Mixed Race Studies

The Greatest Pretender: Korla Pandit, music’s most magnificent fraud

Dead 2 Rights: A Folksy Down-Home Blog
2013-05-19

Joe Blevins

A few of Korla’s two dozen albums. You might notice a recurring visual motif on the LP covers.

“For wisdom is better than rubies, and all things to be desired are not to be compared unto it. We bring you musical gems from near and far, blended into a pattern of glorious harmony, a program based on the universal language of music. It is our pleasure to present to you…”

Korla Pandit spoke not a word when he was on camera. He just wore a bejeweled turban, played the organ… and stared. That was the extent of his act. It was all he needed — the shimmery tones of his music, the vague evocation of the Far East, and that indelible Mona Lisa countenance with its piercing dark eyes and intriguing half-smile. It was a potent combination which carried him along for nearly half a century. And yet, Korla Pandit never really existed at all. It depends, I suppose, on your definition of “existed.” Either way, his story is one of the most implausible and oddly inspiring in the history of popular music.

I first encountered Korla Pandit without any clue to his identity or knowledge of his past. Portraying himself, Korla made a memorable cameo in Tim Burton’s 1994 film, Ed Wood. In the scene, notorious director Edward D. Wood, Jr. (Johnny Depp) is holding a wrap party for his 1955 sci-fi/horor anti-epic, Bride of the Monster. The wild celebration, attended by Bela Lugosi and the other oddballs and grotesques who orbited Wood, is held in the meat-packing plant of the film’s major backer, wealthy rancher Donald McCoy (Rance Howard). While the carcasses of slaughtered animals hang from hooks all around them, the revelers are treated to a suggestive dance routine performed by Wood himself, costumed as a harem girl. Korla Pandit, immaculately attired in a Nehru jacket and the ever-present turban, accompanies him on the organ with a composition called “Nautch Dance,” referring to a seductive style of dance popularized in early-1900s India…

Read the entire article here.

From Multiracial to Transgender? Assessing Attitudes toward Expanding Gender Options on the US Census

Transgender Studies Quarterly
Volume 2, Number 1, February 2015
pages 77-100
DOI: 10.1215/23289252-2848895

Kristen Schilt, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

Jenifer Bratter, Associate Professor of Sociology
Rice University, Houston, Texas

In 2000, the US Census Bureau acknowledged multiracial Americans on the decennial census in an attempt to better capture racial heterogeneity and to more closely align what is publicly collected on forms with people’s personal understandings of their racial identity. In this article, we start a discussion of how the census—a major source of political identity recognition and legitimation—could be more inclusive of gender variance. We ask: (1) Is there support for a transgender category on the US census? (2) Who might select a transgender option if it were provided? To answer these questions, we conducted questionnaire research at three transgender and genderqueer conferences and found strong support for the inclusion of a transgender category. Conversely, we found that many people did not currently check “transgender” on forms when given the opportunity. As we show, the decision to check “transgender” varies by what we term gender identity validation. In other words, people who identified as male or female and who felt others viewed them as unequivocally male or female, respectively, were less likely to check “transgender” than people who identified as transgender or who experienced a discrepancy between their self-perceived and other-perceived gender identity. These differences suggest that—similar to the push for adding a multiracial category to the census—the expansion of sex/gender categories is most likely to come from individuals who experience themselves as constrained by the existing possibilities and/or who are stigmatized by others’ conceptions of the appropriate alignment of bodies and genders.

Read or puchase the article here.

OPINION: The changing racial makeup

Commerce News Today
Commerce, Georgia
2015-10-13

Cameron Whitlock, Reporter

The racial makeup of the United States is changing. That’s not an opinion, that’s a cold hard fact.

By 2050, racial minority groups will make up a majority of the U.S. population.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau and a study from the Pew Research Center, “white” Americans will have gone from 85 percent of the population in 1960, to 43 percent in 2060. Meanwhile, the number of black and Hispanic Americans will, make up a combined 45 percent of the population.

There are many contributing factors, the largest of which are immigration and the intermarriage of races. Until the middle of the 20th century, the American immigrant population largely consisted of white European expats. Nowadays, European immigration to the Americas sparse, while immigrants from Latin America make up over 50 percent of our naturalized citizens…

…I recall an ITBS (Iowa Test of Basic Skills) exam back in primary school. As with most standardized tests, the ITBS info sheet required you to pencil in your age, gender and race. The same still applies for most colleges, job applications and a number of other forms. But at what point do we categorize someone in a particular race? I vaguely remember the confusion felt by one of my Asian-American classmates when he was asked to pencil in his race. His mother was a Korean born immigrant, while his father was a white, natural-born American. He can’t check the “white” box, yet he doesn’t consider himself an “Asian, Pacific islander.” He’s certainly not “Native American” or “Black.” The only other option was just that – “other.” But what does that even mean? Now, such applications or forms typically list another option such as “mixed race.” But with such a vague destruction, is that information valuable in any way? …

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Lecture, forum at UH-Hilo to explore Filipino identity

Hawaii Tribune-Herald
Hilo, Hawaii
2015-10-13

Dr. Ronald R. Sundstrom

Dr. Ronald Sundstrom, professor of philosophy at the University of San Francisco, will deliver a public lecture titled “The Filipino-American Experience and The Post-Racial State” from 4-5:30 p.m. Friday at the University of Hawaii at Hilo UCB 127.

