Enjoying the California sun + What I left in the JANM: Visible & Invisible Guest Book
This past weekend, I was lucky enough to take a quick trip home to Los Angeles for some much needed rest and relaxation. I’ll spare you the details of all the delicious food I consumed - but suffice to say it was plentiful and I ate everything.
While home, my buddy informed me of an exhibition going on at the Japanese American National Museum: Visible & Invisible: A Hapa Japanese American History. I couldn’t resist checking it out - it is not too often (re: ever) that I hear about exhibitions entirely dedicated to us hapas, and it sounded awesome.
I myself am not half Japanese, so I can’t comment on specific hapa Japanese issues as addressed in the exhibition, but plenty of the themes were relevant to all hapas and resonated all the same. I went into it foolishly hoping for an equal balance between a disheartening history of racism and finding positives in the present. It was, of course, a bit more heavy-handed with the former, but how silly of me to think the latter would have provided much comfort.
Amongst many things, I was drawn to a twenty second clip playing on repeat on a television against the back wall. It was a map of the United States, with each state changing color over the course of time based on if it had laws in place against miscegenation, or interracial marriage (and in some cases cohabitation and sex), from colonial times to Loving v. Virginia.
To put this into perspective, Loving v. Virginia happened less than 50 years ago.
Somehow, I struggle to grasp this.
Less than 50 years ago. Comfortably in my parents’ lifetimes and about twenty years shy of their marriage.
With a little research, I found that in Alabama, the last scrap of miscegenation law was only overturned in 2000. Forty percent of voters, more than 525,000 people, wanted to keep it. (Source)
Less than 15 years ago. In my lifetime.
I want desperately to be able to focus on the positives of the now - on the leaps we’ve achieved. They are plentiful, and I am grateful. But there is so much more to be done to reach decency: bad habits to unlearn, microaggressions to be mindful of. My parents are still all too often treated as a taboo, a stereotype, and, as the porn industry undoubtedly confirms, a fetish. (And they’ve been divorced since I was eight!)
This isn’t a disheartening history: This is a disheartening present. Perhaps as a whole, we need to consider what will stop us at a museum fifty years from now. If we are able to better reflect on the now, hopefully we will ultimately be less ashamed of the past.
Feel free to share your thoughts and experiences in the comments - and to anyone in LA, the exhibition and museum are well worth a perusal!
