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Imagine that the year is 2010 and you are filling out the Census. Armed with a blue or black pen, you read the questions and begin taking stock of your family members and details about who they are. You reach a question that reads: What is person one’s race? Mark one or more boxes.

Underneath the question is a list of ethnicities and racial identities.

This question about ethnic identity has been on the Census since it’s conception, and it would not be so striking in 2010, if it weren’t for the fact that it has not always been worded in this way.

In 1990, the survey stated: Fill one circle for the race that the person considers himself or herself.

And, again, beneath the question was a list of ethnicities and racial identities to mark, but only one would apply.

Dr. Matthew Jendian, a professor of Sociology at Fresno State, says that in the 200 years that the Census has been conducted, it is only in the last 20 that people could self-identify has more than one race.

“We did not allow people to check more than one,” says Jendian.

It’s no secret America has become more diverse over the years, and the Census has slowly, but surely, also changed to reflect this diversification.

“We have had, for centuries, a binary way of looking at race and racial identity,” says Jendian. “Basically white and black.”

With more minorities and racial diversity, comes more interracial marriage and bi- and multiracial children.

The proof is in the increasing number of multiracial Americans.

Multiracial Asian Americans who identify as Asian and white is one such growing population.

The Pew Research Center reported in 2015 that Japanese are the group of Asian Americans with the highest number of native-born individuals. This means most Japanese families immigrated from Japan at least a generation ago.

Japanese Americans are also highly likely to marry someone outside of their racial group.

However, despite these statistics about the migration of Japanese to America, Japan and America are still two very different nations with very different cultures and ideas about the self.

Dr. Robert Levine is a professor emeritus of social psychology at Fresno State. He’s just finished a book on identity and self, called “Stranger in the Mirror,” and can shine a light on these differences.

“Cultures like the United States, we have what’s called an independent view of the self,” explains Levine. “An independent view of the self is that there’s me, and I’m in the middle of my mental world, and there are these other people surrounding me, not quite connected. There’s always a space between us.”

This view of ‘self’ differs from many East Asian views of the self, including Japan. In such places, Levine says that those societies maintain an “interdependent view of the self.”

“Which is the idea that ‘I don’t really exist except in relationship to other people’” says Levine. “One of the things about Japan that’s so interesting to me is this sense of the coherency of the group identity, of the identity as being a Japanese person.”

To break this down further, Japan and America are culturally different in critical ways: Japan is ethnically homogenous, while America is super diverse; Japanese culture doesn’t value individuality as much as the collective group, whereas in America, differences and individuality are celebrated often.

So, what might it be like to grow up in America as a biracial child if you have one parent who is Japanese and one parent who is white?

What happens when your parents are different ethnicities, and perhaps lead culturally different lives?

How do you even answer the question, “what are you?”

To begin to understand this, Dr. Jessica McKenzie, a developmental psychologist at Fresno State, brings up a few theories to explain.

First is Erik Erikson’s theory of identity development, which suggests that the process begins at birth.

“There’s not a sort of specific start or end time,” says McKenzie. “We’re always, throughout our lives, trying to determine what it means to be our particular race or in our particular cultural context.”

Erikson’s theory says that there are eight significant stages during which humans resolve certain internal conflicts, and these resolutions shape us over the course of a lifetime.

McKenzie also brought up Jean Phinney’s work, which is the prominent theory of ethnic identity cultivation.

“The basic notion is that, of course identity development is complex for everyone, but particularly for people who are ethnic minorities in a majority culture, or who perhaps are biracial or bicultural,” said McKenzie. “Identity development is all the more complex; way more complex than it is for people who are members of the majority culture.”

Jean Phinney’s work says that individuals create their ethnic identity based on how strongly they identify with the majority group, and how strongly they identify with their ethnic group. High identification with both majority and ethnic minority culture can result in biculturalism, which means understanding and living the behavior of both cultures. A bicultural individual may, for example, behave in one culture over the other, depending on the context. There are other possible outcomes, though, for multiethnic individuals.

“You could be separated if you identify with neither your ethnic minority culture or majority culture, or marginalized,” says McKenzie. “Or you could be assimilated where you don’t even realize that you’re half Japanese, or it doesn’t even occur to you because you perhaps, consider yourself a member of the majority culture.”

