Mixed Race Studies

The Michael Brown Tragedy: A Christian of Color Perspective

Jesus for Revolutionaries: A Blog About Race, Social Justice, and Christianity
2014-08-25

Robert Chao Romero, Associate Professor of Chicana/o Studies and Asian American Studies
University of California, Los Angeles

Today is the funeral of Michael Brown. Please join me in praying for comfort for his family.

As for many, the tragedy of Michael Brown’s death has stirred in me much reflection about the deep racial divide in the U.S. Pretty much everyone is in agreement that racial profiling by police, and racial profiling in general, is wrong, especially when it leads to horrific violence. The racial divide seems to surface, however, when we discuss the prevalence of racial profiling in America today.

If someone grew up with fair skin and light hair in a middle class suburban neighborhood, then, in my experience, the tendency is to believe that racial profiling among police, and in other social settings, is not a pervasive problem.

If someone grew up African American or Latina/o in a racially marginalized urban area, then the almost universal agreement is that ethnic profiling is alive and well. It’s also important to note that many African Americans and Latinas/os in middle class suburban communities experience racial profiling (for example see this excellent article by a Black law professor from the Washington University School of Law in Missouri: http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/25/opinion/norwood-ferguson-sons-brown-police/index.html).

When asserting our perspectives on the topic of racial profiling, we all speak from our personal experience. Many whites from suburban environments speak from their experience–where they have not been racially profiled and where law enforcement is viewed as an ally. For those of us who are People of Color, our experience is often quite different—we experience racial profiling by the police, at our work places, and when we go to our local strip malls to shop.

For example, here’s a few of my racial profiling experiences. Those of you who have tracked with Jesus for Revolutionaries for a while will know that I am a 6 foot 1, 220 pound, dark-skinned, bearded, “Chinese-Mexican,” who usually passes as Latino…

Read the entire article here.

Jesus for Revolutionaries: An Introduction to Race, Social Justice, and Christianity

Robert Chao Romero
2013-10-07
262 pages
5.83 wide x 8.26 tall
Paperback ISBN: 9781304513984
eBook ISBN: 9781304531063

Robert Chao Romero, Associate Professor of Chicana/o Studies and Asian American Studies
University of California, Los Angeles

Are you a “revolutionary”? Are you curious about exploring issues of race and social justice from a Christian perspective? This book by UCLA Professor and Pastor, Robert Chao Romero, is for you!

Topics covered include: a biblical framework for understanding poverty, race, and gender; undocumented immigration; politics; affirmative action; mixed race issues; Christian social justice pioneers; and, an introduction to the Christian world of social justice and community development.

Contents

• Foreword
• Preface
• Introduction: Student Stories from the Revolution
• 1. God’s “Equal Protection Clause”: The Biblical Basis for Social justice
• 2. Jesus Was An Immigrant
• 3. “A Day Without A Mexican”: The Essential Economic Contributions of Undocumented Immigrants
• 4. “Secure Communities” Destroys Immigrant Families
• 5. God Loves “Dreamers”: Undocumented Youth and Comprehensive Immigration Reform
• 6. Jesus Invented Affirmative Action
• 7. The Case for Affirmative Action Today
• 8. Jesus and the Tea Party: Politics and Christianity
• 9. “Chino-Chicano“: A Biblical Framework for Diversity
• 10. Colorblindness, Structural Inequality, and Trayvon Martin
• 11. Gender
• 12. Class
• 13. Summing Up the Image of God: Neither Jew nor Gentile, Male nor Female, Slave nor Free
• 14. Manifest Destiny? The Historical Misrepresentation of Christianity
• 15. God Never Leaves Himself Without A Witness: MLK, Cesar Chavez, and other Social Justice Pioneers
• 16. Modern-Day Revolutionaries
• 17. Join the Revolution!
• Appendix I: A Faith and Justice Manifesto
• Appendix II: More Resources for the Budding Revolutionary—Books, Films, and Immigration
• Appendix III: PraXis Groups and The 4-Part Study

The Chinese in Mexico: No Longer a Forgotten History

Mixed Race Radio
Blog Talk Radio
2013-10-09, 21:00Z (17:00 EDT)

Tiffany Rae Reid, Host

Robert Chao Romero, Associate Professor of Chicana/o Studies and Asian American Studies
University of California, Los Angeles

On Today’s episode of Mixed Race Radio we will meet Professor Robert Chao Romero. With a Mexican father from Chihuahua and a Chinese immigrant mother from Hubei in central China, Romero’s dual cultural heritage serves as the basis for his academic studies. He considers himself fortunate to be able to study himself for a living and his research examines Asian immigration to Latin America, as well as the large population of “Asian-Latinos” in the United States. He is also interested in the role played by religion in social activism.

His first book, The Chinese in Mexico, 1882-1940 (2010), tells the forgotten history of the Chinese community in Mexico.  The Chinese in Mexico received a Latino Studies Section Book Award from the Latin American Studies Association. Romero received his J. D. from UC Berkeley and his Ph.D. in Latin American history from UCLA.  

