Mixed Race Studies

Laura Kina

Fused Society
2015-04-16

Laura Kina, Vincent de Paul professor of Art, Media, & Design
DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois

Meet today’s Fused Society contributor, the accomplished Laura Kina!

“Laura Kina is a multiracial Asian American artist based in Chicago who identifies as “hapa, yonsei, and Unchinanchu” (mixed race, 4th generation Japanese American, and part of the Okinawan diaspora). Her father is Okinawan from Hawaiʻi and her mother is Anglo American (Spanish/Basque and French, English, Scottish, Irish, Dutch) from the Pacific Northwest. Kina’s artwork, scholarly research and activism center on themes of distance and belonging. She focuses on the fluidity of cultural difference and the slipperiness of identity. Asian American history and mixed race representations are subjects that run through her work.

Kina is a Vincent de Paul professor of Art, Media, & Design at DePaul University. She is the coeditor, along with Wei Ming Dariotis, of War Baby/Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art (University of Washington Press, 2013); cofounder of the DePaul biennial Critical Mixed Race Studies conference; and cofounder and consulting editor of the Journal of Critical Mixed Race Studies and reviews editor for the Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas…

Read the entire article here.

Wrightsville Beach alderman pressured to resign after insult against bartender

StarNews
Wilmington, North Carolina
2015-04-17

Julian March

WRIGHTSVILLE BEACH | Alderman Darryl Mills is facing pressure to resign after he used derogatory language to a bartender last month.

Mills made the comment to Mia Banks while she was working at King Neptune Restaurant on North Lumina Avenue.

In an interview, Mills confirmed he called Banks a “mixed breed” and used an expletive. He said he and Banks have had a bantering and teasing relationship for years.

“That night, as soon as it happened, I saw that it bothered her, hurt her, and I apologized immediately and left,” Mills said. He later apologized a second time in an email.

He has no plans to resign. “I think this is a personal matter,” he said. “It has nothing to do with Wrightsville Beach.”

Banks agreed she had a bantering relationship with Mills, but said that would be true with all of her customers, especially regulars.

She said she had not discussed her race with Mills before his comment. Her mother is Polish and Italian and her father is African-American.

“I was humiliated,” Banks said. “I was degraded.”…

Read the entire article here.

Having Mixed-Race Kids Doesn’t Make You Non-White

Mom.Me
2015-04-20

Grace Hwang Lynch, Blogger
Hapa Mama

Adel Vardell photography

Do white parents become “less white” when they have non-white kids? That question is burning up my Facebook feed right now, thanks to an essay in the New York Times last week.

In the piece published in Motherlode, Jack Cheng (a Chinese American man married to a white woman) writes of his wife:

“She became less white when our son, and then our daughter, were born. I think the first bit of doubt surfaced the day we were on the subway with our newborn and a woman came up to my wife and said: ‘Oh, he’s so cute! When did you adopt him?’ I was livid: Did it not occur to this woman that the father was sitting right next to his wife and child?”

But that is not becoming less white…

…While I might be able to code switch and move in different circles and enjoy a variety of cultures, that doesn’t change the fact that my skin is golden, my nose is wide and sometimes people assume I’m a Tiger Mother. Or the manicurist. Or that I should be taking their General’s Chicken order…

Read the entire article here.

In Puerto Rico, a push to revive indigenous culture

The Associated Press
2015-04-20

Anica Coto

SAN LORENZO, Puerto Rico (AP) — In Puerto Rico’s misty, bamboo-studded mountains, elementary school students are studying a nearly extinct language, beating on drums and growing native crops like cassava and sweet potato as they learn about the indigenous people who lived on the island before Christopher Columbus.

The children in four towns in the island’s southeast corner play a ceremonial ball game that was called batey by the native Tainos, who were all but wiped out during colonial times. The boys and girls also learn words from the local Arawak language, which was in part rebuilt with help from linguists, and still exists in varying forms among other native groups in the hemisphere.

Now, a group of academics and educators hope to expand the Taino education program to other public schools around the U.S. territory in an effort to teach children this little known part of the territory’s history.

“If you don’t know your roots, you don’t know yourself,” said anthropologist Carlalynne Yarey Melendez, director of the Taino cultural organization that runs the educational program. “There are so many communities and schools that want the classes, but I can’t keep up with the demand.”

Puerto Ricans’ interest in the territory’s indigenous past has grown in recent years, with 42,000 of the 3.7 million people then living on the island identifying themselves as at least partially Taino in the 2010 Census.

But even though that’s just a little more than 1 percent, Puerto Rico’s legislature is considering a proposal to declare Melendez’s Naguake organization to be the island’s first indigenous-based community. The designation would allow it to receive federal funds under a program that aids native groups, and expand the program to other towns…

Read the entire article here.