored the social constructedness of official categories: These classifications should not be interpreted as being scientific or anthropological in nature . . . They have been developed in response to needs expressed by both the executive branch
and the Congress (Root 1996b:411). Directive 15 explains that the agreed upon (mono)racial
categories should be used for civil rights compliance reporting, general program administrative,
and grant reporting and statistical reporting (Root 1996b:413). Thus, these data are critically
important for a variety of reasons, including assessing and remedying inequality and tracking
health outcomes and patterns of housing settlement.
The Census and other official forms that ask for racial data also serve a symbolic purpose by
defining what categories of identity the government does and does not consider to be appropriate.
Since Jim Crow, these categories have both reflected and enforced the one-drop rule of hypodescent marking anyone with any African blood for racial exclusion, until after the advent of
the civil rights movement and Directive No. 15, which mandated the use of racial categories for
civil rights compliance reporting.14 Individuals of mixed heritage do not fit into a monoracial
template of racial understanding (Harris and Sim 2002; Thompson 2000). For many mixed-race
individuals, choosing one box on a government form is a confusing exercise that may not reflect
how they are perceived (Root 1990) or how they perceive themselves.
The AMEA and Project RACE (Reclassify All Children Equally) spearheaded the challenge
to the U.S. Census Bureaus approach to racial categorization (King 2000). Tactics included letter writing campaigns to elected officials and bureaucrats and testifying about the experiences of
multiracial individuals at hearings on the Census. HIF contributor Ramona Douglass, who was
president of the AMEA from 199499, became a member of the federal 2000 Census Advisory
Committee (AMEA n.d.[c], 1997; HIF n.d.[a]). The production of knowledge and discourse that
emerged through HIF and the mixed-race movement more generally had a discernible effect on
policy. The Census Bureau adopted Roots edited book The Multiracial Experience (1996) as part of
its resource materials (AMEA n.d.[a]). Roots book included the Multiracial Bill of Rights, which
she first presented in 1993 at a mixed-race conference. Later, the HIF adopted the Multiracial Bill
of Rights as part of its Hapa Handbook (HIF 1997a). Proposed changes in the 2000 Census were
discussed at board meetings and at HIF conference workshops (e.g., HIF 2000).
The AMEAs contact with the U.S. Census Bureau and official correspondence with elected
representatives illustrates that activists are aware of the dilemmas and peculiarities of seeking
to deconstruct racial identities while also fostering an identity based on race. For example,
AMEA president Carlos Fernandezs 1989 letter to the Chairman of the Sub-Committee on
the Census and Population of the U.S. House of Representatives states:
Ultimately, the official classification of people by race is abhorrent to many of us. Nevertheless,
it would be fair to say that most of us believe there may be some temporary utility in obtaining
ethnic data for purposes of providing programs aimed at addressing the special needs of historically
14. There have been some exceptions to the one-drop rule. In 1850, the category mulatto appeared on the
Census, followed by octoroon and quadroon in 1890, though those categories were quickly dropped. During reconstruction, mulattos were considered important, since it was assumed that they could play an important role in a
reconstructed South. However, as Jim Crow emerged, the one-drop rule gained ascendency. Anyone with any African
blood was classified as black and could be racially excluded (DaCosta 2007:2425; see also Williamson 1995). No two
Censuses have ever had the same racial/ethnic categories (Williamson 1995).
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mistreated ethnic groups, which include, we would maintain, interracial families and individuals
(Fernandez 1989).
In his 1993 congressional testimony, Fernandez underscored the fears of racial mixing and of the
children produced by such unions that were buoyed by Statistical Directive 15. Thus, in its official testimony and correspondence, the movement simultaneously worked to deconstruct binary
white/nonwhite racial frameworks that were rooted in racist fears while still recognizing their
social salience and thus a need to officially retain some racially based classifications.
