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CHAPTER 7 Rebecca Chiyoko King "Eligible" to Be Japanese American: Multiraciality in Basketball Leagues and Beauty Pageants In the year 2000, when the Office of Management and Budget changed the way that race was enumerated in the U.S. Census to allow people to self-report more than one race, many Asian American communities came face to face with the fact that their demographics are shifting to include an increasing number of multiracial members. In general , Asian American community groups did not support changing the census to allow multiraciality to be expressed because they worried that the inclusion of a "multiracial" category would decrease the proportion of people who reported themselves as Asian American (U.S. Department ofCoriunerce 1997: 2). Because financial and other resources available to Asian Americans are often determined by the size of the community, and because this size is determined by the census numbers, many worried that the change would summarily deplete Asian American communities of needed resources. In addition, Asian Americans traditionally have been undercounted in the census. This was of increasing concern, because overall the Asian American community is small relative to other groups.! The debate over the changes in the 2000 U.S. Census put the attention squarely on one ofthe fastest-changing demographics in Asian American communities-mixed-race Asian Americans. This chapter examines the issues surrounding recognition of multiraciality through two case studies in the Japanese American community-beauty pageants and basketball leagues. In particular , it focuses on the racial eligibility rules that guide participation and access to these two community institutions. The evolution of a larger multiracial population within Asian American communities illuminates a new demographic trend that will continue to have an effect on Copyrighted Material "ELIGIBLE" TO BE JAPANESE AMERICAN 121 how those communities are defined. In addition, the increasing number of multiracial Asian American people provides a case to examine possible strategies for racial and ethnic community change.2 Mixed-race Asian Americans could point to this blurring of racial and ethnic lines when they transgress racial and ethnic boundaries to identify with both their Asian American group and their other racial or ethnic group. Although Asian America historically has had its multiracial people-for example, Sui Sin Far, often touted as one of Asian American literature's first voices, was multiracial -the issue of multiraciality is relatively new in the community (Root 1996: xiv). Multiracial Asian Americans have not always found being "mixed" easy in a community that, until the 1960s, was relatively monoracial. Unlike in the African American community, whose history of "mixing" is long recognized, mixed-race Asian Americans have found themselves a new and often rejected part of the Asian American community (King and DaCosta 1996). In addition, many Amerasians or Eurasians were "faces" that reminded people of war (for the Vietnamese and South Koreans) and therefore were often seen as "the dust of life" (Valverde 1992: 148). Are multiracial Asian Americans the future of Asian American communities as they remain in the United States and come to intermingle with other racial and ethnic groups? Or are mixed-race Asian Americans symbols of Asian American communities ' being swallowed up by assimilation? Traditional scholars of racial and ethnic relations have argued that the longer a racial community remains in the United States, the more culturally and structurally assimilated it becomes (Gordon 1964). Because of rising socioeconomic status, educational levels, and intermarriage rates, Asian Americans have often been targeted as one of the most assimilated racial and ethnic groups. Others, however, point out that assimilation is not the only possibility -that there is in fact evidence of the development of "panethnic" Asian American institutions and communities (see Espiritu 1992). These panethnic organizations tend to bring previously disparate Asian ethnic groups together around a common political or social goal. In this chapter, however, I argue that there is a third option for racial and ethnic community development, one that is neither panethnic nor assimilationist. This process, which I call a "transracial ethnic strategy," is being used among Japanese Americans community to incorporate people of mixed Japanese American people into the community while excluding members of otherAsian ethnic groups and other racial groups. As I will show, in the basketball leagues, multiracial Japanese Americans are seen as "authentic" and rightful participants in Japanese American organizations and are given priority over members of other non-Japanese American (Caucasian, black, Chinese, Korean, Filipino, etc.) groups. This represents not a joining together of Asian ethnic groups in a panethnic formation...

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