Mixed Race Studies

Koreans & Camptowns: Reflections of a Mixed-Race Korean

Korean American Story
2015-11-04

Cerrissa Kim

I’ve often stood out from the crowd, and not in a way that made me feel like a rock star—far from it. Growing up in a rural town filled with dairy cows and Caucasian farmers, and then in a bedroom community lacking ethnic diversity, I was the sole Asian kid at school until fifth grade. To my classmates, I was a slanty-eyed chink. Jap. Gook. Yigger. They’d never even heard of Korea.

I don’t look like my Irish/Scottish American father, nor do I have the distinctly Korean features of my mother. Like many mixed-race people of my generation, I was Asian to the outside world, but not Korean enough to the Korean side of my family. I’ve looked for faces that resembled mine in some small way everywhere I’ve gone. I’ve scanned crowded spaces and deserted diners—anywhere I traveled—hoping for camaraderie with others who might make me feel my appearance was normal.

This past September in Berkeley, California, I opened the doors to the David Brower Center, slightly nervous and excited, I stepped into a room filled with mixed-race Korean Americans attending the one-day Koreans and Camptowns Conference. Even though I grew up with my biological parents, I still carry the scars—physical and emotional—from being ostracized and bullied for looking different from the other children in my bucolic California communities. Many of the people attending the conference were Korean adoptees (KADs) who had even more reason to search through crowds to find someone who resembled them. Not only were most KADs raised in places with no other KADs or Koreans, but they also didn’t look anything like their adoptive parents and other family members.

During and after the Korean War, camptowns were established outside of military installations, offering locals a way to earn a living— including entertaining soldiers with nightclubs and prostitution. Many of the mixed-race children born between the 1950’s and 1970’s were conceived and born in these camptowns, fathered by American and other Allied soldiers. Their mothers, the camptown women, were marginalized by society because most of them came from poor families and had to work as cooks, maids, sex workers, or other low-paying jobs to support themselves as well as their parents, grandparents and siblings. These women often waited for fathers of their children to return, hoping for a way out of the grueling camptown life. But more often than not, this didn’t happen, either because the soldiers were uninterested in going back, or because the military made it difficult—or even impossible—for them to return and marry Korean women…

Read the entire article here.

Measuring Race And Ethnicity Across The Decades: 1790-2010

Random Samplings: The official blog of the U.S. Census Bureau
United States Census Bureau
2015-11-02

Beverly M. Pratt
Population Division

Lindsay Hixson
Population Division

Nicholas A. Jones
Population Division

Over the years, the U.S. Census Bureau has collected information on race and ethnicity. The census form has always reflected changes in society, and shifts have occurred in the way the Census Bureau classifies race and ethnicity. Historically, the changes have been influenced by social, political and economic factors including emancipation, immigration and civil rights. Today, the Census Bureau collects race and ethnic data according to U.S. Office of Management and Budget guidelines, and these data are based on self-identification.

A new interactive visualization released today shows how race and ethnicity categories have changed over time since the first census in 1790. This allows us to better understand the relationship between historical classifications and the present time. A static version of this same visualization was presented in April 2015 at the Population Association of America’s annual meeting.

We created this interactive timeline to establish a starting point for the public — including community stakeholders, academics and data users — to understand how race and ethnicity categories have changed over 220 years in the decennial census. This understanding is important as we interpret results from the 2010 Census Race and Hispanic Origin Alternative Questionnaire Experiment and the current middecade testing of race and ethnicity questions, including the 2015 National Content Test. The National Content Test will inform design changes for collecting data on race and ethnicity in the 2020 Census and other ongoing demographic and economic surveys conducted by the Census Bureau.

Read the entire article here. View the infographic here.

“My life has gotten white”: Zadie Smith’s Erotics and Ethics of Upward Mobility

C21 Seminar Series 2015-16
Centre for Research in Twenty-first Century Writings
University of Brighton
Falmer Campus
101 Mayfield House
Brighton, United Kingdom
2015-11-09, 17:00-18:30Z

Sarah Brophy, Professor of English and Cultural Studies
McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

In a 2011 Guardian article “Where are Britain’s black authors?,” novelist Catherine Johnson discusses the boom in white-authored stories about “other races and cultures,” suggesting that “the words of a white author are a comfortable buffer, a reassurance that nothing in the story will be too shocking, too hard to understand; the author is like you, and you can trust him or her to tell you this story in familiar terms.” Conspicuously absent from Johnson’s discussion is Zadie Smith, the young mixed race author from North London who burst on to the literary scene with a historic advance contract for the manuscript of the acclaimed White Teeth (2000). How does the case of Smith potentially reroute Johnson’s critique? Building on Zadie Smith’s comments in a publicity interview for her latest novel NW (2012) that “my life has gotten white compared to the life I grew up with. Because of the world I work in—it’s white,” this paper considers the dilemmas of upward mobility and whiteness as they have come to bear on Smith, who articulates and negotiates these pressures in a range of life writing modes (especially personal essays and autobiographical fiction)…

For more information, click here.

