I finally began actual research today!
After catching up with e-mails this morning, I took the subway to the outskirts of Seoul to meet with a professor who I was told is a "rare specialist on this topic in Korea." That I found him at all was a stroke of pure luck. With no solid leads for my research at the end of June, I started e-mailing dozens of professors in Asian American Studies and Korean Studies programs across the U.S. , trying to find anyone who knew something about mixed-race issues in Korea. A chain of four or so e-mails("oh, you should try e-mailing so-and-so"..."oh, actually, I don't really know anything about this; try so-and-so") finally led me to this guy.
As it turns out, this "rare specialist," does not actually specialize in mixed-race issues, but rather in migrant issues. But then again, given how invisible these people are, I guess even having a passing interest(and he certainly has much more than that) in mixed-race issues makes one a "specialist" here. We chatted for about an hour, and I learned a lot about the lay of the mixed-race land:
To the extent that there is a mixed-race "movement" in Korea(I put movement in quotations because their numbers are so small and their power virtually nonexistent), there are two factions. At the top of these factions are two men in their 50s or 60s.
It's unlikely that I'll get to meet with of these men, Park Geun-sik, while I'm here. Park is the face of the Korea America Association("America" being the key word), a decades-old private association of Korean and American(both white and black) descent. This particular faction of mixed-race Koreans takes great pride in tracing their heritage to the, "greatest country in the world;" they're not from those, "poor Asian countries," like other mixed folks. Learning about their attitudes reminded me of an e-mail exchange I had with a friend discussing how race and gender played into a decision I was making at the time. In one e-mail, he reminded me, "women can do as much damage to women as men have. (same thing for minorities...)"
Oh, so I'll also elaborate on what I meant when I said that the mixed-race movement has virtually no political power. Park's Korea America Association has no financial resources and meets out of his home; from what I understood, it is more discussion forum than political advocacy group.
I'm hopeful that I'll get to meet with Park's "rival," Bae Gi Chul, during my time here. Bae left the Korea America Association to start a pan-multicultural organization, one that includes, I presume, Kosians, migrant workers, and any other non-Koreans living in Korea. He's trying to add up the small numbers that compose each individual "non-Korean" population and create an actual movement, something more than the same-old ad hoc discussions in some guy's house that have been going on for decades.
Tuesday, 31 July 2007
Monday, 30 July 2007
What Does Kim Jong Il Think About Me?
a 2006 editorial from Rodong Sinmun ("Newspaper of the workers"), the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea, and the most widely read newspaper in North Korea
Recently, in South Korea, a strange game pursuing the weakening of the fundamental character of our race and making society “multiethnic and multiracial” is unfolding.
Those responsible for this commotion are spreading confounding rumors like South Korea is a “multiracial area” mixed with the blood of Americans and several other races, how we must “overcome closed ethnic nationalism,” and we must embrace “the inclusiveness and openness of a multiethnic nation” like the United States.
The words themselves take a knife to the feeling of our people, but even more serious is that this anti-national theory of “multiethnic, multiracial society” has already gone beyond the stage of discussion. Already, they’ve decided that from 2009, content related to “multiracial, multiethnic culture” would be included in elementary, middle and high school textbooks that have until now stressed that Koreans are the “descendents of Dangun,” “of one blood line” and “one race,” and to change the terms “families of international marriage” and “families of foreign laborers” to “multicultural families.” This is an outrage that makes it impossible to repress the rage of the people/race.
To start from the conclusion, the argument for “multiethnic, multiracial society” cried for by pro-American flunkeyists in South Korea is an unpardonable argument to obliterate the race by denying the homogeneity of the Korean race and to make an immigrant society out of South Korea, to make it a hodgepodge, to Americanize it.
The race (ethnic group) is a social unit of ethnic components formed historically and a community sharing the same fate, and said race exists because it has a character that distinguishes it from other races. Ethnic identity becomes an important weapon in personal and social development. Because of this, all races value their uniqueness and highlight their excellence, and by doing so give strength to awakening and unifying the components of the race. Today, with the wave of “globalization” inundating the world, nations have confronted it and insisted on their ethnic character and built walls to protect it; there is not one nation or race that has denied itself.
