Mixed Race Studies

CCIE presents Cedar & Bamboo – Film Première and Panel Discussion

University of British Columbia, Point Grey Campus
UBC First Nations Longhouse
Thursday, 2010-10-14, 12:00-14:30 (Local Time)

Sponsored by the Centre for Culture, Identity and Education (CCIE).

There are numerous First Nations in what is now British Columbia and Chinese people arrived on BC’s shores many generations ago. Since then, Indigenous and Chinese people have interacted and forged relationships. Set in Vancouver and other locations in BC, Cedar and Bamboo opens with a survey of the lives of early Chinese immigrants and concentrates on addressing the more recent history of highly complex and troubled issues of interracial relationships and marriages, multiracial identity and identification, alienation and belonging. Its central focus is on the lives of four people of mixed Indigenous and Chinese ancestry and their formation of strong and meaningful identity in spite of the difficulty of reconciling divergent identities, racist laws, the complexities of familial and ethnic acceptance and/or rejection and personal identification with and alienation from Canada and Canadianness, China and Chineseness and First Nations and Indigenous identity. Lil’wat elder Judy Joe reflects on being “abandoned” by her Indigenous mother, being sent to her father’s village in China at age five, being ill treated there as a foreigner and returning to Canada as a teenager to a Vancouver from which she felt completely alienated. Musqueam elder Howard Grant, whose Chinese father worked in the market gardens near his Musqueam mother’s family, reflects on his experiences with both cultures and his principal identification as aboriginal. Siblings Jordie and Hannah Yow, now in their 20s, reflect on growing up “Canadian” in Kamloops with knowledge of being quite multiracial and multiethnic but with virtually no information about either their Chinese grandfather or their Secwempec grandmother.

As a bonus- 1788: A History of Chinese and First Nations Relations in British Columbia, 10 minutes of academic commentary from Professors Henry Yu and Jean Barman of the University of British Columbia and Harley Wylie of Nuu-chah-nulth ancestry on the intersecting histories of First Nations and Chinese people in British Columbia.

For more information, click here.

What Can DNA Really Tell Us About Race?

UCtelevision
Unviersity of California
2007-04-25
00:54:55

Introduction by
Howard Winnant, Professor of Sociology
University of California, Santa Barbara

Troy Duster, Chancellor’s Professor of Sociology
University of California, Berkeley

and
Professor of Sociology and Director of the Institute for the History of the Production of Knowledge
New York University

One of the leading authorities on race and science, Troy Duster discusses how the understanding of race is being reshaped by the genomics revolution. Sometimes unintentionally and sometimes not so innocently, genomics may be generating a new and more sophisticated racism, not so different from the eugenics-based and criminological racism that flourished in decades gone by. Series: “Voices” [7/2007] [Public Affairs] [Humanities] [Science] [Show ID: 13008]

Vietnamese Afro-Amerasian Testimony: In Search of the “Place” in Displacement

The Global Viet Diaspora
2009

This documentary was produced/directed by Rojelio Vo, Long S. Le, and Aaron Hedge. The documentary is based on the lived-experience of a Vietnamese Afro-Amerasian, Khanh Le.

“If the individual black self could not exist before the law, it could, and would, be forged in language as a testimony at once to the supposed integrity of the black self and against the social and political evils that delimited individual and group equality.” – Professor Henry Louis Gates

Khanh Le is a Vietnamese Afro-Amerasian, fathered by an African American serviceman during the Vietnam War. Khanh has no information about his father, and his mother abandoned him when he was an infant. He was raised by a surrogate family. As a “half-breed” black child (con den lai) and a child of the enemy (con cua ke thu), Khanh did not exist before the law in Vietnam. His displacement experiences entail physical, cultural, psychological, and intellectual of which he suffered humiliation and discrimination. His search for a “place” came in 1986 when he arrived to the U.S. through the Orderly Departure Program (ODP). The ODP allowed Amerasians to bring their mothers but restricted surrogate or extended family members. Thus, at the age of ten, Khanh came to the U.S. as an unaccompanied minor, living with foster families and later in sheltered homes for Amerasian young adults…

Read the article here.
View part one (of five) of the documentary here.

Multiracial Identity [Movie] to be screened at the  Portland, Maine International Film Festival

Portland, Maine International Film Festival
Saturday, 2010-08-21, 12:00 – 13:30 EDT (Local Time)
Space Gallery
538 Congress Street, Portland, Maine 04101
Phone: 207.828.5600

Year: 2010
Director: Brian Chinhema
Writer: Brian Chinhema
Producer: Brian Chinhema (Abacus Production)
Running Time: 01:22:00

Multiracial people are the fastest growing demographic in America, yet there is no officially political recognition for mixed-race people. Multiracial Identity examines what it means to be multiracial in America and explores the social, political, and religious impact of the multiracial movement.

