Arts and Culture
Half-Japanese, Half-Black: Miss Japan 2015 not ‘Japanese enough’
By Sanya Panwar, Hindustan Times, New Delhi
Biracial beauty Ariana Miyamoto was crowned Miss Japan 2015 and will represent her country at the Miss Universe 2015 pageant.
She’s Japanese. She’s African-American. She was born and raised in Japan, but also travelled to the US to attend high school. She speaks Japanese as her first language and has a Japanese mother (and a Black father).
Ariana Miyamoto is Japanese by legal definition, but the Miss Universe contestant is facing criticism from those at home who say she is not ‘Japanese enough’.
(All Photos: Facebook/ Instagram)
In Japan, mixed-race people are known as “hafu”, and Miyamoto’s selection as Miss Universe Japan has prompted a storm of criticism in Japanese media, for whom a hafu just doesn’t cut it. Her selection even has social media users asking if it is “okay to choose a hafu to represent Japan?”
The leggy model became the first ever mixed-race or biracial beauty who will represent the island nation in the Miss Universe pageant and also the first half-Japanese, half-black woman to compete in Miss Universe.
Despite her impressive accomplishments, success has not come without challenges for Miyamoto in one of the least racially-diverse countries in the world.
At six-feet tall in heels, the 20-year-old is being forced to defend herself after being abused for ‘not being Japanese enough’ because her father is a black American from Arkansas, US. Miyamoto, who grew up in Nagasaki, Japan, also travelled to the US for her education.
And some in Japan think all this makes her not traditionally Japanese, and hence unfit to represent the nation of her birth in an international beauty pageant.
So much so that the mixed-race beauty queen has been forced to insist that she is “Japanese on the inside.” Miyamoto used her first television appearance after her selection to apologetically explain to reporters that while she doesn’t ‘look Japanese’ on the outside, on the inside, there are ‘many Japanese things about her’.
She also told CNN in an interview that she had always stood out in Japan and that when she was young, she was bullied for being different. “In school, people used to throw rubbish at me,” she said. “They also used racial slurs.”
According to a translation by Washington Post, a Twitter user posted, “Even though she’s Miss Universe Japan, her face is foreign no matter how you look at it!”
Another said, “Miss Universe Japan is… What? What kind of person is she? She’s not Japanese, right?”
Even as the website Kotaku hailed Miyamoto’s selection as a sign that change was occurring in Japan — if “slowly”, it noted that “many of the highest-rated comments” about Miyamoto on the Japanese site GirlsChannel “said that they wanted a more Japanese contestant to represent Japan”.
However, not everyone thinks that way: Comments supporting her selection are all over social media, with people saying that the only thing that matters is whether or not she’s a Japanese citizen and loves the country or whether or not she was born and raised in Japan.
Others said criticizing the selection because she wasn’t ‘Japanese’ enough was “pathetic” and “outdated thinking.”
Read more at Hindustan Times
Activism
New Oakland Moving Forward
This week, several socially enterprising members of this group visited Oakland to explore ways to collaborate with local stakeholders at Youth Empowerment Partnership, the Port of Oakland, Private Industry Council, Oakland, Mayor-elect Barbara Lee, the Oakland Ballers ownership group, and the oversight thought leaders in the Alameda County Probation Department.

By Post Staff
Since the African American Sports and Entertainment Group purchased the City of Oakland’s share of the Alameda County Coliseum Complex, we have been documenting the positive outcomes that are starting to occur here in Oakland.
Some of the articles in the past have touched on actor Blair Underwood’s mission to breathe new energy into the social fabric of Oakland. He has joined the past efforts of Steph and Ayesha Curry, Mistah Fab, Green Day, Too Short, and the Oakland Ballers.
This week, several socially enterprising members of this group visited Oakland to explore ways to collaborate with local stakeholders at Youth Empowerment Partnership, the Port of Oakland, Private Industry Council, Oakland, Mayor-Elect Barbara Lee, the Oakland Ballers ownership group, and the oversight thought leaders in the Alameda County Probation Department.
These visits represent a healthy exchange of ideas and plans to resuscitate Oakland’s image. All parties felt that the potential to impact Oakland is right in front of us. Most recently, on the back side of these visits, the Oakland Ballers and Blair Underwood committed to a 10-year lease agreement to support community programs and a community build-out.
So, upward and onward with the movement of New Oakland.
Arts and Culture
BOOK REVIEW: Love, Rita: An American Story of Sisterhood, Joy, Loss, and Legacy
When Bridgett M. Davis was in college, her sister Rita was diagnosed with lupus, a disease of the immune system that often left her constantly tired and sore. Davis was a bit unfazed, but sympathetic to Rita’s suffering and also annoyed that the disease sometimes came between them. By that time, they needed one another more than ever.