In a reality where domination and colonialism threatens the fates of weaker races, to deny the the uniqueness and excellence of our homogenous race is an act of treason preaching the spiritual disarmament of the race.
The pro-American traitors singing the arguments of “multiethnic, multiracial society” have not even a basic understanding of the race’s point of view or the historical development of society and are silly asses without even the slightest ethnic spirit.
Homogeneity, which no other race in the world has, is the pride of our race and becomes the source of the unity needed in the struggle for eternal development and prosperity. Because the homogeneity of the race is so precious, our people have sacrificed blood and lives to walk the long and difficult path of reunification, and now we are cultivating the June 15 era of reunification with all our patriotic fervor. If we cannot save the homogeneity of the race, we cannot protect the fate of either the race of the individual before American schemes for domination, nor can we block the schemes of the Japanese reactionaries to reinvade based on claims of sovereignty over the Dokdo islets. The anti-national character of the arguments for “multiethnic, multiracial society” is that it denies the race itself and entrusts the nation and race to the imperialists.
When people are calling for the entire people to unite their strength and reunify the Fatherland and raise up the majesty of the homogenous race, it’s a serious problem that there arguments to deny the race and obliterate the race have appeared in South Korea. Now is the era of independent unification to end 60 years of division between North and South and to establish the structural homogeneity of the race, and the trend of this age is “to handle things within the race” (uri minjok-ggiri). The argument for a “multiethnic, multiracial society” is a poison that weakens the basic ideology of this era and is anti-reunification logic. Anti-national arguments running counter to the direction of the people in South Korea is clearly the result of criminal schemes by pro-American groups, including the Grand National Party, and behind-the-scenes control by the United States to make the bloodlines of North and South different, block the June 15 era of reunification and make permanent the division of the Korean race.
The issue of mixed-race people being raised in South Korea is completely a product of U.S. military occupation of South Korea. How spiritless these fellows must be that not only do they not raise up the value of having the U.S. military withdraw to bring an end to this tragic reality, but instead are trying to make the problem part of society.
That arguments for a “multiethnic, multiracial society,” which make it impossible to repress ones racial shame and rage, are openly going around South Korea and there are moves to make them a reality shows how dangerous the criminal schemes of the United States to make the world unipolar are.
All sectors of the South Korean people must boldly reject the anti-national schemes of the flunkeyist traitors to toss aside our identity and racial character and even sully the bloodlines of our race and obliterate it. They must also raise up the values of putting the Korean race first and settling everything within our race and actively stand up in the patriotic struggle to protect the Korean race and bring about reunification.
Recently, in South Korea, a strange game pursuing the weakening of the fundamental character of our race and making society “multiethnic and multiracial” is unfolding.
Those responsible for this commotion are spreading confounding rumors like South Korea is a “multiracial area” mixed with the blood of Americans and several other races, how we must “overcome closed ethnic nationalism,” and we must embrace “the inclusiveness and openness of a multiethnic nation” like the United States.
The words themselves take a knife to the feeling of our people, but even more serious is that this anti-national theory of “multiethnic, multiracial society” has already gone beyond the stage of discussion. Already, they’ve decided that from 2009, content related to “multiracial, multiethnic culture” would be included in elementary, middle and high school textbooks that have until now stressed that Koreans are the “descendents of Dangun,” “of one blood line” and “one race,” and to change the terms “families of international marriage” and “families of foreign laborers” to “multicultural families.” This is an outrage that makes it impossible to repress the rage of the people/race.
To start from the conclusion, the argument for “multiethnic, multiracial society” cried for by pro-American flunkeyists in South Korea is an unpardonable argument to obliterate the race by denying the homogeneity of the Korean race and to make an immigrant society out of South Korea, to make it a hodgepodge, to Americanize it.
The race (ethnic group) is a social unit of ethnic components formed historically and a community sharing the same fate, and said race exists because it has a character that distinguishes it from other races. Ethnic identity becomes an important weapon in personal and social development. Because of this, all races value their uniqueness and highlight their excellence, and by doing so give strength to awakening and unifying the components of the race. Today, with the wave of “globalization” inundating the world, nations have confronted it and insisted on their ethnic character and built walls to protect it; there is not one nation or race that has denied itself.
