VIEW WEBSITE www.lovingday.org

courtesy of the NAACP

By ALEC YOSHIO MACDONALD
Nichi Bei Times

Two weeks ago, the world lost a quiet legend of the civil rights era when Mildred Loving passed away at her home in Central Point, Va. at the age of 68.

More than four decades ago, Mrs. Loving and her husband, Richard, fought a historic legal battle against Virginia's ban on interracial marriage (Mrs. Loving was black and Native American; Mr. Loving, who died in 1975, was white). Their case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 1967 voted unanimously to vindicate their union, wiping out anti-miscegenation laws all across the country as a result.

By STEVEN MASAMI ROPP
Special to the Nichi Bei Times

My name is Steven Ropp and I'm originally from Sacramento. I'm Yonsei, Japanese on my mom's side and German on my dad's. My wife also has a Sansei mom and a non-Japanese dad, but she's Japanese Peruvian. We currently live in Huancayo, a small city in the Central Andes of Peru with our two young daughters, Emiko and Kiyomi.

By REBECCA CHIYOKO KING-O'RIAIN
Special to the Nichi Bei Times

Living in Ireland, people often ask me where I am from or who I am. I usually say that I am a mixed race Japanese American from Chicago via California, but often that just gets a blank stare. People don't know what that means or what that even is. Most of the time, people just want to know, "What are you doing here in Ireland?"

By AARON KITASHIMA
Special to the Nichi Bei Times

What is the future of San Francisco's Japantown? Who will be the next generation of leaders and community participants? These questions have always run through my mind, and many of you readers who are concerned about our future have pondered them as well.

photo by April Elkjer

By APRIL ELKJER
Nichi Bei Times

Nichi Bei Times sat down with Dr. Wei Ming Dariotis, assistant professor of Asian American studies at San Francisco State University and a leader in the mixed heritage community to learn about what a shared mixed heritage Asian American culture is. Dariotis herself is Chinese, Greek, Swedish, Scottish, English, German and Pennsylvania Dutch.

courtesy www.racialicious.com

By ALEC YOSHIO MacDONALD Nichi Bei Times

Carmen Van Kerckhove is founder and publisher of the race and pop culture blog Racialicious (www.racialicious.com ). Her perspectives have been featured in Newsweek, USA Today, The New York Times, MSNBC Live, NPR's "News & Notes" and now in today's Nichi Bei Times.

To listen to the full Nichi Bei Times audio interview

photo courtesy of Lam Do

By ANGELA KIMI HICKMAN
Nichi Bei Times Contributor

Half Vietnamese, a quarter Japanese, a quarter English and Irish. While all these bloodlines come together to form Luke Do's ready smile, the combination also creates a very unique genetic makeup.

Finding bone marrow donors for a mixed race individual like Luke proves to be very difficult. Patients would most often match a donor of the same ethnicity: Chinese with Chinese, African American with African American, etc.

Over the years, there has been some discussion over the proper word to describe those who are of multiracial or multiethnic descent. What term do you prefer to use to describe your ethnic identity, and why?

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CONTINUE THE DIALOGUE

courtesy of Greg Robinson

By STEVEN G. DOI and GREG ROBINSON
Nichi Bei Times Contributors

The time was the early 1950s. The place was Chicago. For all the street gangs and tough guys around, it was in some ways an innocent age. You couldn't turn on a television and see hours of raw violence.

photo courtesy of Malcolm Amado Uno

By AKITO YOSHIKANE
Nichi Bei Times

Organizing around economic justice and civil rights is nothing new for 30-year-old Malcolm Amado Uno. A Bay Area native, Uno is the executive director at the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA), a labor group founded in 1992 affiliated with the AFL-CIO.

Uno, who is of Japanese and Guamanian descent, grew up heavily involved in workers rights issues. Originally from Oakland, both of his parents were labor organizers and he has continued the family tradition of advocating on behalf of workers rights and social justice.

In addition to holding a master's degree in public policy, he has organized both locally and nationally, working as a youth counselor for APA youth, promoting the push towards universal preschool in California, and even serving as the national organizing director for APIAVote, an organization focused on increasing civic engagement for Asian Pacific Americans.

photo courtesy of Jeff Yoshimi

By JEFF YOSHIMI
Special to the Nichi Bei Times

I became involved with Hapa Issues Forum (HIF) not long after I arrived at UC Berkeley as a transfer student in 1990. There were a lot of student groups on campus, but I didn't get too involved. However, when I saw a sign that asked if I was part Japanese (this was before HIF expanded its purview to all people of partial Asian decent), I had to find out what was up. That's a pretty specific student group, after all.

SIX ORGANIZATIONS

Organization: Loving Day
Headquarters: New York, NY
Founded in: 2004

Mission: "Loving Day's mission is to fight prejudice through education and to build a sense of community among people who engage in meaningful interracial and intercultural relationships..."

By BEN HAMAMOTO
Nichi Bei Times

Multiracials Asian Pacific Islanders have had a long, tumultuous relationship with Hollywood. For the most part, hapas have not been able to see accurate images of themselves onscreen and hapa entertainers have had to present an image of themselves that accommodates Hollywood's, and mainstream America's, concept of race.

(Due to limited space, the following list did not make it into the Nichi Bei Times "IN THE MIX: THE MULTIRACIAL/MULTIETHNIC EDITION")

Compiled By Ben Hamamoto
Nichi Bei Times

News Journalist

Ann Curry

By KERWIN BERK
Nichi Bei Times Contributer

What do Johnny Damon, Tiger Woods and Hines Ward have in common?

Yes, they've all won the biggest events in their respective sports. Yes, they've all appeared on boxes of Wheaties. And yes, they've all been to DisneyWorld.

But, for our purposes, none of those answers is correct. The thing they share in common is that they are all hapa. Damon and Woods are half-Thai and Ward is half-Korean.

It just goes to show that hapas are everywhere, including the sports world. Now, finding Japanese American hapas is a different story. They're a littler harder to find, but they're there.

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