Parenting Hapas

Hi everyone, I'm a Sociology PhD student at North Carolina State University starting my dissertation research on interracial families. The purpose of my study is to examine how interracial parents racially socialize their children. I will examine how parents discuss race with their children and how families navigate issues of race and racial identity as a multiracial family. The study will take an intersectional approach by considering the role of race, gender, class, etc. in racial socialization practices of parents.

Eligibility Requirements

• Pairs of interracial parents should identify as Black and white, Asian and white, or Black and Asian
• Aged 18+
• Live in the U.S.
• Biological parents of child(ren) aged 3 to 18
• Both parents consent to participation
• Parents can be married, cohabitate, and/or coparent

I'm conducting virtual interviews with parents, so location is not a problem! I self-identify as white-Asian and look forward to chatting with folks raising mixed children.

Please DM or email me at KLJohn23@ncsu.edu if you have any questions and/or have interest in participating. Thank you!

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https://preview.redd.it/nlktcz10yeh71.png?width=1294&format=png&auto=webp&s=328ee985e7873c7b5910dc627a9657d0ef328315

Calling All Parents! 

COVID-19 has placed you in many new roles this year. It may have changed the way your child is attending school and how you are able to spend time with friends and family. With these changes can come a mix of emotions for both you and your child. 

If you are the parent of a child between 5-17 years old, we at Case Western Reserve University want to hear about YOUR experience adjusting in this 45-minute research study. 

As a thank you, each participant will be entered into a raffle for one of four giftcards. To participate, click here: https://cwru.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_1O0uCidvCzmrvdr

If you have questions, please contact: 

Amy Przeworski, Ph.D.: axp335@case.edu

Alex Piedra, B.A.: aap145@case.edu

I just noticed that this sub was set to 'private' so no one could make posts without being approved. So sorry about that, not sure why it happened. I've gone ahead and turned it off.

I know even before that, it's been quiet on here. If any of you want to come on as a mod, maybe stimulate discussions, let me know.

Hope you're all staying safe out there

I advise everyone to get the facts on this before it gets worse. If you look at the numbers, and you should, you’ll find the spread is way more dangerous than SARS or the “regular influenza”.

Check this link: https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

Check it day by day to see the increased numbers. There’s a reason Wuhan is on lockdown. It’s also a huge city that China compares to New York City.

HK Disney is shutdown, Shanghai Disney is shut down and millions of Chinese citizens are advised to stay in their homes and avoid going out.

I’m not writing this to freak others out. I want parents of mixed Asian children to not believe others saying that it’s not serious.

If you don’t believe me please do your own research.

My two cents: Wash your hands often, avoid going into highly populated areas, check your own health. If you’re young you can get through it but you can still contact it. If you are 50+ and have general health problems you can get very, deathly sick from this.

And young or old, you can have it with no symptoms after 5 days and start spreading it to others - family, friends, co- workers, partners.

Take care guys,

PS And F$(/ racism against Asians and anyone Asian-Passing that had nothing to do with starting this!

I found this dialogue very interesting. Jeremy talks about his career and how a lot of people don't know how to react to successful Asian players in the NBA. I don't know if it's Hapa related but still wanted to share the article.

https://theundefeated.com/features/jeremy-lin-on-being-the-only-asian-american-in-the-nba-at-times-it-kind-of-sucks/

Right now his team is second in the East and a favorite to make the Conference Finals. Lin has played pro basketball over 8 years.

I hope someone out there finds this interesting. If he was just a flash in the pan like some others thought he was he would've been dropped by teams at this point.

Hey all, us mods have been busy recently. Please report any posts or comments that break the rules and we'll try to take care of it as soon as we can.

Osaka unapologetically professes to be the gumbo of all her disparate ingredients; not Japanese, not Haitian, not American — she’s just Naomi, a human being who desires nothing more than to be identified by her character and abilities in a world longing to label her.

I took this from this article from Japan Times in which, my words, Naomi Osaka was "white washed" in a Nissin Cup Noodle ad.
I loved her for saying this. This is somewhat how I want to raise my daughter. I want her to be known first for her character.

The new Aquaman film might get made fun of by some critics, but the film is set to make over a Billion dollars worldwide.

The main actor's father is Hawaiian and his mother is white.

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0597388/

Also as a side-note the director is of Chinese descent, James Wan [Chinese name: 溫子仁].