The film is produced and directed by Brian Chinhema and features commentary from noted scholars, Rainier Spencer, Naomi Zack, Aliya Saperstein, Aaron Gullickson, Susan J. Hayflick and Pastor Randall Sanford.

Genetic screening may redefine medical treatments

KGO-TV San Francisco, California
2010-07-07

Carolyn Johnson, Co-Anchor
KGO-TV

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — New research out of UCSF [University of California, San Francisco] shows that tracking a patient’s genetic ancestry can improve the diagnosis of asthma and other lung diseases. The results could have broader implications for other diseases that also rely on standard benchmarks such as race, gender and age.

Doctor’s office visits are the norm for 9-year-old Shamatay Hayes. She was diagnosed with asthma at age 2, something she and her mom have struggled to keep under control.

“It is challenging,” her mother says.

At San Francisco General Hospital and at asthma clinic across the country, Shamatay’s lung function is tracked using standard benchmarks such as age, gender and race. But, researchers say there is now a better way.

“So, what we can now do with modern techniques is estimate what a person’s ancestry is or what their heritage is using a series of genetic markers,” says UCSF researcher Dr. Melinda Aldrich.

The genetic markers more accurately determine lung function rather than a patient’s self-identification as simply white, black or Hispanic.

“With increasing African ancestry, we saw a decrement in lung function,” says UCSF associate professor Dr. Esteban Burchar…

…”We’ve had people contact us who were supremacists that said you know what you’re doing is validating what we believe,” he says.

But, the research actually tells a different story.

“Most of us, all of us in fact, are racially mixed,” he says. “We have a very rich heritage and what we’re doing is acknowledging that mixture and incorporating it into our clinical assessments.”…

Read the entire article and view the video clip here.

AM Northwest KATU-TV Live Interview with Heidi W. Durrow

AM Northwest
KATU-TV (Portland, Oregon)
Friday, 2010-05-21 09:00-10:00 PDT (Local time), (12:00-1300 EDT, 16:00-17:00Z)

Heidi Durrow appeared on the program AM Norwthwest on KATU-TV (Portland, Oregon) to discuss her new book, The Girl Who Fell From the Sky.

You may view the recorded segment below by pressing the start button or by clicking here.

Multiracial Identity [Movie], World Premiere Screening

Politics on Film 2010 Festival
Saturday, 2010-05-08, 13:30 EDT (Local Time)
E Street Cinema (Purchase tickets on-line here.)
555 11th Street, NW
Washington, DC

Year: 2010
Director: Brian Chinhema
Writer: Brian Chinhema
Producer: Brian Chinhema (Abacus Production)
Running Time: 01:22:00

Multiracial people are the fastest growing demographic in America, yet there is no officially political recognition for mixed-race people. Multiracial Identity examines what it means to be multiracial in America and explores the social, political, and religious impact of the multiracial movement.

The film is produced and directed by Brian Chinhema and features commentary from noted scholars, Rainier Spencer, Naomi Zack, Aliya Saperstein, Aaron Gullickson, Susan J. Hayflick and Pastor Randall Sanford. 

For more information, click here.  Purchase tickets on-line here.

Anomaly: A documentary fim about multiracial identity

Langston Hughes African American Film Festival
Sunday, 2010-04-18 13:30 PDT (Local Time)
Central Cinema, 1411 21st Avenue (at Union), Seattle, WA 98122
(206) 686-6684

Jessica Chen Drammeh, Director/Producer

Sharon Smith, Co-Producer

Anomaly is a groundbreaking documentary film that takes an insider’s look at the experiences of multiracial Americans. Through personal narratives, Anomaly stimulates viewers to think about identity, family and community in a changing world.

The film features interviews and performances by:

• Gabriella Callender of Mahina Movement
• Michelle Myers of Yellow Rage
• Pete Shungu
• Thaddeus Rutkowski

The film also includes interviews with community expert Eric Hamako, Jen Chau of Swirl, Inc., Michele Elam (professor at Stanford University), Ann Morning (professor at New York University), and Jennifer Chan (professor at San Francisco State University).

For more information, click here.

Biracial residents boxed in on U.S. census

MSNBC
2010-03-31

Mara Schiavocampo, Digital Correspondent
NBC Nightly News

We’ve asked viewers to tell us how their community has changed since the last census. One viewer from outside Olympia, Washingtonwrote in to tell the story of how diverse her community has become. NBC’s Mara Schiavocampo reports.

Multiracialism In America – Jane Junn

New Century Foundation
New York, New York
2008-08-05
Length: 00:04:04

Jane Junn, Associate Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University
Rutgers University

Political scientist Jane Junn examines shifting views on racial categorization in the United States. Junn notes the increasingly common use of the “Multiracial” designation on the U.S. Census, and discusses what it may mean for American society.