The Mixed-Race Experience: Reflections and Revelations on Multicultural Identity

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Now is the perfect time to use this blending of races and cultures to bridge communities – you could say that mixed-race people are the future. Get into it! An estimated 1 in 49 marriages are international marriages in Japan. The majority of international marriages are between Japanese and Chinese, Filipino or Korean people. The documentary follows the lives of five ethnic half-Japanese people. It is narrated by themselves, it includes interviews and cinéma vérité. David Mitsuaki Yano is Ghanaian and Japanese. He seeks to reconcile his mostly Japanese childhood with his mother's country Ghana. He wants to build a school in Ghana and thereby connects with his Japanese community. Sophia Fukunishi is half Australian and Japanese. She moved to Tokyo at 27 years old and has obstacles with trying to assimilate into a very different Japanese culture. The Mexican-Japanese Oi family with Gabriela, Alex, Tetsuya and Sara share the challenge of raising multi-lingual, multi-cultural children in Japan. The older son Alex has difficulty integrating into his school and suffers from bullying. Edward Yutaka Sumoto is Venezuelan and Japanese. He struggled with his hafu identity and the disconnect with Japanese culture. He now actively works to promote multicultural awareness in Japan. Fusae Miyako is Korean and Japanese. She can easily blend into Japanese society due to looking just like an average Japanese person. So she is not easily identified as hafu on the spot. Fusae was led to believe she was entirely Japanese until discovering otherwise in her mid-teens. As the personal stories are told of the five protagonists, it is discovered that they each have different personal experiences, struggles and accomplishments. There's also diversity among them due to factors such as family, relationships, education, appearance, language skills and upbringing. Race will always be a schizophrenic issue and the only way to dismantle the idea that white is the ‘ruler’ or the ‘leader’ is to ensure that racial education is taught from all perspectives. We first listen to our parents then we listen to our teachers. We then listen to our social circles and take bite-size pieces to formulate our own idea of race for what it was, what it is now and for what it will become. It will anger us, it will make us rage, it will make others uncomfortable but this is the cycle and has been for as long as we can remember.

From Fetishisation To Establishing A Sense Of Belonging: 3 From Fetishisation To Establishing A Sense Of Belonging: 3

Most news outlets make their money through advertising or subscriptions. But when it comes to what we’re trying to do at Vox, there are a couple reasons that we can't rely only on ads and subscriptions to keep the lights on. She is working to influence change in education to ensure the curriculum is not just taught through a white lens. This was incredibly insightful into experiences of micro-aggressions, dealing with everyday racism, navigating family and other relationships concerning racism and the duality of navigating a plethora of racial and ethnic identities.

The making of this documentary took 3 years of research, interviews and filming. It was completed in April 2013. [6] The documentary is in Japanese with English subtitles and English with Japanese subtitles. Some protagonists talk in English.

The Mixed-Race Experience - Penguin Books UK

It made me reflect and think as it's not a question of belonging. The book helped me to understand. How I identify, and being non-binary, it’s something I’m grappling with constantly. This isn’t to say that my experience is harder than other people’s. But there is that constant vigilance to not, you know, slip into comfortable. As a masculine, white-passing person, life would probably go by fine for me. It’s having that self-awareness and continuously working on the awareness to keep pushing against white supremacy and patriarchy wherever it shows up.Stonequist, E. V. (1937). The marginal man: A study in personality and culture conflict. Russell and Russell. It's a book about learning and acceptance, structured around practical tips for survival and support for living through systemic racism. There is something powerful and validating about the sharing of testimonies, and I loved how the authors let each person they interviewed really speak for themselves.