Labels...

Lately I have been thinking alot about the labels that people use with regards to race. Growing up in London, I was always surrounded by people whose parents were from different countries (partly because my Mum is Malaysian and I guess other "foreign wives" were drawn to her in the same way I am drawn to my foreign wife buddies here but partly because London is very cosmopolitan) In my mind, these children were the same as me, we were born in Britain, were British, we just had one or two parents who happened to be born in a different country. Growing up I never heard labels like "british-born Japanese/ Chinese" or "bi-racial" or even "half-Chinese" or any of those other terms. As Japan is a homogeneous nation, labels seem to be important and there are many words in Japanese that don`t really translate very well into English. One example is: 在日韓国人　(zai-nichi kankokujin) which describes the group of people who are ethnically Korean but have basically lived in Japan their whole lives and are to all intents and purposes Japanese. (I won`t get into the racism in Japan with regards to immigrations laws etc.. because I have to take Joey to baby massage class soon so don`t have much time.. I will save that for another day..) Another example is: 外人　(gaijin) This word literally means "person from the outside" and comes from the word 外国人　(gaikokujin) which means foreigner. While it should encompass all foreigners living in Japan, it is most commonly used to describe caucasians. The label I hate more than anything else in the world is ハーフ　(ha-fu) which is basically used to describe children of mixed marriages. The term implies that the child is half-Japanese (and it doesn`t really matter what the other half is..) When people turn to me and ask if my son is a ハーフ (ha-fu)I have two ways of responding. If I am feeling pedantic, I say "actually as my great-grandmother was Japanese, he is in fact 57% Japanese, and not ha-fu anything".. which usually leaves the person very confused. The other response is just to ignore them because it is a stupid question anyway because if you take one look at my son, it is obvious that he has Japanese blood in him. (and the lack of a babysitter/ au-pair culture here means that people instantly assume that I am his mother, even though he looks very little like me!!) I have become more conscious of labels through reading other people`s blogs as well. When I see people describing themselves as African-American or Chinese-American it makes me wonder. Did the people I hung out with at school whose parents were from other countries use these kinds of terms and I just didn`t notice? Or is it just that America, with its history of slavery and then segregation, has made race more of an issue than it is in the UK? I have never been to the US and my only knowledge of it is things I have seen on the TV, read in books/ newspapers and heard from my friends there (not forgetting the American guys I dated when I was an exchange student). (I also studied alot about US-Japan relations when I was at university but that is not really helpful when trying to understand more about the daily coming and goings in a country!) There is of course a chance that there is more going on in the UK than I ever noticed. I was always aware of groups like the British National Party (anti-immigration and racist) and there was even a guy I nearly went out with until he found out my Mum was Malaysian and i found out he was a member of the Neo-Nazis and had a Swastika on his arm. However, in my everyday life, I didn`t feel like having a Mum who was from another country was a negative thing. Now.. some of you are reading this and wondering where I am going with it.. the truthful answer is that I don`t really know. I have been musing about labels for a couple of weeks now and that moved onto a musing about how me being a foreigner is going to affect my son if he grows up in Japan. I belong to an internet group for people married to Japanese men and there have been many stories of bullying (simply for being a ha-fu and being different) that have shocked and scared me. Yesterday we got out of the lift in my apartment building and there were two little girls waiting to get on and they took one look at me and exclaimed "gaijin" and then in the next breath "dekai" (huge) I was shocked and angry because it was the first time I had seen that reaction since we moved here. The children here are usually very polite and greet me in the same way that they greet the other mothers living in the building. It made me wonder if my son is destined for a life of being categorized because I am foreign. It also made me wonder why I didn`t point at the little girl and say "ugly" because she really was... ;-) On that note, it is time for me to go to baby massage class.. will take my camera today and hope to catch some good shots because it is J`s last class as he turns one on friday.