When he is not a professor, he is a pastor and director of Christian Students of Conscience, an organization which trains and mobilizes students in issues of race and social justice from a faith-based perspective.  He is also the author of Jesus for Revolutionaries: An Introduction to Race, Social Justice, and Christianity (October 2013).

Are Latinos “White”?

Jesus For Revolutionaries: A Blog About Race, Social Justice, and Christianity
2013-08-30

Robert Chao Romero, Associate Professor of Chicana/o Studies and Asian American Studies
University of California, Los Angeles

Hundreds of years of cultural politics underly the current debate over the proper racial categorization for Latinos.   For the greater part of U.S. history, Latinos argued for legal “whiteness” as a means of shielding itself from racial discrimination.  At the same time, up until the present day, many Latinos have consistently identified as “white” based upon the influence of colonial notions of race in Latin America.  Such identification with whiteness has the dual negative effect of disassociating the Latino community from the contemporary civil rights struggle in the United States, and perpetuating Latin American racist ideology.

Following the Mexican American War of 1848, Anglo American politicians struggled with how to incorporate more than 115,000 former Mexican citizens into United States society.  Many politicians argued vehemently, and publically, that they did not wish to confer the full rights of American citizenship upon the Mexican population which they viewed as an inferior cultural group.   The compromise, articulated in Article IX of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, was that Mexicans in the conquered territories could choose to become U.S. citizens, but that such citizenship would not take effect until an undetermined future date to be decided upon by Congress.  More than two decades after the signing of the treaty in 1848, the citizenship status of thousands of Mexicans remained ambiguous and unresolved.

Mexicans in California were finally declared to be American citizens in 1870 as part of the famous case of People v. De la Guerra.  Since U.S. citizenship at that time was reserved for those defined by the law as “white,” Mexicans at that moment gained not only citizenship, but also an implicit judicial declaration of whiteness.   Despite their legal whiteness, however, Mexicans, and other Latinos continued to experience explicit, and pervasive, racial discrimination in housing, education, and every other facet of American life…

Read the entire essay here.

“Colorblindness” Overlooks Structural Inequality

Jesus For Revolutionaries: A Blog About Race, Social Justice, and Christianity
2013-04-30

Robert Chao Romero, Associate Professor of Chicana/o Studies and Asian American Studies
University of California, Los Angeles

Good morning.  Thanks to all who have been tracking with our multi-part series on Critical Race Theory and Christianity.  It seems like we’ve struck a nerve with this one, so I’m excited to keep sharing ideas—back and forth—between us.

Some very thoughtful comments came in last week from Paul, a teacher, pastor, and doctoral student at my old stomping grounds—U.C. Berkeley.   He raised the important point that the colorblind approach to race ignores not only the cultural diversity which God Himself created, but also the stubborn racism which continues to pervade U.S. socio-economic and political institutions.   It is to this important point that we turn to this week.

Supporters of “colorblindness” say that racism is behind us.  Sure, racism rears its ugly head once in a while in individual encounters between people, but, as a whole, it’s a thing of the past.  As evidence they say, “see, we elected a black, Kenyan president…”

Read the entire article here.

Critical Race Theory and Christianity: Race Is A Social Construction

Jesus For Revolutionaries: A Blog About Race, Social Justice, and Christianity
2013-04-16

Robert Chao Romero, Associate Professor of Chicana/o Studies and Asian American Studies
University of California, Los Angeles

Good morning.  It’s taken me a little longer than usual to write this new post, but I have a good reason.  I just got back from a wonderful birthday celebration with my wife!  One of my gifts to her—no blog writing this weekend!

Last week we began a new series on Critical Race Theory and Christianity.  Our first topic was “Racism is Ordinary.” This week’s theme is, “Race is a Social Construction.” 

According to Critical Race Theory (CRT), “race” is a social construction.  I.e., race is something that human beings invented.  We invented race as a way of dividing up people from different ethnic backgrounds so that we could give special rights and privileges to some, and deny them to others.  The racial categories we create, moreover, do not correspond to true biological and genetic differences among human cultural populations.  They are socially constructed…

Read the entire article here.

“Mixed-Race in the Bible (“Chino-Chicano” Part II)

Jesus for Revolutionaries: A Blog About Race, Social Justice, and Christianity
2013-01-09

Robert Chao Romero, Associate Professor of Chicana/o Studies and Asian American Studies
University of California, Los Angeles

As an expression of my multiracial struggles, I used to wrestle a lot with the issue of marriage. I used to say to myself: “If I marry someone who’s Mexican, then my kids will be 75% Mexican. They’ll have a solidified racial identity. If I marry someone who is Chinese, then they’ll be 75% Chinese, probably look mostly Asian, and then they might have some identity problems. If I marry someone who’s Anglo, then my kids will probably look Latino, even though they’ll be only 25% Mexican. But they’ll have the last name Romero, so they’ll probably just pass as Latino.” I can’t believe I used to think this way!

