"Whoever controls the Indian Ocean will dominate Asia, the destiny of the world will be decided on its waters."
Alfred Mahan
Agree or Disagree?
Read MoreAlbany, Western Australia
Indulge in Soup, Restrain in Soup: The Curious Bothness of Soup
Whether you are operating in a Shanghainese or Cantonese, or some other food culture, a meal begins with soup because it prevents you from overeating. This is the Chinese way. To have an elaborately brewed broth, that may contain something exotic, or maybe its just the freshest carrots and pork bones available, seems to be an indulgence. But, then again it is just water molecules with flavor.
Read MoreIndulgence or Restraint? Or Both?
This sets up a bit of a false choice here. After all, we are programmed to feast. It is a survival mechanism that when we haven’t eaten for awhile and suddenly come upon food we voraciously over-consume, our bodies notifying us that if the past is any indication, there aren’t any regular mealtimes coming up soon- so eat up. But evolution has a built in tripwire. Our ancestors who came across putrid, bile-smelling carrion likely did not consume it. Others that did may have gotten a mild case of diarrhea, or maybe an intestinal infection, conditions that are benign with modern medicine, but altogether another matter in the pre-historic savannah. Those who didn’t have a gag-reflex triggered by the sight of maggots might not have made it to pass on their genes. Even if you were starving, the tradeoff of eating something that would make you sick, and dehydrate you might not be worth it. Restraint is just as evolutionarily necessary as indulgence is.
Read MoreW.E.B. Du Bois's Curious Proto-Bothness
Du Bois, put it this way: “one ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”
In Booker T. Washington it was clear there was a heavy emphasis on the “self” in self-help. But in the integrationist leanings of W.E.B. Du Bois, one can’t help but think the enterprise of being black in a white America was fraught with irreconcilable differences. Du Bois often spoke of the “color line,” which was his characterization of the dichotomy, the stacked relationship in American between black and white. The existence of intermediate racial steps like the awful-sounding “quadroon” and “octaroon” in the U.S. Census in the 1800’s betrays a stark binary. Nonetheless, the duality Du Bois and other black intellectuals grappled with conjures a Faustian one, where as Goethe’s Faust said: “two souls, alas, are housed within my breast.” It seems to be an implacable duality, one not easily quieted, one not easily realized.
When I think of bothness as it pertains to being mixed Chinese-Western, I imagine lumpy Cream of Wheat. It sounds strange yet the metaphor is clear. Bothness does not mean smoothness.
Read MoreScotland: From Small to Outsize
Scotland’s values against England’s values have aligned over the years, but it was not always so.
Any teenager consuming American movies in the 90’s can quote you William Wallace’s “Freedom!” line from Braveheart. This movie is full of factually unsupported details, with plenty of creative license taken regarding the pivotal Robert the Bruce character, and drips with sensationalized Hollywood drama; but the hardscrabble Scots and the overzealous English with much better horses and shinier armor come to life on the silver screen as separate moral-cultural universes.
Read MoreLike NATO, Hapa Sucked People in That it Shouldn't Have
Labels matter.
Hapa is one of those labels.
It sounds Hawai'ian (no wonder becasue it is Hawai'ian). Naturally it sounds welcoming. It conjures an expansive rainbow, and you just want to stream to it.
The problem though is Hapa is too vague. It tries to be everything to every mixed person.
Like NATO, Hapa sucked people in that it shouldn't have (see here also). Consequently, Hapa will face threats of a break up in the future.
Read MoreHorizontal or Vertical? More Lens to Understand Being Mixed
Which collection of stuff would you rather have: the first is broad, while the other is concentrated?
These are the two basic directions one can have in collecting anything. The items don’t have to be expensive; they don’t have to be particularly rare. The same question dawns upon every single collector: do I go wide or deep?
Read MoreBasic Research: A Lens to Think of Hapa and Eurasian
But if you listen to a lot of researchers, they'll tell you great things are often stumbled onto. The internet grew out of NASA's communication needs. It was a solution to a problem, that was initially cobbled together, and iteratively just happened. But it wouldn't have grown if not for the basic research it grew out of.
So... I think this quandary directly applies to the topic of being mixed.
Read MoreUltimately, no one Wants to Hear About Racism
Likewise, for an academic, there is no stature without “pubs” (publications, that is); publish or perish rules the day, it is engraved into the ivory tower. No tenure committee gives a damn at how amazing it is you teach. Of course, teaching evaluations could ruin you if they are horrible; nonetheless, the prevailing hurdle to tenure is number of peer-reviewed publications.
Ultimately, no one wants to hear about racism.
No one wants to hear about the discrimination that you face. No one wants to be lectured on microagressions. People care only about what you can do for them. In the end, the most effective appeals somehow, some way invoke self-interest.
Read MoreCommentary on NYT Article: "Choose Your Own Identity"
Nice piece in the NYT today by Bonnie Tsui.
Using the latest Pew research on being multiracial in America (more to come on that) as a springboard, Bonnie Tsui talks about her Chinese-Western "Hapa" 5-year-old son in the SF Bay Area.
3 key takeaways:
- "Hapa" seems to be gaining popularity with mixed people with no Asian descent
- Mixed White/Asian people in America are almost twice as likely to identify as "White" than as "Asian" (60% to 33%)
- The ability for kids in the Bay Area to choose: 1) one or the other race 2) simply "other" 3) neither 4) both, is increasingly markedly. Seems the social space is actually keeping pace with the rapid demographic changes (i.e. 1% births in the U.S. in 1970 were mixed race, whilst 10% [and rising] of births today are mixed race), which is actually quite remarkable and a testament to what an open society America is.