Sense of Place with Guest Sharon H. Chang

Sense of Place
Roundhouse Radio 98.3 FM
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
November 2015

Minelle Mahtani, Host

Minelle Mahtani and Sharon H. Chang (Source: Facebook)

Author, scholar, sociologist, and activist Sharon H. Chang discusses her new book Raising Mixed Race: Multiracial Asian Children in a Post-Racial World.

Listen to the interview (00:36:17) here.

The day my daughter realized she isn’t white

The Washington Post
2015-11-03

Lisa Papademetriou

“Mama,” my 4-year-old daughter said. “Did you know that darks and lights didn’t used to be able to go to the same places?”

“What?” I asked. It was bedtime, and I was tired. I wondered vaguely how Zara knew so much about laundry.

“There are some people who have dark skin color,” she said. “Lights would go one place, and darks would go another,” Zara went on, indignant. “There were signs saying the darks couldn’t go into where the lights were!”

“Who told you about that?” I asked, and she explained that a special visitor had come to her classroom to talk about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. She very earnestly explained the Civil Rights movement and Dr. King’s message to me. “He said that everyone should be able to go into the same places. He said people should take down the signs that kept the darks out.” Growing more passionate, Zara cried, “Kylie and I agreed that we wouldn’t go anywhere if there was a sign that said, ‘Lights Only!’ We would rip up that sign and say, ‘Everyone can go here!’” Kylie has blue eyes and curly blond hair.

“Zara, honey, I’m so glad you feel that way,” I told her. “But do you realize that you’re not white?”

Stunned silence.

And then: rage. “I am white!” she shouted. “You’re white!”

“Yes,” I told her. “I’m white, so you are part white. But Daddy is from Pakistan. He’s brown. And that means that, in those times, you would have been considered brown, not white.”

“I am white!” Zara wailed. “I’m everything!” And she burst into tears…

Read the entire article here.

Vanishing Eden: White Construction of Memory, Meaning, and Identity in a Racially Changing City

Temple University Press
November 2015
198 pages
6 x 9
Paper ISBN: 978-1-43991-119-8
Cloth ISBN: 978-1-43991-118-1
eBook ISBN: 978-1-43991-120-4

Michael T. Maly, Associate Professor of Sociology; Director of the Policy Research Collaborative
Roosevelt University, Chicago, Illinois

Heather M. Dalmage, Professor of Sociology; Director of the Mansfield Institute for Social Justice and Transformation
Roosevelt University, Chicago, Illinois

For many whites, desegregation initially felt like an attack on their community. But how has the process of racial change affected whites’ understanding of community and race? In Vanishing Eden, Michael Maly and Heather Dalmage provide an intriguing analysis of the experiences and memories of whites who lived in Chicago neighborhoods experiencing racial change during the 1950s through the 1980s. They pay particular attention to examining how young people made sense of what was occurring, and how this experience impacted their lives.

Using a blend of urban studies and whiteness studies, the authors examine how racial solidarity and whiteness were created and maintained—often in subtle and unreflective ways. Vanishing Eden also considers how race is central to the ways social institutions such as housing, education, and employment function. Surveying the shifting social, economic, and racial contexts, the authors explore how race and class at local and national levels shaped the organizing strategies of those whites who chose to stay as racial borders began to change.

Diversity Committee Workshop: Loretta Staples, LCSW: “Both & Neither: Biracial Identities”

The Connecticut Society of Psychoanalytic Psychology
Mt. Carmel Medical & Professional Building
3074 Whitney Avenue, Bldg 1
Hamden, Connecticut 06518
2015-11-14, 10:30-12:30 EST (Local Time)

Loretta Staples, LCSW

The CSPP Diversity Work Group Announces a New Workshop in our series: Through An/Other Lens: Multicultural Perspectives

Loretta Staples, LCSW maintains a private practice in New Haven and is a therapist in addiction services at Rushford in Meriden. She specializes in working with clients on issues of race, class, and gender as they impact identity and well-being.

Despite claims of a “post-racial” society, race persists as a salient cultural dimension through which private and public identities are formed. While public discourse about race in the U.S. continues to focus on black/white racial tension, biracial individuals—representing a varied mix of racial backgrounds—occupy a fast-growing segment of the population, as defined by the U.S. Census.

Individuals of mixed race occupy a realm in which they are “both and neither,” affording unique challenges and opportunities in navigating social realities. These particular adaptive demands impact identity formation, social functioning, and well-being, sometimes adversely, sometimes advantageously.

Therapists, especially those identifying as monoracial, may not recognize biracial clients, or may incorrectly assume certain racial allegiances. Moreover, they may overlook the effects of multivalent racialized experiences on the lives of biracial clients, and on the specific concerns these clients bring to treatment. This workshop provides an informal opportunity to explore biracial identity and considerations for clinical work…

For more information, click here.

