more thoughts on thesis

Before you read this you should read my first post about my thesis topic. I've been thinking about my thesis topic. I want to distill in down to something that is not too abstract that it's hard to illustrate graphically. I was thinking about my perception about being biracial and how growing up in Hawaii where is common to be biracial/multi-racial. I know that other people struggle with belonging to one ethnic group or another, but I don't. So the more that I read about it the more I think to myself how not only is it a problem that people percieve me to be one race and not two. But, it also bothers me that I never had to deal with this until I went to college.

I can remember the first time I became aware that multi-racial people got harassed. I was home watching Ricky Lake (remember when she had a talk show) and the topic was biracial families. I remember thinking how weird it was that these people were talking for an hour about their racial background and were getting so worked up about it. Now I could go on and on about the subject. But then I was like,"your biracial big whoop" why are you on TV yelling about it. I know that sounds really insensitive, but you have to remember that as a teenager in Hawaii, I didn't ever consider myself part of a minority group.

Shortly after my brother moved from Hawaii to Seattle and took a class at Seattle Central Community College called Challenging the Matrix. It was a core studies class about examining Social Sciences from a alternative perspective. In that class they had a whole section on racial politics in the United States. He was assigned a paper on his personal experience with racism. He couldn't do it. At that point in his life he had never experienced racism. I have always felt the same. I never experienced racism or prejudice before I moved away from home. I was part of the majority in Hawaii.

I'm going home for a wedding on July 13th. On my visits to home,I never thought about the transition I make from minority to majority. This time I'm really going to pay attention to my behavior and feelings about my status.


Some links about interracial families
http://www.diversitydtg.com/articles/interracial_families.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hapa
http://www.enterprisehonolulu.com/html/display.cfm?sid=176
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0828/p03s01-ussc.html