Mixed Race Studies

So… What are You, Anyway

2012 Conference on Multiracial Identity: Exploring Our Roots
Hosted by Harvard Half-Asian People’s Association
Harvard University
2012-04-06 through 2012-04-07

Welcome to the fourth annual conference on multiracial identity and politics, hosted by the Harvard College Half-Asian People’s Association on April 6 – April 7, 2012.

Join us this year in exploring what it means to be mixed race. This year we are happy to announce Diane Farr as our keynote speaker. Diane Farr last brought her unique sense of humor to Showtime’s CALIFORNICATION as Jill Robinson. Having just finished three years as Agent Megan Reeves on CBS’s NUMB3RS, Farr was thrilled to put her gun down and don a sundress for a comedy. Prior to NUMB3RS, Farr starred on RESCUE ME, as well as THE JOB, THE DREW CAREY SHOW and ROSWELL. Her advice as the sole female on the MTV hit, LOVELINE, is what made her whiskey-soaked voice so recognizable. After 200 episodes of this cult phenomenon, Farr published her first book.

The Girl Code, a comic look at single women in the 21st century has since been sold to seven countries in five languages. Farr’s latest book, Kissing Outside The Lines, hilariously chronicles her path to an interracial marriage. Part of a two book series, Kissing will be followed up next year with Shades of America – which discusses raising biracial children. Diane writes for most American magazines and recently took over Dave Barry’s internationally syndicated column for Herald Tribune Newspapers, writing a comedic comment on pop culture.

We are also happy to welcome Associated Press journalist Jesse Washington and former Harvard Hapa president James Fish as speakers and Sue Lambe, Katie Low, and as discussion leaders…

For more information, click here.

Postracial Possibilities? Deconstructing Contemporary Discourse on Multiraciality

American College Personnel Association
ACPA 2012 Annual Convention
Louisville, Kentucky
2012-03-24 through 2012-03-28

Session Information:
Monday, 2012-03-26
16:15-17:15 EDT (Local Time)
Kentucky International Convention Center, 107

Marc Johnston
University of California, Los Angeles

Prema Chaudhari
Asian & Pacific Islander American Scholarship Fund (APIASF)

Although multiracial individuals have been positioned as harbingers of a postracial era (especially after President Obama’s election) others critique the multiracial movement, with its large college student base, for reinforcing racial hierarchies (Spencer, 2011). This contradictory discourse, coupled with increasing suspicion of mixed heritage students doing “the race hustle” when seeking college admission/scholarships, presents challenges for addressing the needs of an increasingly diverse multiracial student population. By deconstructing this discourse we offer clarity and recommendations for future practice.

For more information, click here.

For black Americans, multi-racialism is not new

The Daily Voice
2008-12-17

Sitafa Harden

Clearly President-elect Barack Obama, the son of a white American mother and a black Kenyan father, is multi-racial. The only question is what’s so new about that?

In a recent article, AP race and ethnicity writer Jesse Washington explored the issue of multi-racialism brought to a head by this year’s presidential election.
 
He wrote, “The candidate Obama, in achieving what many thought impossible, was treated differently from previous black generations. And many white and mixed-race people now view President-elect Obama as something other than black.”
 
But the story of the existence of multi-racial Americans is a story as old as the country itself.  The saga is particularly poignant for black Americans whose mixed-race heritage often harkens back to slavery times…

…”Today, the spectrum of skin tones among African-Americans—even those with two black parents—is evidence of widespread white ancestry. Also, since blacks were sometimes light enough to pass for white, unknown numbers of white Americans today have blacks hidden in their family trees,” Washington acknowledged.
 
My own family is no exception. My great-grandmother Flora was born to a black mother and a Cherokee Native American father.  My great-grandfather’s mom was also black. His father was white.
 
So far I could check at least three boxes on a U.S. Census form.  And that’s just based on the three generations of family history I know about. The injustices of slavery obliterated the rest…

Read the entire article here.

Some Asians’ college strategy: Don’t check ‘Asian’

The Associated Press
2011-12-04

Jesse Washington, National Writer/Race and Ethnicity

Lanya Olmstead was born in Florida to a mother who immigrated from Taiwan and an American father of Norwegian ancestry. Ethnically, she considers herself half Taiwanese and half Norwegian. But when applying to Harvard, Olmstead checked only one box for her race: white.

“I didn’t want to put ‘Asian’ down,” Olmstead says, “because my mom told me there’s discrimination against Asians in the application process.”

For years, many Asian-Americans have been convinced that it’s harder for them to gain admission to the nation’s top colleges.

Studies show that Asian-Americans meet these colleges’ admissions standards far out of proportion to their 6 percent representation in the U.S. population, and that they often need test scores hundreds of points higher than applicants from other ethnic groups to have an equal chance of admission. Critics say these numbers, along with the fact that some top colleges with race-blind admissions have double the Asian percentage of Ivy League schools, prove the existence of discrimination.

The way it works, the critics believe, is that Asian-Americans are evaluated not as individuals, but against the thousands of other ultra-achieving Asians who are stereotyped as boring academic robots.

Now, an unknown number of students are responding to this concern by declining to identify themselves as Asian on their applications.

For those with only one Asian parent, whose names don’t give away their heritage, that decision can be relatively easy. Harder are the questions that it raises: What’s behind the admissions difficulties? What, exactly, is an Asian-American — and is being one a choice?…

…Susanna Koetter, a Yale junior with an American father and Korean mother, was adamant about identifying her Asian side on her application. Yet she calls herself “not fully Asian-American. I’m mixed Asian-American. When I go to Korea, I’m like, blatantly white.”

And yet, asked whether she would have considered leaving the Asian box blank, she says: “That would be messed up. I’m not white.”

“Identity is very malleable,” says Jasmine Zhuang, a Yale junior whose parents were both born in Taiwan…
…Steven Hsu, a physics professor at the University of Oregon and a vocal critic of current admissions policies, says there is a clear statistical case that discrimination exists…

Hsu, the physics professor, says that if the current admissions policies continue, it will become more common for Asian students to avoid identifying themselves as such, and schools will have to react.

“They’ll have to decide: A half-Asian kid, what is that? I don’t think they really know.”…

Read the entire article here.