The Japanese American Citizens League (JACL), which had been a target of educational
efforts by HIF, was the only mainstream civil rights organization to support the proposed
check-all-that-apply change to the Census from the outset (King 2000). In contrast, the drive
to acknowledge the existence of multiracial people on the Census alarmed many traditional
civil rights organizations who were afraid that a multiracial category would dilute the numbers of people of color and, thus, would adversely affect civil rights gains, such as federal
redistricting for voting purposes and equal opportunity employment (DaCosta 2003; Graham
1996; King 2000; Williams 2003). In fact, conservatives such as Newt Gingrich supported proposals to add a stand-alone multiracial category to the Census. According to some observers,
underlying this support was a desire to stymie civil rights monitoring and compliance through
classification chicanerythat is, by classifying employees as multiracial in order to promote or
mask discriminatory policies (Daniel 2001; Spencer 2003).
The campaign to alter government racial classifications also illustrates the dual nature of
the multiracial challenge to racial categorization that simultaneously seeks a new (multi)racial
identity while also acknowledging the continued significance of race. The two major national
multiracial organizations, the AMEA and Project RACE, split over whether or not to support
a stand-alone multiracial category or a multiracial category followed by a check-all-that-apply
option. Project RACE wanted a multiracial box to check with no subcategories (Graham 1996;
King 2000),15 while the AMEA wanted a multiracial and/or multiethnic checkbox followed by
a listing of races that could be checked to indicate heritage (Fernandez 1993).
In contrast, in 1997 the HIF board of directors decided not to support either formulation.
Instead, HIF simply wanted to be able to check all the racial categories that applied without the
addition of a multiracial checkbox. This approach would both acknowledge and legitimate the
existence of multiracial people and enhance medical research, while not harming civil rights reporting, compliance, and enforcement efforts. To reconcile these differences, organizers held the
Third Multiracial Leadership Summit conference of multiracial organizations in 1997 designed to
reach agreement on these issues. The HIF view that a check one or more format under the general
race question should be adopted prevailed (King 2000) and Project RACEs alliance with Gingrich
and the stand-alone multiracial checkbox was defeated (Brown and Douglass 2003). In the end,
intensive lobbying by the AMEA and HIF convinced some of the major civil rights organizations,
including the NAACP, MALDEF, and the National Council of La Raza, to change their position and
support the check all that apply format (Daniel and Castaeda-Liles 2006:134).
Ultimately, the check-all-that-apply option was adopted by the OMB (King 2000). HIF, in
an official press release (HIF 1997c), explained the groups support for the check one or more
option. HIF co-founder and board of director member Greg Mayeda stated:
A separate Multiracial Box does not allow a person who identifies as mixed race the opportunity
to be counted accurately. After all, we are not just mixed race. We are representatives of all racial
groups and should be counted as such. A stand alone Multiracial Box reveals very little about the
person checking it.
15. It should be noted that Daniel (2001), a member of the AMEA advisory board, claims that Project RACE at
times supported a multiracial check box followed by a listing of subcategories, but was inconsistent in its own position.
Project RACE Executive Director Grahams own testimony about the Census at the National Academy of Sciences advocated the stand alone multiracial checkbox (Graham 1996).
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734
Despite its initial support of this option, Project RACE withdrew its support within 24 hours
of its initial agreement (Daniel 2001; King 2000).
The OMB issued a newly revised Statistical Directive 15 on October 30, 1997, allowing
people to check off more than one racial category. Directive 15 affects all agencies of government, including the Census, public schools, states, and other agencies that receive federal
funding (AMEA n.d.[b]) and went into effect for the 2000 Census.
In contrast to the step and venue models, in the campaign to revise the U.S. Census
to allow recognition of individuals with mixed race identities, Hapa activists simultaneously
sought to deconstruct monoracial forms of thinking and to gain recognition for mixed race
identities. Recognition was not a first step to be followed by a lack of concern with identity.
Nor was recognition rather than deconstruction the sole goal of Census activism as the venue
model would expect. Instead, the recognition sought by Census activism was an integral part
of a project designed to challenge categorical ways of thinking rooted in the black-white binary
and the rule of hypodescent. The campaign and its outcome have both political and cultural
significance. Hapa activists were acutely aware of the cultural significance of challenging the
rule of hypodescent and felt that changing government policy would help transform cultural
understandings of race. Politically, the change in Census classifications of race allows for continued civil rights monitoring and compliance designed to remedy inequality.