People can go back and forth over if the film is a 'good movie', but the results are that is a very, successful movie and the lead actor is of mixed heritage. Also in the film there are a few references to calling him a 'Mixed mongrel' / 'Not Pure' but he ended up being Twice the King his brother was.

And yeah, I saw it with my wife. It's pretty obvious I wasn't the only one.

.... And to the ignorant people out there calling Jason "Half-American". Umm ... Hawaii is part of America. Maybe they should go back to 3rd grade.

*There should be a Aquaman 2 in the works.

Self hate is an issue for some people. In short it means hating or devaluing your personal or physical characteristics.

For example, a half-asian kid growing to despise his asian characteristics. Or growing to hate that they don’t look full asian or full white.

The internet is replete with examples and stories of how people got through a self hate stage. As kids get into their teens, peer groups have tremendous influence, as does societal messages.

What are your strategies for preventing self hate?

I feel it necessary to make a public service announcement by reminding people to never refer to apparently mixed people as looking "half-American" (or "half-Canadian"/"half-Australian"), unless the context is such that the subject's passport is relevant and the subject's looks are not. The one exception might be when the topic is the subject's BMI...

I've heard someone comment about how a U.S.-born hapa celebrity looks "half-American" more than once in recent weeks and I think people making such comments need to stop and think about how they are defining "American".

I know a few of you are still out there even though it's been quiet for a couple of months. Now I'm not going into Left vs Right discussions, but I'm just thinking about how any of you speak with your half-Chinese children if U.S. vs China business discussions come up. For example my wife is pretty open to hear my opinions but I just avoid it with the Mother in Law. I really don't talk about it in the open, in work or in public, but only with a couple close people because it's more of an international discussion.

I guess, what I'm asking, is if your kids ask your opinions on the news or why things happened (for example the Hua Wei executive in Canada), how would you explain the situation? I don't want to talk very bad about China because my son is half-Chinese, but at the same time there are a lot of good things about the U.S. and our businesses that I want him to feel connected with.

Any feedback? And if any of you follow the news or read Chinese ... this situation will get more "delicate" in 2019.

Lucky for me my son is just saying Ba Ba and Ma Ma and I have some serious time to grow into things.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Schmidt_(footballer)#Club_career

I read about him on an American soccer site, now he's been noticed by scouts out here and he is succeeding in Japan. He's a son of WMAF and even was called up to represent Japan on their national team.

I thought it was interesting that when Americans were discussing him doing well they didn't bring up that maybe he could play for the U.S. because of his being born here; but I don't want to say their opinions are based on racism, I think it's because his entire life was in Japan and his current Japanese team is probably better than a lot of MLS teams, so it makes sense random Americans would think he'd play for Japan first ... and we all know anyway Japan's soccer team is better than America's at the moment.

I hope he continues to play well and inspire other Hapas.

Our son has beautiful Asian eyes that are a mix of my chinkness and his father's caucasian eyes- in my Chinese culture we call this appearance "Pheonix eyes", according to my mother anyway. ;)

I'm out to lunch with one of my girl friends and she is also a AF married to a WM. She has two hapa kids, a son and daughter. This girlfriend is known in our friends circle to be competitive. She once told another girlfriend that their sons were about the same age but had to rub it in our other girlfriend's face that her son was a head taller than her son. My girlfriend did not take that sitting down and snapped back at her- all this happened at a breakfast table while we were all out to brunch in front of the kids so I had to intervene and play referee...basically told them both to cut that sh!t out.

So back to my luncheon, out of the blue as we are dining, my girlfriend says "You know, your kid has lighter color hair and skin but he looks more Asian than my son." So I retorted, "sure, he's got my eyes. I like that." In hindsight, I should have said "And? As if it's a bad thing to look Asian?!" I dunno, maybe she didn't mean it in a bad way and I'm reading the situation wrong. Ultimately, I didn't want to make a big deal of it in front of the kids, I believe their lives shouldn't involve adult drama. I haven't felt like bringing it up to her since.

Was I being overly sensitive here?

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The real issue that bothers me is the competition from other WMAF is real.

We should really be a supportive community- not this immature display of my d1ck is bigger than yours.

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He has dozens of World Records and has done charity work for Vietnam.

He's doing large multi-million dollar shows and here is an interview: https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/Interview-with-Fan-Yang-of-the-Gazillion-Bubble-Show-20070308

Hope someone finds it interesting, I did.

I was raised to believe that race is only skin-deep and not taught pay much attention to it.