In a reality where domination and colonialism threatens the fates of weaker races, to deny the the uniqueness and excellence of our homogenous race is an act of treason preaching the spiritual disarmament of the race.
The pro-American traitors singing the arguments of “multiethnic, multiracial society” have not even a basic understanding of the race’s point of view or the historical development of society and are silly asses without even the slightest ethnic spirit.
Homogeneity, which no other race in the world has, is the pride of our race and becomes the source of the unity needed in the struggle for eternal development and prosperity. Because the homogeneity of the race is so precious, our people have sacrificed blood and lives to walk the long and difficult path of reunification, and now we are cultivating the June 15 era of reunification with all our patriotic fervor. If we cannot save the homogeneity of the race, we cannot protect the fate of either the race of the individual before American schemes for domination, nor can we block the schemes of the Japanese reactionaries to reinvade based on claims of sovereignty over the Dokdo islets. The anti-national character of the arguments for “multiethnic, multiracial society” is that it denies the race itself and entrusts the nation and race to the imperialists.
When people are calling for the entire people to unite their strength and reunify the Fatherland and raise up the majesty of the homogenous race, it’s a serious problem that there arguments to deny the race and obliterate the race have appeared in South Korea. Now is the era of independent unification to end 60 years of division between North and South and to establish the structural homogeneity of the race, and the trend of this age is “to handle things within the race” (uri minjok-ggiri). The argument for a “multiethnic, multiracial society” is a poison that weakens the basic ideology of this era and is anti-reunification logic. Anti-national arguments running counter to the direction of the people in South Korea is clearly the result of criminal schemes by pro-American groups, including the Grand National Party, and behind-the-scenes control by the United States to make the bloodlines of North and South different, block the June 15 era of reunification and make permanent the division of the Korean race.
The issue of mixed-race people being raised in South Korea is completely a product of U.S. military occupation of South Korea. How spiritless these fellows must be that not only do they not raise up the value of having the U.S. military withdraw to bring an end to this tragic reality, but instead are trying to make the problem part of society.
That arguments for a “multiethnic, multiracial society,” which make it impossible to repress ones racial shame and rage, are openly going around South Korea and there are moves to make them a reality shows how dangerous the criminal schemes of the United States to make the world unipolar are.
All sectors of the South Korean people must boldly reject the anti-national schemes of the flunkeyist traitors to toss aside our identity and racial character and even sully the bloodlines of our race and obliterate it. They must also raise up the values of putting the Korean race first and settling everything within our race and actively stand up in the patriotic struggle to protect the Korean race and bring about reunification.
Retrospecting
Given the Enrique post("I don't look Filipino, but I am.") and the promise of the "Mixed-Race in White Face" post, I thought I'd give some background and re-post the very first post I wrote for the blog I kept while studying in Seoul last summer(2006). Reading it again makes me feel a little jaded; only a minute or two of skin shock when I returned this time.
June 12, 2006
White
I arrived in Seoul late Monday night, June 5. Everywhere I went my first three days in Seoul, I went with Korean family or friends who came from Yale with me. To class. To set up a bank account. To breakfast, lunch, and dinner. To search for better housing. To buy cell phones. To shop. To explore Sinchon. In the hustle and bustle of getting set up for three months in Seoul, I hadn't had a free moment to explore Sinchon(the university district where I live) on my own.
Not until Thursday night did I have plans that brought me out alone. I had called my hal muh ni(grandmother) earlier in the day, and working around her schedule more than mine(her's includes English, voice, and computer classes--how amazing is that at 82!), we planned to meet at 6 PM in front of the Hyundai Department Store just a few minutes walk from where I live. I had some time on my hands that afternoon, so I set out a little early to wander around Sinchon by myself.
After traveling in Europe last spring break, I'd grown accustomed to a certain level of anonymity in my travels. As long as I kept my camera tucked away and looked like I was going somewhere, anyone might mistake me for a native. That's not the case here where I see maybe ten white people each day(and that's a generous estimate). But, somehow, I didn't realize how much I stand out from the crowd until I ventured out alone for the first time. As soon as I stepped out of our building, I felt different. As I merged into the crowd, I felt like I was forcing myself into the flow of foot traffic rather than blending into it. Without any Koreans by my side, I felt so intensely white, like such a spectacle.
