Mixed Race Studies

Diving Into Race, Identity of Multiracial Families In ‘Raising Mixed Race’

NBC News
2015-12-31

Frances Kai-Hwa Wang

Sharon H. Chang’s son with a copy of Kip Fulbeck’s “Mixed: Portraits of Multiracial Kids.” Photograph Courtesy of Sharon H. Chang

Scholar and activist Sharon H. Chang’s new book, “Raising Mixed Race: Multiracial Asian Children in a Post-Racial World,” published in December by Routledge, is generating excitement among reviewers and readers. More than a research study and more than a parenting guide, the book was awarded #1 New Release on Amazon before it had even begun shipping, and it sold out the first weekend it was released.

“‘Raising Mixed Race’ represents not only years of work on my end but a multitude of others’ lived racial realities; stories about and involving mixedness that are poignant, sharp, relevant and vital, and yet – remain mostly untold in America and around the world,” wrote Chang in her blog, Multiracial Asian Families, when announcing her book. “It is my sincere belief if we engage with ‘Raising Mixed Race,’ it can (will) challenge our thinking on mixedness to go deeper and contribute to moving society as a whole towards justice, healing and true transformation.”

With interviews with 68 parents of 75 young multiracial Asian children about race, racism and identity, Chang delves into history, critical mixed race studies, changing demographics, personal experiences, and includes advice for parents, families, teachers, and friends of multiracial Asian children.

NBC News spoke with Chang about her new book, her research on mixed race families, and why it’s important for parents and children to talk about identity.

Please tell us a little about your family background and how you came to this project. Why did you decide to write this book?

My father is a Taiwanese immigrant who came to America in the 1970’s, not long after the Immigration Act of 1965 lifted anti-Asian exclusionary restrictions which had been in place for decades. He met and married my white mother in that same decade which, of course, was also not long after the landmark civil rights Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia which struck down laws prohibiting interracial marriage. My mother is white American of fairly recent Slovakian, German, and French Canadian descent — my Slovakian great grandmother escaped Eastern Europe when she was sixteen and migrated alone through Ellis Island. [The people in] her family were farmers and she became a factory worker in the U.S.

Today I am married to a mixed race man whose mother is a Japanese immigrant, came in her 20s as well, and whose father is white of longtime white American descent, many generations back, it is thought, to colonization…

Read the entire interview here.

New York Times Just Boarded the Post-Racial Express: A critical response to “Choose Your Own Identity”

Multiracial Asian Families
2015-12-16

Sharon H. Chang

screen shot from NY Times Magazine

This Monday, The New York Times Magazine published a very unfortunate essay about multiracial Asian children: Choose Your Own Identity, by author and mother Bonnie Tsui. In it, Tsui (who is not multiracial herself) puzzles over her children’s mixed-race identities, what they may or may not choose to be one day, while taking a brief foray back/forward in time to consider the sociohistorical context of mixed-race and America’s impending multiracial future. After mulling on the subject for about ten paragraphs, she concludes with a seeming liberatory message on behalf of her children: “…the truth is, I can’t tell my sons what to feel…I can only tell them what I think about my own identity and listen hard to what they have to tell me in turn.”

Sounds innocent enough, yes?

No…

Read the entire article here.

Raising Mixed Race: Multiracial Asian Children in a Post-Racial World

Routledge
2015-12-11
240 pages
Hardcover ISBN: 9781612058481
Paperback ISBN: 9781138999466

Sharon H. Chang

Research continues to uncover early childhood as a crucial time when we set the stage for who we will become. In the last decade, we have also seen a sudden massive shift in America’s racial makeup with the majority of the current under-5 age population being children of color. Asian and multiracial are the fastest growing self-identified groups in the United States. More than 2 million people indicated being mixed race Asian on the 2010 Census. Yet, young multiracial Asian children are vastly underrepresented in the literature on racial identity. Why? And what are these children learning about themselves in an era that tries to be ahistorical, believes the race problem has been “solved,” and that mixed race people are proof of it? This book is drawn from extensive research and interviews with sixty-eight parents of multiracial children. It is the first to examine the complex task of supporting our youngest around being “two or more races” and Asian while living amongst “post-racial” ideologies.

Table of Contents

• Foreword
• Introduction
• 1. Foundation
• 2. Framing
• 3. Wiring
• 4. Insulation
• 5. Walls
• 6. Textures
• 7. Mirrors & Exteriors
• 8. Final Inspection
• 9. Conclusion

Raising Mixed Race: Seattle author shows realities facing multiracial children

The Seattle Globalist
2015-12-09

Sharon H. Chang

The day my mixed race son was born in 2009 was a turning point for the way I thought about race.

Despite living for decades as a multiracial person myself, suddenly I started asking deeper questions about race, racism, and mixedness. I realized I needed to move beyond reflecting just on self-identity, and start placing our family in critical conversation with a national global politic. What was our relationship as mixed race Asian peoples to a planet devastated by European colonialism and to our home, a colonized nation, devastated by four centuries of violent white racism?

How would my son experience this world? What would he learn about himself? And how would he grow to contribute to its transformation, or perpetuate its ongoing devastation?…

Read the entire article here.

Virtual release party for ‘Raising Mixed Race’ – December 11th, 2015

Facebook Release Party
2015-12-11, 17:30-21:30Z (09:30-13:30 PST)

Join us for giveaways, Q&A, discussion, and much more as we celebrate the launch of Raising Mixed Race.

Publishing in December 2015, Raising Mixed Race by Sharon Chang is the first book to examine the complex task of supporting young children who are “two or more races” and Asian. To celebrate, the author has organized a virtual release party complete with over 20 giveaways.

