“There have been racial barriers, and it has been challenging to be accepted as Japanese.”
That’s what a tearful Carolina Shiino said in impeccable Japanese after she was crowned Miss Japan on Monday.
The 26-year-old model, who was born in Ukraine, moved to Japan at the age of five and was raised in Nagoya.
She is the first naturalised Japanese citizen to win the pageant, but her victory has re-ignited a debate on what it means to be Japanese.
While some recognised her victory as a “sign of the times”, others have said she does not look like what a “Miss Japan” should.
I am very mixed race, including 18% native american and 24% west African (slave). That’s according to DNA analysis. According to my grandmother’s genealogy efforts, the only member to immigrate to the US after 1776 was Irish and he married the “creole” (white+black+native+???) plantation owners daughter. Resistance was futile. He was assimilated.
So most of my bloodline has been here since the start, 18% before that, but because I am not white and my features’ origins are hard to define, I get asked where I am from fairly often. I’ve been even told to go back to my country.
Racism and xenophobia are dumb.