Racial Privacy Initiative

Like the Census campaign, Hapa participation in the battle over the Racial Privacy Initiative (RPI) represented a simultaneous concern with understanding and documenting inequality that results from the lived experience of race and the fact that Hapa activists themselves,
while challenging the boundaries of racial categories, belonged to diverse racially and ethnically defined communities. Thus, Hapas eschewed a color-blind ideology that dismisses the
continued significance of race in American life (Bonilla-Silva 2001). Instead, Hapa activists
participated in a nuanced politics that views race as socially constructed, yet significant in its
material impact on individuals life chances and still important in providing a sense of identity.
As with the Census campaign, Hapa activists linked recognition to concrete material issues
while also recognizing the social constructedness of categories.
In 2002, University of California Regent, Ward Connerly,16 launched a campaign in California to pass Proposition 54, the Classification by Race, Ethnicity, Color, or National Origin
Initiative, better known as the Racial Privacy Initiative.17 If passed, the initiative would have
prohibited the collection of any data on race in California, while providing a limited number
of exemptions for the criminal justice system and medical research, but not for epidemiological studies. These exemptions would allow law enforcement officers to collect racial data, but
collecting statistics that document police practices such as racial profiling would not have been
permitted (Barlow and Duster 2002). Moreover, schools and universities would no longer be
allowed to record racial data to help track progress for any ethnic/racial group. Academics at
state institutions would no longer be able to gather information and conduct research based
on race. Thus, the educational achievement of students, racially driven hate crimes, police
profiling, and specific medical conditions that disproportionately affect particular racial or
ethnic groups would have been nearly impossible to accurately document had the bill passed
(Chemerinsky 2003).
16. Connerly organized the RPI under the auspices of his organization the American Civil Rights Institute, a multiracial group espousing a color-blind ideology (Dalmage 2004a) that had little grassroots support, as evidenced in the
campaign.
17. Connerly was one of the two authors of Californias Proposition 209 that barred the use of racial data in California hiring and university admissions in 1996. Ironically, Tom Wood, the other author of Proposition 209, opposed the
RPI because he felt that a failure to gather data on the basis of race would make it more difficult to prove discrimination
against whites (Schrag 2003).
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735
The initiatives potential effects on the medical field, education, and law enforcement
compelled organizations such as the American Heart Association, the California Medical Association, the California State PTA, the California Teachers Association, APALC, the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the League of Women Voters in
California to oppose the proposition. HIF coalesced with multiracial organizations such as the
AMEA and the MAVIN foundation to defeat the initiative as it was in direct opposition to
the needs of the mixed-heritage Asian Pacific Islander community18 and participated in the
Coalition for an Informed California (CIC) that spearheaded the anti-Proposition 54 campaign (CIC n.d.). At their tenth anniversary conference at San Francisco State University in
2002, HIF held a plenary session on the RPI to educate the community about the proposition
(Lieser 2002). In addition, student groups from various racial and multiracial organizations on
campuses statewide rallied to oppose the proposition. Eventually, the RPI was resoundingly
defeated (64 to 36 percent). Organizers attributed the victory to the relentless grass-roots
opposition (Branscomb 2003).
In seeking to defeat Proposition 54, HIF wanted both a recognition and transformation
of racial categories. Defeating Proposition 54 was not a first step toward a broadening of connections; those connections were already there. Hapas who fought against the RPI felt that
legally banning race would not diminish its effects and thus eschewed a color-blind agenda.
The implications are both symbolic and material, as they relate to police practices and the
distribution of jobs, housing, and health care as well as feelings of legitimacy for Hapas. Yet,
official recognition is only one level by which categories are reinforced and maintained. On a
daily basis in everyday life, racial boundaries are reinforced interactionally.
