Mixed Race Studies

Mixed Student Union Hosts Fourth Annual Heritage Conference

Pacific Ties
University of California, Los Angeles
2016-05-13

Ayesha Sheikh

UCLA’s Mixed Student Union (MSU) hosted their fourth annual Mixed Heritage Conference on April 30 in the James West Alumni Center. The organization’s goal for hosting the conference on campus, according to the organization’s co-director Ariel Pezner, was to spread awareness of mixed identity among student audiences within UCLA as well as circles of mixed groups outside UCLA.

The reach of the organization’s efforts go well beyond the campus, with its connections to several other student organizations such as those at the University of Southern California. Chelsea Strong, co-director of MSU alongside Pezner, shared that the conference was the biggest event hosted by the organization to attract students, staff, and faculty of all backgrounds “to get a chance to learn critically about mixed heritage.” To manifest the appropriate space for this exchange of ideas and learning, prominent speakers from various mixed backgrounds were invited to speak.

The keynote Speaker Dr. Velina Hasu Houston, who wrote her senior thesis at UCLA and received her doctorate from USC, is recognized locally and internationally for her analytical playwriting on genres of mixed heritage, a topic often overlooked as “too uninteresting” for the arts.

The conference brought into projection the importance of using art as a medium to communicate beyond the subjects of the composition itself. Among Dr. Houston’s most renowned works is “Tea, with Music” and “Cinnamon Girl.” She is a leadership force for many organizations such as HapaSC, a mixed heritage organization at USC, and Multiracial Americans of Southern California (MASC), whose mission statement is “to advocate for and foster multiracial community and identity.”….

…Some of the other organizations’ representatives in attendance included Dr. Chandra Crudup, from One Drop of Love and the co-director of Mixed Roots Stories (MRS), who sponsored the conference. In addition to teaching at Arizona State University, Dr. Crudup is also a social worker. She said, “Race is in the face a lot more than in the past,” and that there needs to be a healthy way to deal with social justice issues. She spoke on what a healthy lifestyle looks like, a survival guide to not getting “jaded out by issues that affect life at work and socially.”…

Read the entire article here.

The Color Conversation-Healthy Identity Happy Kids: Fostering Positive Racial Identity in Mixed Youth

Multiracial Americans of Southern California (MASC)
World City Center
3911 W. Adams Blvd.
Los Angeles, California 90018
Saturday, 2015-06-20, 13:00-16:00 PDT (Local Time)

Join our 3rd parenting seminar where we focus on issues relating to adolescence – specifically, racial identity.

Hear a presentation on how parents can better understand the racial identity process in youth and what you can do to support your youth! Join a supportive conversation in a safe space with similar parents and families.

Bring your mixed race or transracially adopted TEEN for a special breakout session JUST for them!

FREE childcare will be provided at the preschool playground and garden for younger children.

Children will engage in an identity building and affirming art project presented by Art Zone!

This event will be beneficial for ALL parents, not just those with teens!…

For more information, click here.

Multiracial Community Organizations Response to #Ferguson

2014-11-26

As members of the multiracial community, we want to express our concern and compassion for the family of Michael Brown Jr. We are connected to these events and stand in solidarity with the many individuals and communities that have been harmed by the legacies of white supremacy, privilege, and racism. As community organizers, scholars, activists, writers, and artists, we remain resolute in dismantling racism through our work and actions.

#BlackLivesMatter

Critical Mixed Race Studies
Loving Day
MAVIN
Mixed Roots Stories
Mixed Race Studies
Multiracial Americans of Southern California (MASC)
Multiracial Asian Families
National Association of Mixed Student Organizations (NAMSO)
Kaily Heitz

Census Data Confusion, Manipulation, and Latinos of Mixed Ancestry or “Should Latino be a Race?”

