The Southeast Asia Club and the Mixed Heritage Club held a discussion last Thursday as part of SEAC Week called "Experience and the Self," which focused on issues faced by mixed-race Southeast Asians and aimed to "show as many different aspects of Southeast Asian culture as possible," according to SEAC President Arnel Blake Batoon '10. The aim of the discussion was to focus on the multiracial fabric of Southeast Asia and raise "awareness of these ignored groups," according to Kaamila Mohammed '11, founder and president of MHC.

Mohammed began by asking attendees to reenact issues regarding health, sexuality and racial identification addressed in articles written by Southeast Asians of mixed heritage from EurasianNation, an online magazine. The attendees were randomly divided into five groups of three. The articles were discussed within each group before the groups performed their own interpretations of the key aspects of the texts.

The first group portrayed the dilemmas faced by a gay Vietnamese and French man, played by Michael Sitzman '07, as he struggled to figure out with which race he identified the most. The re-enactment focused on this confusion through the physical manifestation of the Eurasian's conscious, played by Christina Luo '11. Luo vocalized the Eurasian's angst when he was asked which race he prefers to be involved with romantically.

Christina Luo later said in the general group discussion at the end of all the performances that she felt her group addressed a segment of Eurasians apprehensive about their mixed heritages and sexualities who "we don't really hear about."

Alexandra Luo '11 noted that this particular Eurasian could not only be discriminated against because of his mixed race, but he was "further marginalized" by his sexuality.

The next performance narrowed in on the racial discrimination prevalent in a Singaporean census a woman of Chinese-Indian descent had to fill out while she was living in Singapore. The group portrayed the woman's indignation when she was forced to classify herself as Indian according to her father's race. Mohammed, who played a secondary character in this performance, said that she found this article "really fascinating" as the group explored the issues faced by people of mixed heritage in another country. Sitzman added that he had previously thought of Southeast Asia as a "paradise" for people of biracial heritage.

Although Lauren Maramara '09 supported Sitzman's assumption by emphasizing that Eurasians are better integrated into the community in Southeast Asia than in the United States, Blake disagreed. While he admitted that Southeast Asia is "very diverse," it nevertheless designates each race a particular "place in the hierarchy."

Concerns about mixed race, gender and health were addressed in the depiction of an anorexic American-Filipino woman, whose stereotypical ideas of Fillipino women as prostitutes and cleaning ladies, propagated by the media, encouraged her to take drastic steps in order to hide the Filipino part of her heritage.

Alexandra Luo found the multi-layered issues "really sad and scary" when she considered that the Eurasian woman was willing to risk anorexia, the "white woman's disease," in order to gain the physical characteristics commonly associated with such women.

Student Union Vice President Adam Hughes '11 concluded that race "pervades every part of your identity" when he considered how it directly affected the health of the Filipino woman.

One group was given an article written by an Indonesian-Irish-Italian man who never actually struggled with his multiracial heritage. Hughes elaborated that his group decided to place the Eurasian into a problematic situation to explore how he might react. Similar to the Chinese Indian, the Indonesian Irish Italian was depicted as facing problems while registering for voting papers in the United States. While the Chinese Indian was compelled to classify herself as Indian due to Singaporean racial laws, the Indonesian Irish Italian refused to assign himself a specific race.

Hughes said that he "very much enjoyed" the discussion as it "raised a lot of interesting questions."

For a first-time collaboration with MHC, Blake enthusiastically declared that the "Experience and the Self" discussion was "as good as it gets.