By Terri Schlichenmeyer
Author: Bridgett M. Davis, c.2025, Harper, $29.99, 367 Pages
Take care.
Do it because you want to stay well, upright, and away from illness. Eat right, swallow your vitamins and hydrate, keep good habits and hygiene, and cross your fingers. Take care as much as you can because, as in the new book, “Love, Rita” by Bridgett M. Davis, your well-being is sometimes out of your hands.
It was a family story told often: when Davis was born, her sister, Rita, then four years old, stormed up to her crying newborn sibling and said, ‘Shut your … mouth!’
Rita, says Davis, didn’t want a little sister then. She already had two big sisters and a neighbor who was somewhat of a “sister,” and this baby was an irritation. As Davis grew, the feeling was mutual, although she always knew that Rita loved her.
Over the years, the sisters tried many times not to fight — on their own and at the urging of their mother — and though division was ever present, it eased when Rita went to college. Davis was still in high school then, and she admired her big sister.
She eagerly devoured frequent letters sent to her in the mail, signed, “Love, Rita.”
When Davis was in college herself, Rita was diagnosed with lupus, a disease of the immune system that often left her constantly tired and sore. Davis was a bit unfazed, but sympathetic to Rita’s suffering and also annoyed that the disease sometimes came between them. By that time, they needed one another more than ever.
First, they lost their father. Drugs then invaded the family and addiction stole two siblings. A sister and a young nephew were murdered in a domestic violence incident. Their mother was devastated; Rita’s lupus was an “added weight of her sorrow.”
After their mother died of colon cancer, Rita’s lupus took a turn for the worse.
“Did she even stand a chance?” Davis wrote in her journal.
“It just didn’t seem possible that she, someone so full of life, could die.”
Let’s start here: once you get past the prologue in “Love, Rita,” you may lose interest. Maybe.
Most of the stories that author Bridgett M. Davis shares are mildly interesting, nothing rare, mostly commonplace tales of growing up in the 1960s and ’70s with a sibling. There are a lot of these kinds of stories, and they tend to generally melt together. After about fifty pages of them, you might start to think about putting the book aside.
But don’t. Not quite yet.
In between those everyday tales, Davis occasionally writes about being an ailing Black woman in America, the incorrect assumptions made by doctors, the history of medical treatment for Black people (women in particular), attitudes, and mythologies. Those passages are now and then, interspersed, but worth scanning for.
This book is perhaps best for anyone with the patience for a slow-paced memoir, or anyone who loves a Black woman who’s ill or might be ill someday. If that’s you and you can read between the lines, then “Love, Rita” is a book to take in carefully.
Activism
Faces Around the Bay: Author Karen Lewis Took the ‘Detour to Straight Street’
“My life has been a roller-coaster with an unlimited ride wristband! I was raised in Berkeley during the time of Ron Dellums, the Black Panthers, and People’s Park. I was a Hippie kid, my Auntie cut off all our hair so we could wear the natural styles like her and Angela Davis.

By Barbara Fluhrer
I met Karen Lewis on a park bench in Berkeley. She wrote her story on the spot.
“My life has been a roller-coaster with an unlimited ride wristband! I was raised in Berkeley during the time of Ron Dellums, the Black Panthers, and People’s Park. I was a Hippie kid, my Auntie cut off all our hair so we could wear the natural styles like her and Angela Davis.
I got married young, then ended up getting divorced, raising two boys into men. After my divorce, I had a stroke that left me blind and paralyzed. I was homeless, lost in a fog with blurred vision.
Jesus healed me! I now have two beautiful grandkids. At 61, this age and this stage, I am finally free indeed. Our Lord Jesus Christ saved my soul. I now know how to be still. I lay at his feet. I surrender and just rest. My life and every step on my path have already been ordered. So, I have learned in this life…it’s nice to be nice. No stressing, just blessings. Pray for the best and deal with the rest.
Nobody is perfect, so forgive quickly and love easily!”
Lewis’ book “Detour to Straight Street” is available on Amazon.
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