The presentation, part of UH-Hilo’s Filipino-American Heritage Month events, is open to the public.

There also will be an academic forum titled “Knowledge, Power and Identity” from 11-11:50 a.m. Friday in UCB 111.

Dr. Celia Bardwell Jones, UH-Hilo philosophy professor, and the Filipino-American Heritage Month committee organized the academic forum and public lecture to tackle sensitive and provocative issues of Filipino identity.

Sundstrom comes from a mixed-race Filipino heritage and was born as a Filipino Amerasian child in Olongapo, Subic Bay. He later had to nationalize in order to claim his U.S. citizenship.

Additionally, he teaches for USF’s African-American studies program and the master of public affairs program for the Leo T. McCarthy Center of Public Service and the Common Good…

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Exotic Korla Pandit hid race under swami persona

SFGate
2015-08-15

Jessica Zack

Eric Christensen grew up in San Francisco in the 1950s and remembers his mother, “like a lot of women then, being transfixed by Korla Pandit on television. He wore a jeweled turban and had these mesmerizing eyes that made women feel he could see right through them. Korla was this otherworldly, captivating guy, and we all thought he and his music were from another land.”

Christensen, who lives in Mill Valley, and his former KGO TV colleague John Turner of Berkeley have chronicled Pandit’s life story in their new documentary “Korla,” which has its Bay Area premiere at San Francisco’s Museum of the African Diaspora on Aug. 20.

From his first 1949 episodes of “Adventures in Music” on Southern California’s KTLA, Pandit rode an almost 50-year-long wave of success — as a TV sensation, prolific recording artist (13 albums with Berkeley’s Fantasy Records) and “grandfather of exotica music” — based not only on his keyboard prowess but on his enigmatic swami persona.

With his heavily kohl-rimmed eyes and upturned half-smile, Pandit coaxed unusual sounds from the Hammond B-3 organ, playing “musical gems from far and near” — faux-Polynesian sounds, Hawaiian war chants, “hypnotiques” — while extolling the virtues of “divine consciousness” and “the universal language of music.”

Yet, unbeknownst to his legions of fans until after his death in Petaluma in 1998, at age 77, Pandit’s hypnotic Svengali look and supposedly Hindu name were part of an expertly crafted fiction of self-invention. A magazine profile by R. J. Smith in 2001 revealed that Pandit was actually African American, a minister’s son born John Roland Redd, from Columbia, Mo…

…The film incorporates interviews with music and sociology experts — including Carlos Santana (who likens Pandit to Miles Davis), The Chronicle’s Radio Waves columnist Ben Fong-Torres and UC Berkeley Professor Emeritus Harry Edwards — as well as with Pandit’s nephew Gary Cloud, to examine, says Christensen, “this amazing act, even by show business standards. This wasn’t an act that occurred onstage for an hour or two, this was 24/7, all through his life. Korla put on this persona and couldn’t take it off. Living a lie on a daily basis must have been very difficult.”

“Korla’s life story illustrates what African Americans knew at the time: ‘If I can be anything other than black, my life could change dramatically,’” says Stanford University Assistant Professor of History Allyson Hobbs, whose new book “A Chosen Exile” explores the stories of individuals who passed as someone else racially from the late 19th century through the 1950s. “If they could just twist people’s perception of them even one degree — in this case, from black to another minority — doors previously closed would open.”…

Read the entire article here.

Health Care, Research Failing to Adapt to U.S.’s Growing Multiracial Population

School of Social Work
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
2015-10-12

Data collection methods in research and health care settings have lagged behind in adapting to the rapidly growing population of multiracials, according to studies led by social work professor Karen M. Tabb Dina

Multiracial people who change their racial identity from a single race to multiracial over time may be healthier than their minority peers who consistently identify as monoracial, new research suggests.

Despite the U.S.’s rapidly growing population of multiracial individuals, researchers and health care systems continue to use outdated approaches to racial categorization that force people to classify themselves as monoracial, which may be masking the incidence of health conditions and obscuring disparities in health care access and utilization among multiracial populations, a University of Illinois scholar said.

Social work professor Karen M. Tabb Dina is the lead author of two recent studies that explored issues of racial identity and its impact on health care access and utilization among nearly 8,000 U.S. young people.

The subjects in both of Tabb Dina’s studies were participants in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, one of the first surveys to allow respondents to identify themselves as multiracial using two or more racial categories, Tabb Dina said.

Participants in the Adolescent Health survey were asked about their racial background during the first wave of data collection in 1994 and again during the third wave, conducted in 2002.

Of the 7 percent of participants identified as multiracial at either wave, only 20 percent of these people selected the same racial categories both times, Tabb Dina found.