Understanding Identity as Goal

In addition to official government policies that create race as a legally meaningful category,
race is a symbolic system that is reproduced through everyday interactions. These interactions
play an important role in upholding racial and racist ideologies. We argue that Hapa activists
seek both to deconstruct existing notions of identity and gain recognition for new identities
through everyday interactional strategies. Because dealing with these interactions represents
a concern with identity, the step model would view these strategies in terms of gaining recognition for new identities, rather than in deconstructing existing notions of identity. Instead,
we argue that these micro-level Hapa strategies are simultaneously geared toward recognition
and deconstruction. The different venues model, in contrast, would view these micro-level
strategies as primarily cultural and therefore deconstructive in nature, failing to recognize the
ways in which deconstruction and recognition are dialectically linked.
Furthermore, we argue that these interactional strategies overcome the queer dilemma
identified by Gamson (1995) and Lorber (1999). In other words, activists do not eliminate
identity categories altogether, but reformulate them in ways that challenge existing and oppressive categories of identity. Identities are inescapable. It is incumbent upon the analyst to
examine the types of identities that are produced and the implications of those identities.
To achieve the recognition of mixed race identities and to deconstruct exclusively monoracial ways of thinking, Hapa activists strategically deploy their identities. The term identity deployment refers to expressing identity such that the terrain of conflict becomes the individual
person so that the values, categories, and practices of individuals become subject to debate
(Bernstein 1997:53738, 2008). Identity deployment may seek to spread public awareness of
an issue, change mainstream culture, reform policy, and/or challenge or deconstruct categories, ideologies, and values. Identity deployment is a form of strategic action, not simply an
expressive, nonpolitical act. We argue that the Hapa movement deploys identity in order to
18. Hapa Issues Forum (see www.hif.org/community/pr_rpi.html).
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disrupt the black-white binary and to deconstruct an exclusively (mono)racial understanding

of race, which, in essence, opens the space for the recognition of mixed race identities.
In this section, we first illustrate the ways in which daily interactions experienced by Hapas
constitute an exercise of power and illustrate the dilemmas that Hapas face in navigating the shoals
of American racial categories. Hapas must continually decide whether to pass, adopt a dominant
or subordinate identity, or assert a new identity. These negotiations are politically charged and, as
we show below, they are an important focus of Hapa movement activism. Second, we draw on
the statements of movement leaders and founders as well as official statements by different Hapa
groups found on their Web sites, and writing produced by Hapas, regarding the meaning and goals
of the Hapa movement, in order to illustrate the strategies that HIF and Hapa clubs use to deconstruct monoracial classification systems and seek to secure recognition for a Hapa identity. This
data also shows that these strategies are consciously chosen movement goals. We illustrate Hapas
awareness of the power of daily interactions to uphold racial hierarchies. We show that the promotion of the term Hapa serves the dual purposes of recognition and deconstruction. We illustrate
the mechanisms through which Hapa activists seek these dual goals as well as Hapas awareness
of the challenges of doing both simultaneously. We also discuss the sexualized and gendered nature of racial categories and interrogatory interactions. So rather than interpreting concerns with
identity and recognition as a preoccupation with identity and the self, such activism constitutes a
challenge to the U.S. racial truth regime.
Posted on the HIFs Web site as part of their Hapa Resources Handbook, Roots (1996a:7)
Bill of Rights for Racially Mixed People illustrates the importance of discourse as a mode of
power that Hapas must challenge:
I have the right
not to justify my existence in this world

not to keep the races separate within me
not to be responsible for peoples discomfort with my physical ambiguity
not to justify my ethnic legitimacy
I have the right
to identify myself differently than strangers expect me to identify

to identify myself differently than how my parents identify me
to identify myself differently than how my brothers and sisters
to identify myself differently in different situations
I have the right
to create a vocabulary to communicate about being multiracial

to change my identity over my life timeand more than once
to have loyalties and identify with more than one group of people
to freely choose whom I befriend and love
The objective then for multiracial activists is to challenge what Beverly Yuen Thompson
(2000:172) describes as the monoracial template of racial understanding in American society and to secure recognition for a new Hapa identity. The HIF Web site states, We strive
to challenge Americas rigid notion of race and ethnicity. Ultimately, we hope to enhance the
nations respect for diverse cultures, build an inclusive community, and to broaden the understanding of Asian Americans to include Hapas (HIF n.d.[a]). Individuals of mixed race add
perplexity and ambiguity to preset expectations that people hold for individuals of a particular
racial/ethnic background. Multiracial individuals may not fit into extant physical preconceptions of what black, white, Asian, or Latina/o people look like. More importantly, how one
chooses to identify may determine how he or she is perceived by others.