I may not consider myself to be white, but that doesn't change the fact that everyone else everywhere does after just one quick, passing glance. At home, I've accepted the fact that my racial identity is obvious to no one but myself. The looks of shock and disbelief I get when people find out I'm half-Korean have long ceased to bother me. But, here, I cannot go anywhere, do anything without being noticed. Though there weren't too many people staring me down or gawking, I can say without any conceit that I am always an object of attention. And, somehow, that makes the assumptions I know people are making("Oh, a white person") more personally offensive.
On that first walk out alone, my hyper-consciousness of my whiteness made me physically sick. I hadn't gone more than a block before I felt so uncomfortable that I just wanted to go back to my room and watch the One Tree Hill: Season 2 DVDs I'd brought with me. It was a little disconcerting, after all, to realize that I really don't fit in at all in this place I love so much. Standing out as I did, I really felt that I couldn't call this place my own like I wanted to. I kept wanting to scream, "I'M HALF KOREAN!," to stop random passerbys and inform them that I had a greater claim on this country than any other place. Being thrown into a homogenous population which only I know I belong to messed with my head a little bit, I guess.
I've grown comfortable in the days that have passed with walking around alone. A few more trips out alone and it was easy enough to become less sensitive about being an object of attention. All the rest of it--this identity crisis of sorts--I'm still grappling with. Maybe it's insecurity, but I just want these people to know what I know about myself: that I am Korean and I am very proud of that part of my identity.
June 12, 2006
White
I arrived in Seoul late Monday night, June 5. Everywhere I went my first three days in Seoul, I went with Korean family or friends who came from Yale with me. To class. To set up a bank account. To breakfast, lunch, and dinner. To search for better housing. To buy cell phones. To shop. To explore Sinchon. In the hustle and bustle of getting set up for three months in Seoul, I hadn't had a free moment to explore Sinchon(the university district where I live) on my own.
Not until Thursday night did I have plans that brought me out alone. I had called my hal muh ni(grandmother) earlier in the day, and working around her schedule more than mine(her's includes English, voice, and computer classes--how amazing is that at 82!), we planned to meet at 6 PM in front of the Hyundai Department Store just a few minutes walk from where I live. I had some time on my hands that afternoon, so I set out a little early to wander around Sinchon by myself.
After traveling in Europe last spring break, I'd grown accustomed to a certain level of anonymity in my travels. As long as I kept my camera tucked away and looked like I was going somewhere, anyone might mistake me for a native. That's not the case here where I see maybe ten white people each day(and that's a generous estimate). But, somehow, I didn't realize how much I stand out from the crowd until I ventured out alone for the first time. As soon as I stepped out of our building, I felt different. As I merged into the crowd, I felt like I was forcing myself into the flow of foot traffic rather than blending into it. Without any Koreans by my side, I felt so intensely white, like such a spectacle.
I may not consider myself to be white, but that doesn't change the fact that everyone else everywhere does after just one quick, passing glance. At home, I've accepted the fact that my racial identity is obvious to no one but myself. The looks of shock and disbelief I get when people find out I'm half-Korean have long ceased to bother me. But, here, I cannot go anywhere, do anything without being noticed. Though there weren't too many people staring me down or gawking, I can say without any conceit that I am always an object of attention. And, somehow, that makes the assumptions I know people are making("Oh, a white person") more personally offensive.
On that first walk out alone, my hyper-consciousness of my whiteness made me physically sick. I hadn't gone more than a block before I felt so uncomfortable that I just wanted to go back to my room and watch the One Tree Hill: Season 2 DVDs I'd brought with me. It was a little disconcerting, after all, to realize that I really don't fit in at all in this place I love so much. Standing out as I did, I really felt that I couldn't call this place my own like I wanted to. I kept wanting to scream, "I'M HALF KOREAN!," to stop random passerbys and inform them that I had a greater claim on this country than any other place. Being thrown into a homogenous population which only I know I belong to messed with my head a little bit, I guess.
