David Mura’s Memoirs and the Transformation of “Whiteness”

Abstract

In the U.S., the debate over the racial whiteness has a major role in establishing American subjectivity because of its historical connection with what it means to be Americans. Until the mid twentieth century, European Americans had become racially whites at the expense of people of color including Asian Americans. In this process, their racial differences had been morphed into “ethnicity,” emphasizing cultural differences, and they stabilized their Caucasian whiteness. However, the social changes in the 1960s such as civil rights movement and the increasing immigration from Asia threatened the maintenance of Caucasian sense of white privileges. Then, the middle class Asian Americans supported the transformation of whiteness as color-blind multiculturalism. Furthermore, the last twentieth century, the diversification of Asian immigrants and increasing economic influence of Asia caused the transformation of whiteness as a global capitalist. This paper will focus on the transformation of “whiteness” in response to the ethnic identity formation of Asian Americans. Pursuant to this purpose, this paper will examine the memoirs of sansei Japanese American writer David Mura and how his identity formation as a Japanese American can be related to the maintenance and transformation of whiteness as a symbol of the privileged groups in the late twentieth century. In his memoirs, Mura reflects on the year he spent in Japan and narrates his struggle with becoming conscious of his Japanese American identity. Although his memoirs contain a number of themes and experiences generally included in Japanese American literature, such as the internment camp, the silence of Nisei and a visit to a heritage country, Mura’s identity formation is beyond the cultural identity based on the common historical experiences. Rather, Mura’s Japanese identity formation is the acknowledgement of the existence of “whiteness” which interned the Japanese Americans and resists a new face of whiteness that made his parents believe in their ethnic senses of U.S. belonging through their social mobility. He revitalized race from cultural particularities, ethnicity. Nevertheless, Mura’s identity formation as a Japanese American is not within the framework of “Asian Americans” in the U.S. Rather, he feels bonding to a new global capitalist which upholds global economic system. In this sense, Mura’s identity formation can be complicit to another transformation of whiteness, making Mura’s Japanese ethnicity as a social capital in the global society.