Thesis advisor: Eve Spangler / The recent rise in anti-Asian hate amidst the COVID-19 pandemic provides a novel circumstance within which to investigate Filipino American ethnic and racial identity development. Existing literature on this topic highlights the impact of colonization on present-day Filipinos, regarding their ethnic identification, panethnic consciousness, and responses to discrimination. Most of this research focuses on college-aged and second-generation Filipino Americans. However, victims of the rise in anti-Asian hate include older Asian Americans. Therefore, this study explores Filipino American identity and experiences with racism through 10 interviews with first-generation Filipino Americans, aged 65 and above. The study finds that, although Filipino Americans experience racial discrimination, many are resilient. However, their resilience may reflect internalizations of Filipino cultural values, the colonial mentality, and the model minority myth, as well as the search for a positive identity. Additionally, this study has an unexpected finding that Filipino Americans may collectively construct their identities, with many of their ethnic/racial identities reflecting that of their spouse. Ultimately, the lives and identities of Filipino American involve a dynamic process that adapts and reflects shifting political, social, and cultural contexts. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Departmental Honors. / Discipline: Sociology.

This exploratory study draws from six semi-structured interviews with multiracial Nikkei women living in Canada to investigate their experiences of mixed race belonging. After establishing belonging as intrinsic to the very nature of how multiraciality and Asianness have been historically constructed and are presently experienced in Canada, three areas relevant to how the interviewees experience mixed race belonging are then considered: multiracial name modification (MRNM), the nation and Canadianness, and Japaneseness in Canada. This study also considers how the recent racial climate of pandemic-related anti-Asian racism has potentially impacted how mixed race belonging is experienced by the interviewees, which reveals two additional areas of interest: the amplified experience of multiracial dysmorphia (MRD) during this time and the emergence of pan-Asianness in Canada as a potential new site of belonging. As captured, issues of mixed race belonging arise in various spheres of the interviewees' lives because of the very ways in which multiraciality and Asianness have been constructed and maintained in the Canadian social landscape. In doing so, this study hopes to drive home how issues of mixed race belonging speak more to the problematic nature of "race" itself than of mixed race people themselves.

This thesis aims to understand Sinophobia in the context of post-racial, anti-racist and color-blind Sweden, specifically concerning news representations of China and racial caricatures of Chinese and other East-Asians through “Gook humor”. Sinophobia is examined through race humor and public engagement with satirical race representations using the controversial case of news satire of China produced by Swedish public television SVT in 2018. A reflexive thematic analysis is conducted to analyze the news satire as transcripts from a YouTube video, and public engagement as relevant YouTube comments in Swedish. The findings of the analysis are situated within a critical race theoretical framework based on the concept of liquid racism, color-blindness, Yellow Peril narratives and critical humor theories. The result shows that the news satire contains liquid race representations of Chinese as ironic yet exaggerated racial caricatures, while portraying China as a powerful yet threatening authoritarian state, alluding to Yellow Peril narratives. Mediated through humor, these representations implicitly promote liquid racism in public engagement, in which racist interpretations could exist in the context of white liberal anti-racism. This paper coins the term liquid Sinophobia to describe how covert racism has adapted to exist in post-racial and color- blind Sweden by primarily negating accusations of racism by Swedish-Chinese minorities. Explicit Sinophobia was also found in the public engagement rooted in cultural racism, nationalism and counter-PC culture. This thesis has major implication for Sinophobia research in Asian critical race studies in Sweden, being the first of its kind to focus on this topic at the nexus of news satire and public engagement. Further research is required to study liquid Sinophobia and anti-Asian racism based on the general and intersectional experiences of Swedish-Asian communities.