Q: Tell me a little about your cultural heritage.

RM: My mother is Jewish and my father is Japanese American and we grew up in Berkeley. I have five siblings and we grew up during the time of integration here in Berkeley. I think my first year in kindergarten was the first year Berkeley schools were integrated. It was an interesting experience.

Q: Was this the integration of all races?

RM: I believe it was all races. I believe what they did was they bussed children from the, we call it West Berkeley or the Flatlands, to the schools that are up in the hills and vice versa. They started shifting everybody around. This was in the 70s, or in the late 60s, and so we grew up in a time when there was a lot of political activity here in Berkeley.

Q: Did you feel that this was courageous of your parents at the time as a biracial couple?

RM: Definitely. They had a lot of obstacles. Within their own families, there was some resistance, although I think they were for the most part open-minded, considering the time, and they eventually accepted it. But I think it was very courageous, and I think that they were just so much in love that it didn't matter what other people thought. And that's one of the reasons they came here, because they met taking classes at the Chicago Art Institute. They were both students. They immediately fell in love, and came here because they felt it would be a better environment to raise biracial children.

Q: Did they feel that there was more racial tension in Chicago than in the Bay Area?

RM: I think that was part of it. They also thought it would be easier for them to find work here as well. We also grew up with a couple of other families that were similar to ours. The fathers were both Japanese American artists, and the mothers were both Caucasian and had lots of kids. Our parents made an effort to expose us to a community that was like ourselves.

Q: So you weren't isolated as a multiracial family?

RM: In that sense, yes, but in the larger society it wasn't always like that. At that time, when I was going to school, there were very, very few biracial children. I think there were one or two kids in my school that I can recall.

Q: These other families didn't have children?

RM: They did but they weren't in the same schools. One of them lived in Marin County, and the other one lived in a different area of Berkeley so we didn't go to school with them.

Q: Did you encounter prejudice when you were young?

RM: There was a lot of racial tension growing up, as I said, because there were so many changes going on at that time. I did get teased. I was ridiculed for being Asian. I always felt like an outsider. In that larger community, I didn't really have a place where I fit, or we didn't have a place where we fit in, except at home, of course.

Q: And would you come home and say, they're teasing me for being Asian? And what kind of a response did you get at home about that?

RM: I don't know that I ever told my parents. It wasn't a huge issue that would come up all the time. Kids get teased about all kinds of stuff but it was a very sensitive issue for me because whenever you're teased about something that's a part of you, it becomes a big deal to a kid.

Q: Did you feel that you knew, being a mother with a multiracial family, that you would face certain prejudices and certain difficulties?

RM: Yes, I definitely felt that I wanted to prepare them in any way possible and to really open up the lines of communication for that because I experienced some difficulties. I felt it was important for me to prepare my children for that and to keep the lines of communication open. It was hard particularly for my daughters because they grew up in Berkeley. They went to nursery school and they went to public schools here in a very integrated environment. Then when they were six and eight years old, we moved to Piedmont because I married my second husband and he had a house there. That was especially hard for them because they weren't in an environment where they saw a lot of kids that looked like them. At that point I tried to keep the lines of communication open and talk to them and work through issues with them because I felt that I had been there and wanted to make sure they had the kind of support they needed.

Q: Have you seen the culture open up more for your daughters since you were growing up ?

RM: Definitely. We're pretty close in age: Belia and I are only 17 years apart. There hasn't been a whole lot of change but I do notice just within the media that I see more biracial people. I see more mixed race people and I see more people of color too. On the TV, on the news, in the movies and so forth. Not as much as I think there should be, but definitely there are more biracial local news reporters. In terms of role models for me, I really didn't have any. That's one thing I've often thought about. I've never seen an old person that looks like me, racially. The only person who I had to look up to, who had my same experience, was my oldest sister, Laurie. She's eight years older than I am. From the time she was an adolescent, she was very in tune to her culture, and being biracial, and how to function in society to deal with these kinds of issues. She feels strongly tied to being a person of color. She's involved in ethnic studies, and in political activities when she was at UC Berkeley. She took my sister Amy and me under her wing and mentored us and provided guidance for us.

Q: You'd have to carve out your own niche. There's a poet named Sharon Olds. I don't know if you've heard of her, she works in New York and she wrote a wonderful poem about how her older sister acted as a kind of shield for her - so that the older sister took sort of the brunt of difficult things, to sort of make it safer for herself as the younger sister. And that sounds like something that happened with you.

RM: I feel like in a lot of ways that she's really shaped who we are... that kind of role model. And the conscious effort to help us along, really did have a lot of effect on myself and my sister Amy. We're the two youngest, so in a lot of ways I feel like her influence has been really as strong an influence as my mom's influence.

Q: Is there more acceptance of being multiracial here in the Bay Area than in other parts of the country?

