oh yeah, i'm japanese

I won't tell you where I was, or what I was doing, but when I was busy doing my *thang*, I was also reflecting on my last post, and on what it means to be Japanese American.

In my last post, I doubtfully wondered if I could compare growing up Japanese American and middle-class in Hawaii to being African American and poor in New Orleans. Obviously, the class disparity renders such positions incomparable, but to what extent does race influence this difference?

Anyway, today it donned on me (DuH!) that Japan is treated as if it were a western country, as if race itself ceases to matter in the First/Third, North/South division. But still, being Japanese is not at all like being white.

But am I more white than brown? And how about if I look more brown that white? If I look more like I come from Fuling, China than from Yamaguchi, Japan? If race is a social construction, then does my appearance rather than my actual ancestry contribute more to shaping my hue identity? And what about agency, what if I choose to identify more with being brown, simply because that's the position I seek from which to do honest activism?

And to further complicate things, what does it mean to refuse to conflate my Okinawanness with my Japaneseness? What does it mean to be half-bred, half-colonized?