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Disparities in Health Services Use Among Multiracial American Young Adults

Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health
First online: 2015-09-29
8 pages
DOI: 10.1007/s10903-015-0289-7

Karen M. Tabb, Assistant Professor of Social Work
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Christopher R. Larrison, Associate Professor of Social Work
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Shinwoo Choi
School of Social Work
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Hsiang Huang, Instructor of Psychiatry
Cambridge Health Alliance
Harvard Medical School

Addressing disparities in health services utilization remains critical for improving minority health; however, most studies do not report on the health service use of multiracial young adults (age 22–34). This study compares past year health service use of self-identified multiracial (two or more races) young adults with monoracial White young adults. Weighted survey data from Add Health (N = 7296) and multivariate logistic regression analyses were used. Compared to monoracial White young adults, Black-White multiracial [OR 0.40, 95 % CI (0.17–0.90)] and Black-Native American multiracial [OR 0.23, 95 % CI (0.09–0.63)] young adults are less likely to report primary care service use in the past year. Multiracial young adults have different health care service utilization than their White monoracial peers with Black-Native American young adults appearing to be particularly vulnerable to under-utilization of primary care services. It is important to examine multiracial subgroups when studying patterns of health services utilization.

Musician’s life brings more than passing interest in passing

San Francisco Chronicle
2015-07-28

Leah Garchik, Features Columnist

As colleagues at KGO-TV, Eric Christensen and John Turner — Eric was a sports producer, John a news editor/arts producer — shared a passion for exotic cultural phenomena. Retired, they’ve combined know-how with that passion to make the doc “Korla, the Movie,” about organist Korla Pandit.

Turban-wearing Pandit, who said he was born in India, had his own TV show in the late ’40s and early ’50s. He was known for playing exotic “foreign” music. He was living in Petaluma when he died, in 1998. A subsequent magazine profile revealed that he was African American, born in Missouri.

A documentary about Pandit as an exotic performer — the likes of Yma Sumac — would be interesting at any time. But now, in the midst of a national discussion about identity that intensified with the recent revelation that Rachel Dolezal had chosen to identify as black, the movie’s tale of “passing” seems particularly relevant. It will be shown Aug. 20 at the Museum of the African Diaspora…

Read the entire article here.

I Am the Blood of the Conqueror; I Am the Blood of the Conquered

Christina Torres: Teacher. Runner. Writer.
2015-10-12

Christina Torres, Middle and high school English and Drama Teacher
University Laboratory School, Honolulu, Hawaii

I didn’t know the true extent of Columbus’s reign of horror until a few months ago. Sitting in a Nashville library, I read accounts of the things Columbus and his men did and felt sick to my stomach.

Columbus and his fellow “conquerors” were assholes. There are a number of sources that show this. It’s easy (and correct) to hate it all. The level of prestige bestowed on them is, frankly, disgusting…

…There was also rage. A sickening, black cloud of it stormed in behind my eyes, as it usually does when I read the real history of things. Normally, that rage has a name: white supremacy, slavery, segregation, police brutality, racism, privilege, bias. I can normally pin that rage to something, burn that effigy as things to stay away from and consciously choose to try and rid myself of, to work day and day to scrape out internalized oppression and beliefs.

You can’t scrape bloodlines clean, though…

..I am Mexicana and Filipina. I have been raised to be proud of the centuries of ancestors who came before me. Both cultures place a strong emphasis on not forgetting familial and cultural history…

Read the entire article here.

Trevor Noah Says He’s Not a Political Progressive. He’d Be Funnier If He Were.

The Nation
2015-10-09

Katie Halper

(The Daily Show with Trevor Noah / Brad Barket)

The new Daily Show host doesn’t have much to say, which leaves him making jokes about tramp stamps and body weight.

Unlike Jon Stewart, Trevor Noah doesn’t ground his comedy in a political ideology. This is of course politically disappointing to people who saw Jon Stewart as someone who not only raised awareness but influenced politics and sometimes even policy. But what’s less obvious is that the lack of political perspective makes the show less funny.

Like millions of viewers in the United States and across the globe, I depended upon Jon Stewart, night after night, to excoriate people in high places who had messed with ordinary people during the day. When Comedy Central announced that Trevor Noah would replace Stewart, I knew that the odds of someone doing as good a job were slim. But I defended Noah when he came under attack for a handful of tweets that ranged from offensive to not at all offensive (just critical of Israeli policy), and from unfunny to really, really unfunny. It seemed an unfair point of focus. I was hopeful that his background, so different from Stewart’s, would bring a fresh perspective. And I thought it went without saying that Noah would continue the show’s political focus and insight…

… In contrast, correspondents Roy Wood and Jordan Keppler brought an angle and some character to the show, which made them funnier. It wasn’t earth-shattering (no pun intended), but Roy Wood Jr.’s report on NASA’s discovery of liquid on Mars was the first time I laughed during the debut episode. It was also the first time racism (and not just race) was addressed on the show. When Noah asks Wood what he can tell us about the story, Wood responds, “I can tell you I don’t give a shit.” When an optimistic Noah says, “Doesn’t this raise the possibility that one day people can live on Mars?” Wood responds, “People like who? Me and you? How am I going to get there? Brother can’t catch a cab, you think we can catch a spaceship?… Black people ain’t going to Mars! And that includes you, Trevor.”…

Read the entire article here.