What Are You?

The ubiquitous question What are you? helps to maintain a (mono)racial truth regime.
Answers about ones ancestry often lead to disbelief. For example, Teresa Williams (1996)
describes an experience with a Latino man who asked her, Are you white?: My phenotype
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737
screams Latina, yet this man had to make sense of my lack of Spanish language proficiency . . .
After I explained that my mother is Japanese and my father is Irish/Welsh American, this man
uttered in discontent, Japenese? No, youre lying (p. 192). The question What are you?
serves as a catalyst for many to join HIF or Hapa Clubs.19 Cornell Hapa Student Association
President Chris Erway (2001) reflects on why he started a Hapa organization:
Its not like were real minority or anythingand we dont even have a culture. But still, the idea
persisted: why not a half club? Id only met a few mixed kids before and they seemed pretty cool.
But no, itd be silly, I argued with myself. Wed just be creating another minority category and ethnic
clique, I figured . . . [But other Hapas] understood what it felt like to be torn between different ethnicities but also rejected by one or all of them. Theyd heard What are you? too many times and
understood immediately what check one referred to. And, deeper than these most obvious shared
traits, we were all grappling with the same issues of ethnic identity and culture.
Thus, Hapa clubs and organizations formed as a means to challenge the interactional policing
of (mono)racial categories.
For Ferber (2004) and Spencer (2004), the response to these interactional strategies is likely
more subversive than Census activism. If multiracial identity were simply another racial classification (not white), then it would not threaten racial essentialism. However, Ferber (2004)
argues that a Multiracial Movement which relentlessly disrupts and destabilizes racial classifications, revealing their constructed nature, can instead contribute to the broader movement against
white power (p. 56). Yet, Spencer (2006) assumes that mixed race people do not announce that
the boundaries are permeable and put at risk the possibility of a racially pure identity (p. 99). In
contrast, we argue that the deployment of Hapa identities with their deliberate acknowledgment
of being of more than one race in response to what-are-you interrogations are designed to
disrupt, destabilize, and thus challenge racial hierarchies. Ironically, to disrupt racial classification
systems and the purity of whiteness, one still has to use the language of race.
Hapa strategies are designed to challenge the racial truth regime in the United States. For
example, Wei Ming Dariotis, co-founder of the San Francisco chapter of HIF, illustrates in an
interview with AsianWeek magazine that the rigidity of American racial classification systems
is signified by the question What are you? The response provides an opportunity to challenge that system. Paraphrasing Dariotis, Janet Dang and Jason Ma (2000) explain:
Hapas are typically asked What are you? or are mistaken for another race . . . And this confusion
that Hapas can induce in other Americans represents a potential crack in the traditional notion of
race that could eventually shatter it all together. Episodes of mistaken identity poignantly bring to
mind the arbitrary and artificial aspects that race can have.
According to Erway (2001), Cornell Hapa Student Association president, I found, Hapas are
not an ethnic clique. The mixed race community is, by definition, part of every other ethnic
community, and it is precisely this hybrid quality that allows us to act as living, breathing
liaisons between ethnic groups.
Collective strategies designed to challenge the quotidian enactment of race include deployment of the identity Hapa. The term Hapa is promoted as a way to simultaneously deconstruct exclusively (mono)racial ways of thinking and to secure recognition for a Hapa identity.
Activist Chris Thipphavong (n.d.) writes about both the HIF and the UCLA Hapa club and
explains the importance of the term Hapa. He says:
hapa haole originally held a negative connotation, roughly translating to half-other or half-outsider and was applied to individuals who were half Asian or Hawaiian and half Caucasian. The term
has since been shortened simply to hapa in a border-crossing type effort to include all individuals who have some Asian blood mixed with any other race, and is now a proud statement through
which these individuals are beginning to assert their own identity.