For more information, click here.

“Race absolutely still matters and racism persists in every sector of society. We can easily see evidence of these realities every day in the news, on social media, in film, television, publishing, academia, the workplace, medicine, government, politics, law, etc. Proclaiming “race doesn’t matter anymore” is willfully ignorant, colorblind, avoidant, and worse – in being complicit – perpetuates racism itself through inaction. To make the point how powerfully shaping racial reality is: The finely-tuned concept of race alone (i.e. belief that human beings can be organized into a handful of hierarchically organized groups based on the way they look) has not changed in centuries. Elite white male thinkers fully congealed value-laden racial categories by the late 1700s which are still the very same categories we use today. This way of thinking has been infused into the fiber of society; the words we use; the way we interact with each other; even our Constitution. Every time we check a race box on a form, every time we read a report where people are filed into races (e.g. Pew Research), every time we watch a news anchor talk about Black Lives Matter protestors – we are living the reality of the racist foundation this country was built on. Nobody is immune or escapes that history that continues to shape us all today.” —Sharon H. Chang

Grace Hwang Lynch “Interview With Sharon H. Chang on Raising Mixed Race,” Hapa Mama: Asian Fusion Family and Food, December 7, 2015. http://hapamama.com/2015/12/07/qa-on-raising-mixed-race-with-sharon-h-chang/.

Interview With Sharon H. Chang on Raising Mixed Race

Hapa Mama: Asian Fusion Family and Food
2015-12-07

Grace Hwang Lynch (HapaMama)

I’ve been reading a new book by Sharon H. Chang called Raising Mixed Race. You might remember Sharon, a Seattle-based writer and scholar, from her guest post A Multiracial Asian Mom Wonders How Her Son Will See Himself (Routledge 2015). With chapter titles that are analogies to home construction (Foundation, Framing, Wiring, etc.), the book aims to get to the historical ideas behind the way we talk about race, including the concept of mixed race identity. I was especially interested because the research focuses specifically on Asian multiracials. Recently, I had a chance to interview Sharon about her work. Read on…

HapaMama: First of all, tell us a little bit about yourself, how the idea for Raising Mixed Race: Multiracial Asian Children in a Post-Racial World came about and the process of researching and writing it.

Sharon H. Chang: I’ve worked with families and children for over a decade in various capacities: as a teacher, parent educator, administrator, school owner, etc. I hold a Master’s degree in Human Development with an Early Childhood Specialization and Raising Mixed Race actually grew out of my Master’s thesis. At the time I had just had my son and was struggling to find resources that would support our mixed race family. Frustrated beyond belief (particularly since I thought things would have changed by now) I finally decided to head into the field and conduct research myself. I interviewed 68 parents of 75 young multiracial Asian children around questions of race, racism and identity. I then compiled and analyzed those interviews, about 800 pages of transcripts, while simultaneously researching critical mixed race studies. Several years later I am at last thrilled to debut the book we are about to see today…

Read the entire interview here.

“Children of color in general either tend to get left out of school curriculum and societal teachings or hyper-visibilized in negative, harmful ways. Multiracial kids—since mixed race is still not often considered a “legitimate” group (by both whites and people of color alike)—often experience an added layer of invisibility that is so damaging for their self-esteem. Multiracial children don’t fit typical racial constructs and complicate the conversation in a way folks don’t like. When others feel discomfort and disequilibrium, it leads them to dismiss, gloss over, minimize or scoff at mixed race experiences. This often then leads multiracial children to feel they cannot be their whole authentic self on any front unless they’re willing to subscribe to prescribed racial categories.” —Sharon H. Chang

Alice Wong, “Parents (of multiracial kids) Just Don’t Understand,” AsAmNews, December 3, 2015. http://www.asamnews.com/2015/12/03/parents-of-multiracial-kids-just-dont-understand/.

Parents (of multiracial kids) Just Don’t Understand

AsAmNews
2015-12-03

Alice Wong

Talking about race is complicated enough but how do parents of multiracial Asian American children talk to their kids about race and racial identity? What are the experiences of multiracial Asian American children? What’s missing in the media representations of multiracial kids?

Writer, scholar and activist Sharon H. Chang talked with AsAmNews about her multiracial family and the findings from her research on multiracial Asian American children from her new book Raising Mixed Race: Multiracial Asian Children in a Post-Racial World. Below are some edited excerpts from their conversation.

You and your husband are both multiracial Asian Americans—describe your family’s cultural mash-up.

Our collective family ancestry is Japanese, Taiwanese/Chinese, Slovakian, German, French Canadian, British, Welsh – American. But culturally we feel multiethnic, mixed, 2nd gen Asian American.

How do you and your husband talk about your child about being multiracial in America?

We talk pretty openly about systemic racial inequities in front of him. We don’t hide those struggles and even encourage him to participate in the conversations when he’s interested. Then regarding his own identity (i.e. relationship to those racial struggles) we don’t tell him he’s white. Because he’s not. He’s certainly asked, “Am I white?” And we’re very clear, “No.” Instead we offer Asian, Asian American, and mixed…

Read the entire interview here.

Sense of Place with Guest Sharon H. Chang

Sense of Place
Roundhouse Radio 98.3 FM
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
November 2015

Minelle Mahtani, Host

Minelle Mahtani and Sharon H. Chang (Source: Facebook)

Author, scholar, sociologist, and activist Sharon H. Chang discusses her new book Raising Mixed Race: Multiracial Asian Children in a Post-Racial World.

Listen to the interview (00:36:17) here.