Akiko Miyake-Stoner is a pastor at the United Japanese Christian Church in Clovis, California. She calls herself Japanese American, because her mother is Japanese and her father is Pennsylvania Dutch. She is familiar with the feeling of struggling to define herself when she’s a part of two races and cultures.

“Growing up, I always felt I didn’t fit in either circle,” reflects Miyake-Stoner. “I wasn’t completely white, I wasn’t completely Japanese.”

Korio Masumoto, a sociology major at Fresno State, can relate.

“Within my family, with being Japanese American, I’ve gotten I’m not Japanese enough, and then on my white side I’ve also got I’m not white enough.”

When asked how he identifies ethnically, he says that it depends on who he’s explaining it to.

“If they’re Asian American, I’d say, I’m hapa,” Masumoto says, referring to a Hawaiian slang term for ‘half.’ “If it’s someone who is of another ethnicity, I’d say I’m half white, half Japanese.”

This hasn’t always been how he’s described himself, though.

“When I was a little kid, I thought I was just Japanese. I didn’t think I was half-white,” says Masumoto. “I think it was because I was always surrounded by my Japanese grandparents.”

Dr. Levine, says that one theory about creating our identity is internalizing what we hear, so maybe it’s not surprising that Masumoto thought he was only Japanese as a kid.

Levine says the social development theory by Lev Vygotsky explains how the way we look at ourselves is influenced heavily by those around us and who has told us what we are, including important figures like our parents.

He gives the example that a child learning to ride a bike might say, out loud, “keep peddling” to themselves.

“What tends to happen is the child learns that you don’t say everything out loud. Keep your thoughts in your head,” says Levine. “And then they become you.”

He says that when adults reflect on where these voices in their heads came from, it’s likely that they heard them from someone while they were growing up.

Dr. Jendian notes other surrounding social influences affect how people learn to identify themselves.

“If you see yourself one way, but nobody else does, how you are impacted by other people’s behavior is not based on your own identity,” says Jendian. “It’s based on what they think you are.”

Miyake-Stoner is familiar with this feeling, where she reflects on her identity in the context of those around her.

“I went to this Asian American conference in Chicago, so all the kids were maybe first or second generation Asians and they were all pretty much 100 percent,” says Miyake-Stoner. “I would go into the bathroom and look at myself and be like, wow I’m so white.”

When she went to another church conference, a couple days later, her ethnic experience was totally swapped.

“I flew to Washington, D.C. where I started my orientation with the Lutheran Volunteer Corps. You know, I was there with all of these white kids now,” Miyake-Stoner laughs. “I went into the bathroom and I was like, holy mackerel, I look really Asian!”

Dr. McKenzie says that it’s not just biracial individuals who are reconciling two cultures; with globalization, it’s just about everyone.

“With social media, with large-scale media, with globalization-related implications and effects, adolescents are increasingly exposed to cultures that are not their culture,” says McKenzie. “The suspicion is that people don’t have to leave their home in order to develop a bicultural identity.”

The opposite of this globalization and spreading of majority culture is what Dr. McKenzie calls localization. This phenomenon is where a group of persons may decide to focus on preserving and practicing more traditional culture.

A group may see globalization as a threat to “local traditional culture,” says McKenzie.

Their response, she says, is “like grasping at what it means to be local, what it means to be a member of this culture.”

Miyake-Stoner says that her parents emphasized appreciation of both Japanese and American cultures, and this has given her a richer ethnic experience.

“This was drilled into me from a very early age by my mom,” recalls Miyake-Stoner.

Her remembers her mother telling her, “You are not half. You are 100 percent Japanese. You are 100 percent American.”

Despite the conflict that identity can present, both Masumoto and Miyake-Stoner have come to terms with their own. They appreciate their cultural background, and how their experiences give them more lenses through which to view the world.

“I just feel like people who are biracial understand both sides,” says Masumoto. “In many ways, biracial people try to bridge the ways for both cultures.”

To be biracial can mean growing up slightly confused about where you belong in the world, but it can also mean that you belong more places than anyone else.

Moving forward, the Census may not even ask for people to identify their race anymore. The Pew Research Center reported in 2015 that the 2020 Census may simply ask for people to check the “categories” that describe themselves. And the option will be there for them to check all that apply.

This podcast was produced for Honors 180, a course within the Smittcamp Family Honors College of California State University, Fresno.

The producer and writer is Laura Tsutsui.

The faculty advisor is Dr. Bradley Hart.