I've grown comfortable in the days that have passed with walking around alone. A few more trips out alone and it was easy enough to become less sensitive about being an object of attention. All the rest of it--this identity crisis of sorts--I'm still grappling with. Maybe it's insecurity, but I just want these people to know what I know about myself: that I am Korean and I am very proud of that part of my identity.
Sunday, 29 July 2007
Do You Know
Now, I agree with the New York Times 's official decision that Rihanna's "Umbrella" is the song of the summer(did you hear she's starting her own line of them?!).
In fact, I agree so much that I listened to "Umbrella" on repeat for a full 3 days after first hearing it at a San Diego club, added "Rihanna deflecting water" to my facebook interests, and have decided that "Rihanna-painted-silver" is a finalist for my Halloween costume this year(how else can I outdo last year's K-Fed)?
But, last weekend, my friend, Victor, introduced me to what is now another personal favorite song of the summer: Enrique Iglesias's Do You Know(Ping Pong Song):
In the subsuquent google-stalking that follows any new song/celebrity obsession, I discovered a few interesting things:
1. Enrique is not that great of a live singer/performer(I especially like the, "here we go! Uh!"):
2. He recently got his trademark mole("entertainment’s most famous blemish," says The Sun) removed because it was "cancerous." Not because that was an easier solution than continuing to tell photographers they could only shoot from his left side or strategically blocking the mole with his hand.
3. Yup--he's half-Asian! Or half APA to be exact. Enrique is the son of famous Spanish singer Julio Iglesias and Filipina socialite Isabel Preysler. Additional google-stalking led to the discover of this interview exchange:
R: Melanie Brown also e-mailed into us last night, and she says she was lucky enough to meet you in London last January, when you were here. She's obviously one of your dedicated fans. And you told her that you speak, is this right, Tagalog? Tegalog?
E: Ah Tagalog.
R: What is it? And were you telling her the truth?
E: Oh Tagalog, no because I am part Filipino.
R: Yeah.
E: And in the Philippines they speak Tagalog, but I don't really speak Tagalog. Did I say I spoke Tagalog?
R: So she says.
E: No I don't think I, no oh maybe, oh I'm sorry if I did. I'm a stup~d li@r sometimes.
R: I wanted to know what it was, because I never heard the word.
E: No that's why because I'm part Filipino.
R: Fantastic.
E: I don't look Filipino, but I am.
And this is a good stopping point for a future personal post: Mixed-Race in White Face.
Saturday, 28 July 2007
Dreaming of Diaspora
I've just arrived in Korea for four-and-a-half weeks of what I expect to be deeply-draining and deeply-personal field research. On Monday, I'll start meeting with professors, trying to win over NGOs, and wandering around Seoul's migrant neighborhoods and U.S. military camptowns, searching for young adult(ages 18-30ish) mixed-race Koreans to interview. Not American citizens like me, but mixed-race Koreans who were born and raised in Korea, a country that prides itself in its, "unified bloodline."
This ideology of racial purity has produced a society where the few individuals(and by few, I mean an estimated 5000 "Amerasians"-- people of mixed American(primarily white or black) and Korean heritage, and an estimated 30,000 "Kosians" -- people of mixed Korean and other-Asian descent) who deviate from the monoracial norm live in the margins of society, face unrelenting discrimination, and consequentially suffer from many of the problems that plague marginalized minorities across the world: high drop-out rates from schools, large numbers of suicides and attempted suicides, poor emloyment opportunities--not to mention just dealing with the fact that they are one of 35,000 exceptions to a monoracial narrative of nationhood in a country of 50,000,000.
Before studying in Seoul last summer, it had never really occured to me that these 35,000 contradictions to Korea's racial ideology existed. Perhaps the idea had crossed my mind at some point, or I intuitively assumed that there must be people like me in my other motherland, but I had never bothered to find out.
But, arriving in Seoul last June, I landed in the middle of national discussion on race.
