Pacic Identities beyond US Racial Formations: the Case of Chamorro Ambivalence and Flux

Although racial and ethnic relations scholarship continues to proliferate, there is a lack of scholarship on race and ethnicity in the context of US territorial relations. The foundation of US race relations is embedded in territorial expansion. In turn, Pacic Islanders, albeit a small population in the US, have emerged as a relatively recent group within the US racial and ethnic mosaic precisely because of US territorial politics, yet research on Pacic Islanders on the US mainland is lacking and marginal. Pacic Islanders on the US mainland nd themselves historically and socially situated in ambivalence in the context of US territorial relations, colonialism and race relations. With the homogenisation of ethnic labels such as ‘Native American’, ‘Asian Pacic American’, and ‘Hispanic’, and in lieu of the essentialism inherent in a nation that romanticises its immigrant history; Pacic Islander experiences are often watered down by these binarisms. In essence, there seems to be an intraethnic and interracial hierarchy that deals with Pacic Islanders as epiphenomenal, or virtually ignores their experiences. Consequently, within US academic discourse, Pacic Islander experiences further tend to be reduced within biracial theorising to minority-majority dichotomies. Therefore, issues of identity among Pacic Islanders are entangled in a history of racialisation and colonial binarisms, thus perpetuating invisibil-ity — that is, embedded in their existence at the edges of US neocolonialism, race relations and ethnic studies. The focus of this paper is on Chamorros of Guam, as a case of Pacic Islander diaspora on the mainland US.1 Heightened by the Organic Act of Guam in 1950, which granted congressional US citizenship to the residents of Guam, Chamorros have emerged as the third largest Pacic Islander com-munity in the continental US (Barringer et al., 1993). I explore Chamorro ambivalence and diaspora in the context of US neocolonialism and racial formation. In so doing, I discuss the complex layers of ambiguity and ux among Chamorros on Guam and the US mainland; and adaptive cultural and political responses among Chamorros in the context of US neocolonialism and race relations