Aloha, Hip Hapa Homeez!
Can you believe that it’s been 20 years since we launched this blog?
In the beginning, there was so much HAPA-ning!
In 2020, for the first time in history, the U.S. Census allowed its citizens to choose more than one racial category to identify themselves. Those of you old enough to remember will recall previous nail-biting days filling out forms and trying to decide whether you were the same race as your mother or your father.
Up to that point, most of us had been told all of our lives what we were by other people who were nothing like us.
A few of us reluctantly chose the parent we most resembled in appearance which made no sense if you embraced both parents and their cultures. And, if you had one Black parent, you were considered Black, period, due to the One Drop Rule. It didn’t matter whether or not you were accepted or recognized as being Black by the Black Community.
Even if your parents shared the same culture, i.e., being American, they still had different backgrounds due to their ethnicities. So, how to choose?
In those early days, we began rebelling and calling ourselves mixed-race, multiracial, multicultural, hapa, blasian, wasian and some even referred to themselves as being mulatto—a word that was once synonymous with mix-bred animals.
Based on our personal experiences of being mixed, we wrote books, made films and organized conferences and festivals all honoring the mixed-race agenda.
Our film, Watermelon Sushi, has been in the works now for 28 years. Well, it’s been in existence, but only worked on sporadically. That is, until we acquired our executive producer, Doug Ing, who a few years ago, had all of our footage digitized. Now, we’re editing and utilizing AI for enhancements.
Please stand by.
Juggling three films (including Tokyo Lily and Vegan Jin) seriously cuts down on our time. Therefore, we are directing you to our Hip Hapa Homeez group page on Facebook to discuss any issues surrounding multiculturalism.
We won’t be updating this blog until the end of 2026.
You can also check out these links for any news:
https://www.youtube.com/c/WatermelonSushi/videos
https://www.redbubble.com/people/yayoiclanart/shop
https://www.teepublic.com/user/yayoiclanart
Here are our Facebook links:
https://www.facebook.com/watermelonsushi
https://www.facebook.com/hapateez
Enjoy a HAPA summer!
Your Hip Hapa,
Yayoi
