Mixed Race Studies

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…

Read the entire article here.

Art for Obama: Designing Manifest Hope And The Campaign For Change

Abrams
2009-10-01
184 pages
150 full-color illustrations
Trim Size: 9 x 11
Paperback ISBN: 0-8109-8498-9

Edited by:

Shepard Fairey

Jennifer Gross

Few events in recent memory have captivated the world’s attention like that of Barack Obama’s historic presidential campaign. Not only did it stir passionate political momentum, but it also inspired the creative talents of a world of artists, illustrators, and graphic designers.

Shepard Fairey’s iconic Hope portrait became the face of the campaign and, more than ever before, innovative graphic design became a central strategy for winning the race.

Comprised of collages, paintings, photo composites, prints, and computer-generated pieces, Art for Obama showcases the well-known images of the campaign as well as less famous but equally creative pieces from around the globe. This is a volume for design and art aficionados, as well as supporters of the 44th President of the United States who want a keepsake as uncommon as his extraordinary campaign.

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.

Read the entire article here.

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.

A resurgence of black identity in Brazil? Evidence from an analysis of recent censuses

Demographic Research
Volume 32
Article 59 (2015-06-18)
pages 1603-1630
DOI: 10.4054/DemRes.2015.32.59

Vítor Miranda
Population Studies Center
University of Pennsylvania

Background: The second half of the 20th century brought a sharp increase in the number of people self-identifying as “brown” in the Brazilian Censuses. Previous studies have demonstrated that this was not the result of demographic forces, such as differential birth rates, but of a large number of people changing their response in the censuses from “black” or “white” to “brown”. Despite the increased black political activism of the last two decades, whether this historical pattern of racial reclassification continued after 1990 has not yet been systematically investigated.

Objective: This study investigates if the increase in identity politics by the Brazilian black movement since the 1990s was associated with a number of people changing their answers in the census from non-black to black.

Methods: The residual method is used to estimate a counterfactual scenario: what the distribution of the population by race would look like in the 2000 and 2010 censuses if no racial reclassification had occurred during the 1990s and 2000s.

Results: The “black” category experienced net gains of 2.2 million and 3.1 million newly reclassified members in the 2000 and 2010 censuses, respectively. By 2010 at least one in every three people in the black population was a newly reclassified black. The increase was particularly strong among males and the younger generations.

Conclusions: The historical flight from blackness in Brazil documented by previous studies has reversed in the last two decades. This suggests that the increased black activism might have been successful in valorizing black identity and increasing identification with blackness.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Racial statistics in Brazil
3. Earlier studies and open questions
4. Analytic strategy and data
5. Results
6. Alternative scenarios: Mortality, international migration, and census coverage
7. Conclusions and discussion
8. Acknowledgments
9. Reference

Read the entire article here.

Tap Roots (1948): A Review of the first “Free State of Jones” movie

Renegade South: Histories of Unconventional Southerners
2015-10-11

Vikki Bynum, Emeritus Professor of History
Texas State University, San Marcos

As we await the release of The Free State of Jones, I thought it might be fun to visit an earlier movie similarly inspired by Newt Knight and the Knight band’s Civil War uprising. Tap Roots, adapted from James Street’s 1942 novel of the same name, was released by Universal International Pictures in August, 1948.

As I searched the internet, I quickly discovered that New York Times reviewer Tom Pryor had been anything but impressed by the movie. “Checking the accuracy of historical detail in Tap Roots, the romanticized Civil War drama,” he wrote, . . . “would serve no special purpose,” presumably because, he added, “clichés, oral and visual,” had produced a drama whose characters exhibited no “individuality or substance.”

Although I had read the novel Tap Roots many years ago, I had never seen the movie—until now. After viewing seven of the eight sections of Tap Roots on YouTube over the space of two days, I have to say, Pryor was correct. Moviegoers learned little to nothing about the important story of Southern Unionism in Jones County, Mississippi, from this production…

Read the entire review here.