RM: I did live in Texas for awhile while I was still married to Elida and Belia's father. It was a very short period, because I was not at all happy there. There's a lot of factors that went into it, but I think it has a lot to do with the political climate there. It's more narrow-minded. It's much more conservative there. Here it's more progressive, but also there's just so much more diversity. There's so much more multiculturalism. I feel that there are value differences as well. I'm not saying they're always cultural values, but I think my family and his family are very different in terms of what they value, not across the board, but I think it's been a really hard transition for my daughters. From the time that they were young, living with myself and my husband and then going to Texas and living with her dad. They've had to do a lot of adapting. I think it's really hard because the values really clash. The message I've always tried to instill in them is to be independent, to pursue your education, and follow your dreams. And there's a lot of conflict because they really haven't known their dad. They've visited, but he's never raised them. He's never been a constant presence in their lives. And because of that, there is a lot of conflict between them.

Q: How are white people treated differently than people of color?

RM: I have a lot of mixed feelings. Being biracial has been a real issue for me, being half-white. As an adult, I've finally started coming to terms with who I am and who I identify with. I identify as a woman of color, even though I am of mixed race. I've always felt that that's how society has treated me, not as a white person. I have experienced some prejudice. I try to be more diplomatic in my approach to my children when these issues come up. I don't want my son totake my feelings and interpret them as his own. I want him to develop his own feelings. And I think that Elida has experienced some prejudice is partly because when she was growing up in Piedmont, she had a really, really hard time. When they talk about kids who are on the fringe? In a way, both of my daughters were. I don't think either of them felt like they really fit in with the core group there. And it's very, very exclusive. There are popular groups, your preppies and your nerds. Belia felt like she didn't she fit in. For awhile she withdrew and she didn't have a lot of friends and just kept to herself. She read a lot. Ellie was on the fringe because she hung out with the "bad kids." She felt she wasn't going to be accepted, that the teachers and the students were going to look at her like she was an outsider and I think that especially white people are intimidated by that. But that's her defense mechanism, her way of saying, I'm not going to let you intimidate me. I'm going to intimidate you first.

Q: What is it that white people get? How are they treated?

RM: It kind of boils down to that one drop rule. Society has always classified you - if you're white, you're pure white. If you're mixed with Indian, African American, Asian, anything else, you're a person of color. That's the way this society has always been. And I'm not defining myself by that, but just in the way that people have always treated me. People don't look at me and say, you're an Asian American, because I don't look like an Asian American. But people look at me and they see that I'm not white. So, from the time that I was a kid people would speak Spanish with me on the streets. When I was in the 4th or 5th grade, a friend of mine, a white girl, and I, we went down to Lucky's. And we shoplifted. She took some fingernail polish or some make-up and she put it in the hood of my sweatshirt. She stuffed her pockets too and then we got caught. We were brought in to the office by a guy who was a redneck. He questioned us and kept us in there for a long period of time. It was meant to intimidate us. He totally focused on me and he didn't even press charges on my friend, and she was the one who initiated it. He asked us what school we went to. At that time we went to Malcolm X School and he said to me, "What are you doing in this neighborhood?" This is three blocks from my house. It's an example to me, from the time I was very young, things that I've experienced. When my mom took me down to the police station, to follow up on this, she had talked to my friend's parents, and they said, no, there were no charges against her. So my mom made a big fuss and had the charges dropped but what if she didn't do that for me. Was that fair? That's just one example of the kind of experiences I've had.

Q: So it sounds like there's a kind of pressure you feel knowing that you're not white.

RM: It's not that I'm constantly conscious of it. But I think when I was a kid, when I was a teenager, it was much more of an issue because you're insecure. You're still finding your place in the world. When you're being treated like that, it's much, much harder. But I also think that people look at kids and they can feel like they can treat them that way. When you're a teenager they look at you the way they look at Ellie. They say, "I'm going to watch her when she comes into my store." It also has to do with a style of dress. I was the same way when I was a teenager. I was very rebellious. And now it's not so much of an issue in terms of when I go out. I don't feel that people follow me around department stores or treat me in that way. It's not such a blatant thing. But I do feel like I'm struggling with my own sense of entitlement. I feel like, as an Asian American, there are a lot of cultural issues: I've always been taught to be considerate toward other people, and not speak out, and not be too assertive. Not that I was consciously taught that, but by example, especially through my dad. I've always been kind of withdrawn in a way and soft spoken. In my career, I have to really, really struggle to be more assertive. Because I know that to be successful, I have to step outside of that. It's been a difficult struggle for me, not just in public speaking but also when conflict arises between myself and another person. It's always difficult for me to say, this is how I feel, this is important, with any kind of issue, outside of my family. I think that is for me the biggest thing, that sense of entitlement. White people, in society as a whole, that's who controls the society, and I think that, as a person of color, I've just had to really develop my sense of entitlement and I'm still working on it.