Two months before my arrival, 2006 Super Bowl MVP, Hines Ward, a football player of Korean and African-American descent, had completed a triumphant tour to the land of his mother. Here, he had been feted by politicians, celebrated by the (notoriously sensationalist) Korean media, and named an honorary citizen of Seoul. Somewhere in this hoopla, cultural commentators coined terms like, the "Hines Ward effect" and "Hines Ward syndrome," to describe Ward's impact on the Korean society, speculating that Ward's celebrity had begun to force a shift in how Koreans think about race.
But, has life for mixed-race Koreans really changed in this Hines Ward era? Well, the Korean government granted legal status to mixed-race Koreans(apparently my existence was illegal in Korea on my previous two visits here...ok, I'm dramatizing a bit) and decided that instead of labeling mixed-race Koreans with the derogatory term honhyol("mixed-blood people"--basically Korea's answer to the Harry Potter series' "mudblood") in government documents, they would start using a new term: "people of international marriages"(so even if you were born in Korea and have spent your entire life here, you're still not Korean...you're a "person of an international marriage"). But, let's be fair, at least these measures are more proactive then deciding that the worst problem mixed-race Koreans face is discrimination from crayon companies
During the two-and-half months I was here, I couldn't stop wondering about these 35,000 Koreans; and thinking about how race importantly—but very differently—impacted both my and their lives compelled me to study race in an academic context. When I returned to Yale last fall, I decided to take Introduction to Ethnicity, Race, and Migration, a class that taught me, among many lessons, how to better articulate my own experiences as a person of mixed racial heritage. And that fall, I began to develop my own plan to take advantage of Yale's generous funding for its students' quixotic projects.
As I was putting this project together and applying for grants, I discussd my plans with several professor and graduate students. Indepedent of each other, two former TAs recommended that I read a new book by Columbia professor, Saidiya Hartman, Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route. One told me she thought I'd, "appreciate the prose and the approach." The other commented that it was, "a must read for anyone interested in attending to the silences in historical archives and negotiating the tension between memory and history."
I put it on my summer reading list and just finished the last few pages during the near twenty-four hours of flying that brought me back to Seoul.
Hartman's self-described "exercse in literary fieldwork" didn't disapoint, providing me a powerful framework for thinking about and reckoning with histories of trauma, pain, and loss. And, looking back at her prologue during my connecting flight from Tokyo and Seoul, I was struck by the similarities between our motivations and goals.
Hartman writes:
"I had come to Ghana in search of strangers...As both a professor conducting research on slavery and a descendent of the enslaved, I was desperate to reclaim the dead, that is, to reckon with the lives undone and obliterated in the making of human commodities...I arrived in Ghana intent upon finding the remnants of those who had vanished.
It's hard to explain what propels a quixotic mission, or why you miss people you don't even know...The simplest answer is that I wanted to bring the past closer. I wanted to understand how the ordeal of slavery began. I wanted to comprehend how a boy came to be worth three yards of cotton and a bottle of rum or a woman equivalent to a basketful of cowries. I wanted to cross the boundary that seperated kin from stranger."
But, unlike Hartman, who wrote that, "neither blood nor belonging accounted for my presence in Ghana," blood and belonging are exactly what have brought me back to Seoul this summer. My mixed-blood and sense of belonging to those who share it have brought me back here to listen to my peers who share my mixed-blood, hoping that with them, I'll find something I've been missing, that with them, I'll begin to forge a diaspora that's tied to no single ancestral homeland--or, at least, we'll establish some trans-Pacific lines of communication where none existed before.
Where Hartman sought to "reclaim the dead," I seek to find the living, not to "reclaim" them, but simply to hear and share what they have to say. Where Hartman searched for the traces of unrecorded voices of the dead, I am searching for living voices to record.
This ideology of racial purity has produced a society where the few individuals(and by few, I mean an estimated 5000 "Amerasians"-- people of mixed American(primarily white or black) and Korean heritage, and an estimated 30,000 "Kosians" -- people of mixed Korean and other-Asian descent) who deviate from the monoracial norm live in the margins of society, face unrelenting discrimination, and consequentially suffer from many of the problems that plague marginalized minorities across the world: high drop-out rates from schools, large numbers of suicides and attempted suicides, poor emloyment opportunities--not to mention just dealing with the fact that they are one of 35,000 exceptions to a monoracial narrative of nationhood in a country of 50,000,000.
