Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

recent posts

about

  • A Statement from a Collective of Multiracial and Biracial Students

    A Statement from a Collective of Multiracial and Biracial Students

    bluestockings magazine
    Monday, 2015-10-12

    Multiracial and Biracial Students at Brown

    For further context, please see the bluestockings editors statement.

    Introduction

    We, a collective of multiracial and biracial students, write this statement to address the publication of a series of articles by the Brown Daily Herald, as well the publication of “An open letter to students on power, learning and responsibility” written by President Christina Paxson, Richard Locke, a provost, and Russell Carey, executive vice president for planning and policy. We write out of deep concern for the decisions made by the Brown Daily Herald to publish the racist opinion articles “The White Privilege of Cows,” and “Columbian Exchange Day” [by M. Dzhali Maler ’17] on October 5th, and October 6th, 2015, respectively, and the administration’s choice to address the publishing of these articles with an open letter that minimizes the pain of Native and Indigenous students.

    The Herald’s staff privileges writers who continue in the legacy of white supremacy, further marginalizing students already systemically oppressed by the University. In an effort to recenter and stand in solidarity with Native and Indigenous students, we call attention to The Herald’s errors and their history of racism…

    …We also call multiracial and biracial community members to interrogate the ways in which we are complicit in the erasure of Native and Indigenous people. Moreover, multiracial, biracial and Indigenous identities are not separate—there are multi- and biracial people who hold Indigenous identity. We, as a community that experiences multiple histories of racism and colonization while often being heralded as a signal of the end of racism, must evaluate, address, and decolonize our own actions…

    Read the entire article here.

  • The Greatest Pretender: Korla Pandit, music’s most magnificent fraud

    The Greatest Pretender: Korla Pandit, music’s most magnificent fraud

    Dead 2 Rights: A Folksy Down-Home Blog
    2013-05-19

    Joe Blevins


    A few of Korla’s two dozen albums. You might notice a recurring visual motif on the LP covers.

    “For wisdom is better than rubies, and all things to be desired are not to be compared unto it. We bring you musical gems from near and far, blended into a pattern of glorious harmony, a program based on the universal language of music. It is our pleasure to present to you…”

    Korla Pandit spoke not a word when he was on camera. He just wore a bejeweled turban, played the organ… and stared. That was the extent of his act. It was all he needed — the shimmery tones of his music, the vague evocation of the Far East, and that indelible Mona Lisa countenance with its piercing dark eyes and intriguing half-smile. It was a potent combination which carried him along for nearly half a century. And yet, Korla Pandit never really existed at all. It depends, I suppose, on your definition of “existed.” Either way, his story is one of the most implausible and oddly inspiring in the history of popular music.

    I first encountered Korla Pandit without any clue to his identity or knowledge of his past. Portraying himself, Korla made a memorable cameo in Tim Burton’s 1994 film, Ed Wood. In the scene, notorious director Edward D. Wood, Jr. (Johnny Depp) is holding a wrap party for his 1955 sci-fi/horor anti-epic, Bride of the Monster. The wild celebration, attended by Bela Lugosi and the other oddballs and grotesques who orbited Wood, is held in the meat-packing plant of the film’s major backer, wealthy rancher Donald McCoy (Rance Howard). While the carcasses of slaughtered animals hang from hooks all around them, the revelers are treated to a suggestive dance routine performed by Wood himself, costumed as a harem girl. Korla Pandit, immaculately attired in a Nehru jacket and the ever-present turban, accompanies him on the organ with a composition called “Nautch Dance,” referring to a seductive style of dance popularized in early-1900s India…

    Read the entire article here.

  • From Multiracial to Transgender? Assessing Attitudes toward Expanding Gender Options on the US Census

    From Multiracial to Transgender? Assessing Attitudes toward Expanding Gender Options on the US Census

    Transgender Studies Quarterly
    Volume 2, Number 1, February 2015
    pages 77-100
    DOI: 10.1215/23289252-2848895

    Kristen Schilt, Associate Professor of Sociology
    University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

    Jenifer Bratter, Associate Professor of Sociology
    Rice University, Houston, Texas

    In 2000, the US Census Bureau acknowledged multiracial Americans on the decennial census in an attempt to better capture racial heterogeneity and to more closely align what is publicly collected on forms with people’s personal understandings of their racial identity. In this article, we start a discussion of how the census—a major source of political identity recognition and legitimation—could be more inclusive of gender variance. We ask: (1) Is there support for a transgender category on the US census? (2) Who might select a transgender option if it were provided? To answer these questions, we conducted questionnaire research at three transgender and genderqueer conferences and found strong support for the inclusion of a transgender category. Conversely, we found that many people did not currently check “transgender” on forms when given the opportunity. As we show, the decision to check “transgender” varies by what we term gender identity validation. In other words, people who identified as male or female and who felt others viewed them as unequivocally male or female, respectively, were less likely to check “transgender” than people who identified as transgender or who experienced a discrepancy between their self-perceived and other-perceived gender identity. These differences suggest that—similar to the push for adding a multiracial category to the census—the expansion of sex/gender categories is most likely to come from individuals who experience themselves as constrained by the existing possibilities and/or who are stigmatized by others’ conceptions of the appropriate alignment of bodies and genders.

    Read or puchase the article here.

  • OPINION: The changing racial makeup

    OPINION: The changing racial makeup

    Commerce News Today
    Commerce, Georgia
    2015-10-13

    Cameron Whitlock, Reporter

    The racial makeup of the United States is changing. That’s not an opinion, that’s a cold hard fact.

    By 2050, racial minority groups will make up a majority of the U.S. population.

    According to the U.S. Census Bureau and a study from the Pew Research Center, “white” Americans will have gone from 85 percent of the population in 1960, to 43 percent in 2060. Meanwhile, the number of black and Hispanic Americans will, make up a combined 45 percent of the population.

    There are many contributing factors, the largest of which are immigration and the intermarriage of races. Until the middle of the 20th century, the American immigrant population largely consisted of white European expats. Nowadays, European immigration to the Americas sparse, while immigrants from Latin America make up over 50 percent of our naturalized citizens…

    …I recall an ITBS (Iowa Test of Basic Skills) exam back in primary school. As with most standardized tests, the ITBS info sheet required you to pencil in your age, gender and race. The same still applies for most colleges, job applications and a number of other forms. But at what point do we categorize someone in a particular race? I vaguely remember the confusion felt by one of my Asian-American classmates when he was asked to pencil in his race. His mother was a Korean born immigrant, while his father was a white, natural-born American. He can’t check the “white” box, yet he doesn’t consider himself an “Asian, Pacific islander.” He’s certainly not “Native American” or “Black.” The only other option was just that – “other.” But what does that even mean? Now, such applications or forms typically list another option such as “mixed race.” But with such a vague destruction, is that information valuable in any way? …

    Read the entire article here.

  • Lecture, forum at UH-Hilo to explore Filipino identity

    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

    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

    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

    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

    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

    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.