19. DaCosta (2000, 2007) argues that having to identify as monoracial on government forms and elsewhere creates strong emotions that stem from a refusal to choose one parent over the other parent. Thus, family loyalty or a politicization of kinship may also motivate individuals to engage in multiracial activism more generally (DaCosta 2000:7).
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Thipphavong (n.d.) underscores the importance of recognizing a Hapa identity. He says, the
Hapa Issues Forum, by its very existence, seeks some legitimization of Hapa as an identity in
and of itself, similar to the way that more prestigious groups such as MEChA once did, and
continues to do, for Chicanos. Thipphavong (n.d.) describes how activists come to realize the
importance of securing recognition for a Hapa identity. He recounts how one activist described
how he felt that the UCLA Hapa club was not very political.
The board member replied: no, you are active. Just the fact that you are organized and have a group
and call yourself Hapa is political in itself, and thats a great thing that you are doing for people. So,
it can be said that building a community of Hapas is not only community and identity building, but
also a source of legitimization for the group.
The Hapa movement provides multiple forums in which to discuss and strategize about experiences with the question What are you? (e.g., Ahn 2002; HIF 1996, 1997b, 1998). The Web
pages of Hapa groups discuss the meaning of such questions (e.g., UCLA Hapa n.d.). In 2004, the
HIF newsletter Whats Hapaning started a new series featuring photos and replies to [the] notorious question What are you? (HIF 2004:6). Annual conferences held in California sponsored by
the HIF from 1993 through 2002, as well as other multiracial conferences organized by Hapa activists, also provided opportunities to share strategies about how to contend with racist interrogatory
interactions. For example, the 2002 Sixth Annual Pan-Collegiate Conference on the Mixed Race
described the rationale for having a conference on multiracial issues in terms of both securing
recognition for a new identity, deconstructing racial hierarchies, and developing an answer to the
question What are you? The conference materials stated:
In the process of developing a collective identity and voice as mixed people, it is important that we
maintain an open dialogue and strong connections and values amongst ourselves, as well as crossculturally and inter-racially, so as not to become pawns in the system of racial hierarchy in the
United States . . . We must maintain the integrity and unity in our individual cultural connections,
while learning to be comfortable and confident in asserting our own identities however we may
choose to do so (Cornell Hapa n.d.[b]).
At the 2002 Pan-Collegiate Conference on the Mixed Race Experience, HIF activist and author
Pearl Gaskins organized a workshop to address the theme, What are you? (Cornell Hapa
n.d.[b]). The tenth annual HIF conference included a film about the experiences of children
adopted by families of a different races faced with interlocutors asking about their racial identity (HIF n.d[b], 1997b).
In addition to interactional strategies that promote the term Hapa as a way to gain recognition for a new identity and to deconstruct existing identities that are discussed in organizational meetings and on social movement Web pages, Hapa activism also includes the
production of books, journals, magazines, and online forums that serve as outlets for Asian
Pacific Americans of mixed heritage to communicate, (re)define, validate, deconstruct, and
establish new meanings that explain their experiences as mixed race individuals. For Hapas,
identity deployment is operationalized through the spread of public awareness, primarily in
the form of discourse, which has developed extensively over the past 15 years. Publications
such as Mixed Blood (Spickard 1989) and What Are You? (Gaskins1999) illustrate the vibrancy
of the intellectual and cultural production of the Hapa movement.
Art and culture have been an important part of promoting the term Hapa for the twin
purposes of deconstruction and recognition. For example, Kip Fulbeck, who was a Hapa activist at UCSD in the late 1980s, invited Hapas and Hapa organizations across the country to take
part in the Hapa Project. Fulbecks book, Part Asian, 100% Hapa (2006), and accompanying
photo exhibit consisted of more than 1,100 photos taken across the country (Watanabe 2006).