Presented at The Second Annual Mixed Heritage Conference
University of California, Los Angeles
2014-04-16

Thomas Lopez, President
Multiracial Americans of Southern California (MASC)

Multiracial Americans President Thomas Lopez delivers a talk on changing the Census categories to allow Latino to become a race. In this episode, the talk is introduced with a brief history of the Census. Special emphasis is made on how Hispanic became a Census category and mixed race people succeeded in checking one or more racial categories.

• Part 2 of 7 (Offset Data)
• Part 3 of 7 (Biased Reporting)
• Part 4 of 7 (Manipulated Data)
• Part 5 of 7 (What is Race?)
• Part 6 of 7 (Mass Media)
• Part 7 of 7 (Alternative Questionnaire Experiment)

SoCal multiracial families create their own Cheerios ‘ads’

Multi-American: How immigrants are redefining ‘American’ in Southern California
89.3 KPCC: Southern California Public Radio
2013-06-06

Leslie Berestein Rojas, Immigration and Emerging Communities Reporter

Call it a reaction to a reaction.

A group of multiracial Southern Californians, happy to see a new Cheerios commercial featuring a mixed-race family—but upset over the flood of hateful comments it generated online—has come up with “ads” of its own.

The Cheerios ad went up on YouTube last week. In it, a little girl with brown skin asks her mother, who is white, if it’s true that the cereal is “good for your heart.” After her mother answers, the little girl runs off. The camera then cuts to her father, who is black, waking from a nap to find a pile of Cheerios on his chest.

Online, the ad drew praise for addressing shifting demographics when the number of multiracial American families is on the rise. But it also triggered a flood of hate-speech comments so vitriolic that Cheerios disabled the comments section under the video.

“We knew there would be some kind of backlash, but we did not expect it to be such hatred,” said Sonia Kang, a board member of Multiracial Americans of Southern California, a group formed in 1986 that celebrates and advocates for multiracial families and children.

Read the entire article here.

Latinas and Latinos of Mixed Ancestry first interest survey

Latinas and Latinos of Mixed Ancestry (LOMA)
2012-12-17

Welcome to LOMA’s first interest survey.  Your responses will help us learn more about you, the community we serve, and what we should be doing!  For more information, click here.

LOMA is a program of Multiracial Americans of Southern California (MASC) a 501(c)3 non-profit.

MASC’s Thomas Lopez Discusses Mixed Latina/o Identity

Mixed Race Radio
Wednesday, 2012-10-17, 16:00Z (12:00 EDT, 09:00 PDT, 17:00 BST)

Tiffany Rae Reid, Host

Thomas Lopez

Thomas Lopez continues to amaze me. He has held various positions with Multiracial Americans of Southern California (MASC), Los Angeles, CA since 1995 and continues to organize numerous conferences, workshops and events such as “Race In Medicine: A Dangerous Prescription” and “A Rx for the FDA: Ethical Dilemmas for Multiracial People in Race-Based Medicine” at the Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference, DePaul University, 2010.

Thomas is also a filmmaker, having produced, Mixed Mexican: Is Latino a Race? which was shown at the Mixed Roots Film and Literary Festival (2010), Readymade Film Festival (2010), and Hapapalooza Film Festival (2011)

On today’s episode of Mixed Race Radio, Thomas will announce the start of a new program by Multiracial Americans of Southern California (MASC) called: Latinas/os Of Mixed Ancestry (LOMA).

The purpose of the LOMA project is to:

• Provide space for expression of mixed Latina/o identity.
• Provide culturally relevant material to the mixed Latino community.
• Raise awareness of this community to society at large.

This will be accomplished by:

• The establishment of a website with blog and forum discussions.
• Social media campaign.
• Attendance at conferences.
• A public relations awareness campaign.
• MASC seeks to broaden self and public understanding of our interracial, multiethnic, and cross cultural society by facilitating interethnic dialogue and providing cultural, educational, and recreational activities. In 2009 MASC celebrated twenty years of incorporation.

As a part of our mission, MASC has always worked to raise awareness of the impact of multiracial identification. During the 1990’s, we successfully worked to revise the Census to allow multiple racial classifications.

For more information, click here.