‘Blind Spots’ and Other Problems in Globally Blended Families

Posted in Articles, Asian Diaspora, Census/Demographics, Family/Parenting, Media Archive, United States on 2016-08-31 21:20Z by Steven

‘Blind Spots’ and Other Problems in Globally Blended Families

The Wall Street Journal
2016-08-31

Tracy Slater

When the parents are in the majority and the kids are in the minority

Perhaps your child, like my two-year-old, and many other children in globally blended families, belongs to the world’s growing mixed-ethnicity population. The World Factbook finds a percentage of mixed-ethnicity people in almost a quarter of its 236 countries and territories. Among western nations, the U.K.’s and the U.S.’s mixed-race populations are increasing faster than any other minority group.

Mixed-ethnicity children often face very different experiences to their parents, a point stressed by many studies tracking this population’s growth, but within multinational families, there is another dimension: My daughter may be mixed, but she has two biological parents without much clue about what it feels like to be a minority as a kid. I’m a Jewish-American, raised with all the cultural privileges afforded to whites in the U.S., her father is native Japanese, and we live in Japan.

As a woman in a multicultural, multinational, and multiracial couple, I’ve sensed how some people assume I must be uniquely open to cultural differences, and thus uniquely equipped to raise a mixed child. But this assumption betrays a flawed logic. Globe-trotting parents in mixed marriages who grew up in the majority may be aware of racism and may even have faced it themselves, but most still lack a deeper understanding of racism during a child’s formative years…

Read the entire article here.

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Reflections on the 2014 Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference

Posted in Articles, Media Archive, United States on 2014-11-17 01:47Z by Steven

Reflections on the 2014 Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference

Multiracial Asian Families: thinking about race, families, children, and the intersection of mixed ID/Asian
2014-11-16

Sharon H. Chang

Ah. Where do I begin. I’m sitting on a plane waiting to takeoff to Seattle (correction, taking off) thinking on my last 3 days in Chicago at the Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference. I’m exhilarated, emotional, exhausted, enlightened. I got to present some of my research for the first time. After years of researching, [a] major milestone. I got to be with and meet in the flesh so many folk doing great work whom I had mostly only known by name or via social media thumbnails till that point: Eliaichi Kimaro of A Lot Like You; Jeff Chiba Stearns of One Big Hapa Family, Yellow Sticky Notes, and the forthcoming Mixed Match; Megumi Nishikura of Hafu; Fanshen Cox [Digiovanni] of One Drop of Love and, with partner Chandra Crudup, Mixed Roots Stories; Ken Tanabe of Loving Day; Co-creators of War Baby / Love Child (as well as two of the conference’s founders) Laura Kina and Wei Ming Dariotis; and Steven Riley of MixedRaceStudies.org

Read the entire article here.

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“A Lot Like You” ~ Where Will Your Cultural Journey Take You?

Posted in Audio, Autobiography, Interviews, Live Events, Media Archive, United States on 2014-01-15 20:06Z by Steven

“A Lot Like You” ~ Where Will Your Cultural Journey Take You?

Mixed Race Radio
Blog Talk Radio
2014-01-15, 20:00Z (15:00 EDT)

Tiffany Rae Reid, Host

Eliaichi Kimaro, Filmmaker

On today’s episode of Mixed Race Radio, we will meet Activist-turned-filmmaker Eliaichi Kimaro. As the director of 9elephants productions, Eli produces videos for non-profits about social and economic justice issues in an effort to use  video to bring stories of struggle, resistance and survival to a broader audience.

Eliaichi brings a lifetime of personal and professional experience exploring issues of culture, identity, race, class, gender and trauma to her Award-winning directorial debut, A Lot Like You.  Drawing upon her 9-year film journey, she is currently on the campus and conference lecture circuit engaging communities across the country in discussion about mixed race/multicultural issues, cultural identity, gender violence, and the power of personal storytelling.

Please join us Today as we discuss how we can “use our own personal stories (our own documentaries if you will) like ‘A Lot Like You’, as a spring board for exploring issues of race, identity, and belonging.”

WON’T YOU JOIN US? We’d love to hear your story!

Listen to the interview here.

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A Lot Like You

Posted in Autobiography, Identity Development/Psychology, Live Events, Media Archive, United States, Videos on 2013-10-04 02:53Z by Steven

A Lot Like You

DePaul University
Center for Intercultural Programs
LPC-Cortelyou Commons
2324 N Fremont St.
2013-10-15, 18:00-19:00 CDT (Local Time)

Join documentary filmmaker Eliaichi Kimaro for a screening and discussion of scenes from A Lot Like Me, her own original autobiographical journey of self-discovery. Her film follows her experience as a mixed-race, first-generation American reconciling the culture she’s inherited with how she defines herself today.

For more information, click here.

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AfroPoP – A Lot Like You

Posted in Africa, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, United States, Videos on 2013-02-01 02:45Z by Steven

AfroPoP – A Lot Like You

AfroPoP
PBS Video
Duration: (00:56:59)
Premiere Date: 2013-01-22
Episode Expires: 2013-02-22

Eliaichi Kimaro, Director

A bi-racial filmmaker returns to her father’s home tribe on Mount Kilomanjaro.

Premieres January 22nd on the WORLD Channel. In this award-winning and very personal documentary a young woman probes her interracial roots to find some difficult truths about her own past and her father’s male-dominated East African culture.

For more information, click here.

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My Day at the 5th Annual Mixed Roots Film and Literary Festival

Posted in Articles, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, United States on 2012-10-15 05:29Z by Steven

My Day at the 5th Annual Mixed Roots Film and Literary Festival

Gino Michael Pellegrini: Education, Amalgamation, Race, Class & Solidarity
2012-10-14

Gino Pellegrini, Adjunct Assistant Professor of English
Pierce College, Woodland Hills, California

Saturday morning, June 16, 2012: I take the Metro from North Hollywood to the Tokyo Arts District in Downtown Los Angeles. My destination is the 5th Annual Mixed Roots Film and Literary Festival at the Japanese American National Museum and the National Center for the Preservation of Democracy. This is a three-day event, but I can be there for just this one day, and my first goal is to meet Steven Riley, the creator of the website, Mixed Race Studies.

I have not attended an event centered upon the mixed experience in many years. I walk through the glass doors. The volunteer staff is welcoming and energetic. The imagery is colorful, ambiguous, and stimulating. The overall vibe is positive and hopeful, and for a moment I am taken aback to how I felt at my first mixed-experience event, the 2000 Harvard-Wellesley Conference on the Mixed Race Experience.

Skeptics say that this type of event, which brings together individuals of diverse mixes and backgrounds, is unsustainable. Do Hapas, blacklicans, latalians, jewasians, and standard black/white multiracials really have that much in common? Apparently many do, and this Festival holds together amazingly well and continues to grow thanks to the diligence, intelligence, and creativity of its founders, Fanshen Cox and Heidi Durrow.

The artists/writers whom I see present or talk to this day have strong personal voices and are very talented at what they do. Overall, their work complicates received understandings of multiracial identity, experience, and art…

Read the entire article here.

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