Each person was photographed from the shoulders up, shorn of all clothes and make-up and
each answered in her/his own words, the question What are you? Thipphavong (n.d.) describes the importance of the project for participants: The plethora of ways in which Hapas
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739
may choose to answer the question What are you?, is a chance for them to actively respond
to the countless questions and odd stares that they have been subjected to their entire lives.
The book was officially released at the opening celebration of a photo exhibition in the books
name at the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo in Los Angeles in 2006
(Watanabe 2006). The exhibit featured portraits from the book and the celebration featured
performances by Hapa spoken word artists, singers, and entertainers. Many documentaries
and film shorts also document the mixed race experience. Student organizations have created
their own literary magazines, such as Cornell Hapas Other to address issues of Hapa identity
(Cornell Hapa n.d.[a]).
In addition, many HIF members are educators who challenge racial discourse in the classroom. They teach courses in Asian American studies centered on mixed race and encourage students to attend conferences and become active in the mixed-race community. For
example, HIF co-founder Steven Masami Ropp, Ph.D., a professor at CSU-Northridge who
teaches a course on multiracial identity in the United States, asks the students to organize a
campus-wide event and share it with the college community to emphasize service and activism (Schlaikjer 2003). Thus, through challenging dominant cultural understandings of race
and encouraging students to get involved, Hapas are bringing mixed race issues to the fore in
academia.
Racial politics at the macro and micro levels also has a sexual dimension. Official policies
once regulated intimate relations between people of different races through anti-miscegenation
laws designed to maintain the purity of the white race. Legally enforced racial segregation
served the same purpose. Although the remaining anti-miscegenation laws were overturned
in the 1967 Loving v. Virginia case, and racial segregation is no longer legally enforced, racial
interactions continued to be sexualized. Nagel (2003) argues that:
Ethnic boundaries are also sexual boundaries. Ethnicity and sexuality join together to form a barrier
to hold some people in and keep others out, to define who is pure and who is impure, to shape our
view of ourselves and others, to fashion feelings of sexual desire and notions of sexual desirability, to
provide us with seemingly natural sexual preferences for some partners and intuitive aversions
to others, to leave us with a taste for some ethnic sexual encounters and a distaste for others (p. 1).
Racial hierarchies are maintained by the policing of ethnosexual boundaries (Nagel 2003).
Hapa activists challenge the sexualized nature of racism by rendering visible these ethnosexual
boundaries and the threat that they themselves present to those borders.
Often, the question What are you? is followed by the question, which race [do] you
prefer to date (UCLA Hapa n.d.). Such questions both racialize sex and sexualize race and
serve to maintain ethnosexual boundaries. Hapas also experience the stereotype that they
are exotic and therefore sexually desirable. According to bell hooks (1992), the assumption
about the Others body is that it will provide a greater, more intense pleasure than any
that exists in the ordinary world of ones familiar racial group (p. 24). The sexualized nature
of racism and interracial relationships provides a common topic for discussion groups at HIF
meetings (e.g., HIF n.d.[c]). Multiracial conferences often offer workshops to address interracial dating as well. For example, a workshop organized at the Cornell-hosted conference
in 2002 by Hapa activists was entitled The Exotic, Erotic Other and was designed to discuss
sexual stereotypes about mixed race people and their portrayal in film (Cornell Hapa n.d.[b]).
Other workshops on interracial dating and on the spectrum of mixed race sexuality take
place regularly at Hapa conferences (e.g., HIF 1996, 1997b, 1998, 2000). Stereotypes of Hapas
as exotic are often discussed at Hapa meetings (e.g., Ahn 2002). Hapa activists also organize
panels at their universities on interracial dating to challenge sexualized racial hierarchies
(e.g., Galan 2002).
In contrast to the step and venue models, recognition and deconstruction both take place
in the cultural realm. Seeking identity as a goal is a viable challenge to power constituted
through, in this case, U.S. racial truth regimes. In contrast to the venue model that sees
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740
cultural changes in solely deconstructive terms, deconstruction is not the only strategy that
can loosen categories of identity. Hapa activists seek recognition for hybrid identities in order
to deconstruct more restrictive identities, thus challenging white power and white privilege.