Before studying in Seoul last summer, it had never really occured to me that these 35,000 contradictions to Korea's racial ideology existed. Perhaps the idea had crossed my mind at some point, or I intuitively assumed that there must be people like me in my other motherland, but I had never bothered to find out.
But, arriving in Seoul last June, I landed in the middle of national discussion on race.
Two months before my arrival, 2006 Super Bowl MVP, Hines Ward, a football player of Korean and African-American descent, had completed a triumphant tour to the land of his mother. Here, he had been feted by politicians, celebrated by the (notoriously sensationalist) Korean media, and named an honorary citizen of Seoul. Somewhere in this hoopla, cultural commentators coined terms like, the "Hines Ward effect" and "Hines Ward syndrome," to describe Ward's impact on the Korean society, speculating that Ward's celebrity had begun to force a shift in how Koreans think about race.But, has life for mixed-race Koreans really changed in this Hines Ward era? Well, the Korean government granted legal status to mixed-race Koreans(apparently my existence was illegal in Korea on my previous two visits here...ok, I'm dramatizing a bit) and decided that instead of labeling mixed-race Koreans with the derogatory term honhyol("mixed-blood people"--basically Korea's answer to the Harry Potter series' "mudblood") in government documents, they would start using a new term: "people of international marriages"(so even if you were born in Korea and have spent your entire life here, you're still not Korean...you're a "person of an international marriage"). But, let's be fair, at least these measures are more proactive then deciding that the worst problem mixed-race Koreans face is discrimination from crayon companies
During the two-and-half months I was here, I couldn't stop wondering about these 35,000 Koreans; and thinking about how race importantly—but very differently—impacted both my and their lives compelled me to study race in an academic context. When I returned to Yale last fall, I decided to take Introduction to Ethnicity, Race, and Migration, a class that taught me, among many lessons, how to better articulate my own experiences as a person of mixed racial heritage. And that fall, I began to develop my own plan to take advantage of Yale's generous funding for its students' quixotic projects.
As I was putting this project together and applying for grants, I discussd my plans with several professor and graduate students. Indepedent of each other, two former TAs recommended that I read a new book by Columbia professor, Saidiya Hartman, Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route. One told me she thought I'd, "appreciate the prose and the approach." The other commented that it was, "a must read for anyone interested in attending to the silences in historical archives and negotiating the tension between memory and history."
I put it on my summer reading list and just finished the last few pages during the near twenty-four hours of flying that brought me back to Seoul.
Hartman's self-described "exercse in literary fieldwork" didn't disapoint, providing me a powerful framework for thinking about and reckoning with histories of trauma, pain, and loss. And, looking back at her prologue during my connecting flight from Tokyo and Seoul, I was struck by the similarities between our motivations and goals.
Hartman writes:
"I had come to Ghana in search of strangers...As both a professor conducting research on slavery and a descendent of the enslaved, I was desperate to reclaim the dead, that is, to reckon with the lives undone and obliterated in the making of human commodities...I arrived in Ghana intent upon finding the remnants of those who had vanished.
It's hard to explain what propels a quixotic mission, or why you miss people you don't even know...The simplest answer is that I wanted to bring the past closer. I wanted to understand how the ordeal of slavery began. I wanted to comprehend how a boy came to be worth three yards of cotton and a bottle of rum or a woman equivalent to a basketful of cowries. I wanted to cross the boundary that seperated kin from stranger."But, unlike Hartman, who wrote that, "neither blood nor belonging accounted for my presence in Ghana," blood and belonging are exactly what have brought me back to Seoul this summer. My mixed-blood and sense of belonging to those who share it have brought me back here to listen to my peers who share my mixed-blood, hoping that with them, I'll find something I've been missing, that with them, I'll begin to forge a diaspora that's tied to no single ancestral homeland--or, at least, we'll establish some trans-Pacific lines of communication where none existed before.
Where Hartman sought to "reclaim the dead," I seek to find the living, not to "reclaim" them, but simply to hear and share what they have to say. Where Hartman searched for the traces of unrecorded voices of the dead, I am searching for living voices to record.
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