“Mixed Race” Identities in Asia and the Pacific: Experiences from Singapore and New Zealand

Routledge
2015-10-28
188 pages
2 B/W Illus.
Hardback ISBN: 978-1-13-893393-4

Zarine L. Rocha, Managing Editor
Current Sociology and The Asian Journal of Social Science

“Mixed race” is becoming an important area for research, and there is a growing body of work in the North American and British contexts. However, understandings and experiences of “mixed race” across different countries and regions are not often explored in significant depth. New Zealand and Singapore provide important contexts for investigation, as two multicultural, yet structurally divergent, societies. Within these two countries, “mixed race” describes a particularly interesting label for individuals of mixed Chinese and European parentage.

This book explores the concept of “mixed race” for people of mixed Chinese and European descent, looking at how being Chinese and/or European can mean many different things in different contexts. By looking at different communities in Singapore and New Zealand, it investigates how individuals of mixed heritage fit into or are excluded from these communities. Increasingly, individuals of mixed ancestry are opting to identify outside of traditionally defined racial categories, posing a challenge to systems of racial classification, and to sociological understandings of “race”. As case studies, Singapore and New Zealand provide key examples of the complex relationship between state categorization and individual identities. The book explores the divergences between identity and classification, and the ways in which identity labels affect experiences of “mixed race” in everyday life. Personal stories reveal the creative and flexible ways in which people cross boundaries, and the everyday negotiations between classification, heritage, experience, and nation in defining identity. The study is based on qualitative research, including in-depth interviews with people of mixed heritage in both countries.

Filling an important gap in the literature by using an Asia/Pacific dimension, this study of race and ethnicity will appeal to students and scholars of mixed race studies, ethnicity, Chinese diaspora and cultural anthropology.

Contents

• 1. Finding the “Mixed” in “Mixed Race”
• 2. Mixed Histories in New Zealand and Singapore
• 3. The Personal in the Political
• 4. Being and Belonging
• 5. Roots, Routes and Coming Home
• 6. Conclusion

Minelle Mahtani is the New Host of “Sense of Place” on Roundhouse Radio 98.3 Vancouver

Sense of Place
Roundhouse Radio 98.3 Vancouver
98.3 FM
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
2015-07-14

Minelle Mahtani is an author, journalist and professor. She is an Associate Professor of Human Geography and Planning, and the Program in Journalism, at University of Toronto-Scarborough. She has written two books, “Mixed Race Amnesia: Resisting the Romanticization of Multiraciality” and “Global Mixed Race.” She has worked in the not-for-profit sector in Vancouver for the former firm IMPACS – Institute for Media, Policy and Civil Society and sits on the steering committee of UBC’s journalism school. She is former President of the Association for Canadian Studies and has won several awards, including a Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Award for her contributions to journalism. She is a former CBC TV journalist who worked on “The National.”

I’m on leave from the university to take on this exciting role. I’m taking it on because of what Roundhouse represents and exemplifies. Roundhouse is about active community citizenry. Roundhouse’s commitment to solutions-oriented programming echoes my own professional passions – thinking about ways to encourage a heightened sense of human flourishing for all Vancouver residents. Roundhouse hopes to be a conduit for so many underrepresented groups in this city. As a person of colour, of mixed race descent, I’m obviously supportive of that project. I’m personally committed to entertaining audiences, but also educating and inspiring our listeners to shed light on the complexities of city life today.

For more information, click here.

Williams: A positive among the attack ads in the Gecker-Sturtevant race

Richmond Times-Dispatch
Richmond, Virginia
2015-11-02

Michael Paul Williams, Columnist

During the 2000 Republican primary in South Carolina, John McCain was the target of a whisper campaign that he’d fathered a black child out of wedlock. McCain, who in reality had an adopted Bangladeshi daughter, suffered a pivotal loss to eventual nominee George W. Bush.

Fifteen years later, with control of the Virginia State Senate in the balance, the Republican and Democratic candidates — both white — are showcasing their black children in televised campaign ads…

…No politician places his children before the camera with the idea that it will cost him votes. But we must never become so cynical, so suspicious of motivation, that we lose the capacity to acknowledge positive change when we see it.

“It’s hard to call this anything but good news,” said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. “I remember the 1950s and 1960s, when Virginians would openly decry racially mixed marriage or the adoption of children of another race. And the Senate race is in the Richmond area, once one of the most resistant to change.

“Today,” Sabato said, “a mixed-race family is a political plus. Without saying a word, you project an image of progress and modernity.”

Of course, it’s hard to imagine a mixed-race family as part of a political master plan, given the love, commitment, energy and money required to raise a child. And what happens if you lose the election?

But evidence abounds that Sabato is on to something.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and his African-American wife, Chirlane McCray, are the parents of college-age daughter Chiara and son Dante, who wears a prodigious Afro hairstyle. And south of the Mason-Dixon Line in Kentucky, Republican gubernatorial candidate Matt Bevin and his wife have run ads including their four adopted Ethiopian children…

Read the entire article here.