As Spencer (2004) argues, To allow that the categories are not distinct, or that people can
fail to properly belong to one and only one category, is to immediately challenge the entire
foundation of the race concept (p. 110).
Hapa activists recognize the challenges involved in both seeking to secure recognition
for a new identity formed through racial categories while also seeking to challenge racialized
patterns of thinking. Hapa activist Claire Light argues that Hapas are moving into virgin territory as they are trying to organize a group around a racial principle without having an actual
race to unite them (quoted in Dang and Ma 2000). Thipphavong (n.d.) states Proposition 54
takes our vocabulary away from us. How can you have a mixed race group when nobody
recognizes race? In short, Hapa activists understand that deconstructing identity is accompanied by recognizing that identities themselves are inescapable.
Conclusion
In this article, we have theorized the ways that discursive systems of meaning related to
categorization operate as a system of power that is codified in official state policies and enforced through standard interactional routines. In contrast to both the step and venue models,
we argue that recognition and deconstruction are dialectically linked. Both cultural and institutional change can be targeted simultaneously through strategies designed to deconstruct
existing identities and to secure recognition for new identities. The Hapa movement has developed a series of strategies for deconstructing dominant categories of race shaped by the
one-drop rule. Those strategies include sharing experiences and strategies to deal with daily
interactions designed to police racial boundaries that Hapas confront on a regular basis. Hapas
also deploy discourse through art and culture. Identity deployment strategies are used to challenge racial truth regimes based on the rule of hypodescent and the black/white binary that is
enforced through daily interactions. Hapas also employ standard political strategies to achieve
these goals of recognition and deconstruction. By recognizing that such groups simultaneously deconstruct identities and produce new identities, these groups overcome the queer
dilemma and will not self-destruct because they lack an identity.
Race is a highly contested political, social, and personal issue that shapes interaction,
forms policy, and defines discourse (Omi and Winant 1994). The Hapa movement has helped
to produce new discourse and alter cultural understandings of race. The Hapa movement
challenges normative cultural codes that constitute conceptions of race that deny the multiracial existence, such as the one-drop rule. Hapas seek both recognition and deconstruction
simultaneously.
The analysis presented in this article can be applied to other groups that operate at the
interstices between dominant cultural categories such as queer, intersexed, or transgendered
movements. These movements can be examined in terms of the ways in which new identities (e.g., intersexed and transgender) deconstruct hegemonic cultural codes while also
securing recognition for new identities. Our analysis suggests the need to rethink ways in
which scholars conceptualize the goals of identity-based movements. For example, in contrast
to dominant portrayals, groups like Queer Nation that employ an anti-identity rhetoric may
not only be seeking to deconstruct identity, but may also be promulgating a new queer
identity. The extent to which this identity hinders or advances mobilization as well as the impact of this identity on existing systems of categorization in terms of sexual orientation then
becomes an empirical question to study. Similarly, why do some multiracial groups espouse
an anti-identity rhetoric and what impact does this have on that groups ability to mobilize?
What identities are being produced through the anti-race rhetoric? Who is included and who
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741
is excluded? Do some second-wave multiracial organizations espouse an anti-identity, colorblind rhetoric or are those groups losing strength? In what ways are the strategies and goals
of second-wave multiracial activists similar to and different from those of first-wave Hapa
activists? What impact will current President Barack Obamawho is mixed race himself
have on the multiracial movement?
This study of the Hapa movement raises other questions as well: How will the growing
numbers of mixed race people, transnational/transracial adoptions, and the multiracial movement more generally affect dominant cultural understandings of race in the future? Will racial
identity for multiracial people become symbolic or will it influence attitudes toward policies
regarding race (e.g. Masuoka 2008)? What other kinds of policy transformations will come
with changing values and cultural shifts in the way we view race? By celebrating their multiplicity and establishing their voice in all of their communities, Hapas are changing the ways
we currently conceptualize race.
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What Are You - Explaining Identity As A Goal of The Multiracial Hapa Movement

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