When my kids were very young I didn't make much mention of race - I didn't want them to see race as something important enough to identify as. Eventually one of the kids started calling himself "Wasian". I didn't want to encourage it but I didn't discourage it either and that has become the term our family uses.

How have you handled this in your family?

Hi all,

I periodically take long breaks from Reddit and I’m about to take another one which may be permanent or very long.

I’m looking for someone to take my place here. Responsibilities include helping Vensa mod, keeping things on topic, civil and non-hate-groupish. Also, this sub has many readers but few that make original posts—so you’d need to periodically (say once a week) start posts that will generate some responses.

Send me a direct message if you are interested.

My experience with racism has mainly been confusion. When I see people engage in openly racist behavior, my initial reaction is often confusion, as in normal life people don’t act this way.

Because of this, I’ve adopted the idea that, as parents of mixed kids, we should do the research to know when people are being racist.

I remember one day I was at a hardware store. An asian woman was in line. As she completed her transaction and left the building, one of the workers started saying “Chang Chang Chang” and once she was gone, struck a gong that was hanging near the exit among an assortment of wind chimes. I knew that I felt very uncomfortable and confused. I eventually realized he was saying “chink chink chink” in his toothless rural accent.

The rest of that event are not terribly important—what stood out to me is that I did not recognize immediately that he was being overtly racist. In the Trump era where vicious race hate has been emboldened, it occurs to me that, as parents of mixed kids, we need to get hip to the game these overt racists are playing.

While I’m more the kind to say that we should be introspective and consider the role racism has played in our own lives, that doesn’t do much when some racist jerk decided to impose his lack of human respect into our families.

That event happened over a year ago. Since that time, I’ve monitored open racists on the web so that I have a better understanding of how these folks act. My question for you all: what has been your experience when you encountered openly hostile racists? Did you immediately recognize their actions? Or did it take a second to understand what is going on? How did you handle it? How will you act in ways that protect your kids from this kind of behavior?

Article by David French, an evangelical Christian, about his experience having a multicultural family through adoption. Lots of relevant themes: https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/08/america-soured-on-my-multiracial-family/567994/

https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/hawaii-wins-2018-little-league-world-series-defeats-south-korea-3-0-today-2018-08-26/

Not sure how it relates to Hapas but I don’t want my son thinking kids that look like him can’t play baseball. It’s not even their first championship, they’ve been strong the past 13 years.

Also congrats to South Korea, the runners up.

For monoracial parents in mixed asian relationship, optics is often brought up as a negative in online discussions. This is true regardless of gender.

It hasn’t been as present for us since we recently moved to a large city where nobody really pays attention to anybody else. But early on, in a mid size town it was certainly there.

For myself it hasn’t been entirely negative-considering that we are judged by optics, it has increased my motivation to take good care of my fitness and general appearance. I think this is fine as it encourages me to do things that are good for me. Life give you lemons, make lemonade basically.

I’m curious how other parents think about this, even if in a minor way. Like it or not, people have judgments (some worth considering, some not).

I’ve seen some couples handle it by being public with their family (online pictures of kids and family time, especially time with grandparents). Or so it seems to me as I’m a pretty private person.

Thoughts?

I'm curious how everyone else handled how to name their kids.

My husband is Vietnamese and I'm white. He and all of his siblings were born in the US. His parents gave them all traditional Vietnamese first and middle names. However, my husband and his siblings learned very quickly that most people couldn't spell it or pronounce it. So this is where the "American name" saga began. He chose a very American first name and that is what his teachers and friends called him from that point on. The same for all of his siblings.

As he got older, more and more people started calling him by his nickname as that is the name he introduces himself with (and the name I've always called him). For instance, no one at work knows he has a legal name and a nickname unless they look at his paycheck or HR record. His name badge has his nickname as his does work email. Literally the only people that call him by his legal name are his parents and siblings. Most of his cousins actually call him by his nickname. It was a bit of a mess when we bought our house because he has so many aliases.

When I got pregnant we decided we weren't going to tell anyone the name we picked out for our daughter until she was born. So after she arrived, my husband called his parents and told them she was here and told them her name. The first question my FIL asked was "What's her Vietnamese name?" My husband told him that she only had one name, an "American" one (it's not a super common or weird one). This seemed to annoy my ILs but they didn't say much else about it. Our second daughter also has an "American" name.

How did everyone else decide to name their children?