In my heart I knew that this was not the right way to be thinking about marriage. Every time I went down this path of reasoning I would end up deeply frustrated, practically to the point of tears. This is led me, one day in law school to cry out to God and say, “God, please help me to understand the topic of race from Your perspective!” The answer to that prayer is what I hope to share with you in the next several blog posts.

After many years of wrestling with my mixed race identity, I feel that God has given me peace, healing, and a deep security in my unique identity. I have discovered a biblically-grounded understanding of race and ethnicity which allows me to be a whole-human being, and which allows me to understand, celebrate, and accept all of who I am. Thank You God. I hope that I might be able to share this understanding with you now, and that what I share might help bring healing to many individuals who have gone through, or are going through, the same struggles I have experienced as a mixed race individual…

Read the entire article here.

“Chino-Chicano”: A Biblical Framework for Diversity (Part I)

Jesus for Revolutionaries: A Blog About Race, Social Justice, and Christianity
2013-01-03

Robert Chao Romero, Associate Professor of Chicana/o Studies and Asian American Studies
University of California, Los Angeles

I’m a “Chino-Chicano.” I was born in East Los Angeles and raised in the small town of Hacienda Heights. My dad is an immigrant from Chihuahua, Mexico and my mom an immigrant from Hubei in central China. The Romeros lost their family fortune during the Mexican Revolution by siding with Pancho Villa, and eventually immigrated to El Paso, Texas. They moved to East Los Angeles in the 1950’s and we’ve been here in Southern California ever since. My mom’s family immigrated to Los Angeles from China via Hong Kong and Singapore in the 1950’s. My maternal grandfather, Calvin Chao, was a famous pastor in China who launched the first Chinese branch of Intervarsity Christian Fellowship. The Chaos fled their native land because my grandfather was on a communist “hit list.” As an interesting side note, my Mom’s family traces directly back to the founding emperor of the Song Dynasty!

Growing up “mixed,” I had a lot of struggles with racial identity. I was very proud of my Mexican heritage, but at a young age got sent the message that being Chinese was a bad thing. On the first day of first grade a kid walked up to me, pretended to hold an imaginary refrigerator in his hands, and said, “Here’s a refrigerator, open it up. Here’s a coke, drink it. Me Chinese, me play joke, me do pee-pee in your Coke.” Kids are so mean.  I was so scarred by that event that I denied my Chinese heritage for the next 18 years.  Once I even remember telling a friend that my mom was our housekeeper because I was embarrassed that she came to pick me up from school…

Read the entire article here.

The Transpacific Shift in Mixed-Race Studies: Sawyer Seminar II

University of Southern California, Univeristy Park Campus
Doheny Memorial Library (DML)
East Asian Seminar Room (110C)
Friday, 2013-02-08, 10:00-16:00 PST (Local Time)

Presented by the Center for Japanese Religions and Culture’s “Critical Mixed-Race Studies: A Transpacific Approach” Andrew W. Mellon Foundation John E. Sawyer Seminars Series at the University of Southern California.

Conference Convenors:

Duncan Williams, Associate Professor of Religion
University of Southern California

Brian C. Bernards, Assistant Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures
University of Southern California

Velina Hasu Houston, Associate Dean for Faculty Recognition and Development, Director of Dramatic Writing and Professor
University of Southern California

PRESENTERS – MORNING SESSION (10:00 AM)

“Filipino-Mexican Relations, Mestizaje, and Identity in Colonial and Contemporary Mexico”
Rudy P. Guevarra, Jr., Assistant Professor of Asian Pacific American Studies
Arizona State University

“Unruly Identities in the Hispanic Pacific”
Jason Chang, Assistant Professor of History and Asian American Studies
University of Connecticut

Respondent: Robert Chao Romero, Assistant Professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies
University of California, Los Angeles

PRESENTERS – AFTERNOON SESSION (1:30 PM)

“Erasing Race and Sex: Adoption of Stateless GI babies in Early Cold War America”
Bongsoo Park, Independent scholar; Ph.D. U-Minnesota
University of Minnesota

“Seeing Race: Korean ‘GI Babies’ and Legacies of U.S. Neocolonial Care”
Susie Woo, ACLS New Faculty Fellow in American Studies and Ethnicity
University of Southern California

Respondent: Lily Anne Welty, IAC Postdoctoral Fellow, Asian American Studies Center
University of California, Los Angeles

For more information, click here.

The Chinese in Mexico, 1882-1940. [González Review]

H-Net Reviews
February, 2012

Fredy González
Yale University

Robert Chao Romero. The Chinese in Mexico, 1882-1940. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2010. xii + 254 pp., ISBN 978-0-8165-2772-4.

Moving across the Transnational Commercial Orbit

Robert Chao Romero’s The Chinese in Mexico, the first English-language monograph on the subject, makes an important contribution to the existing literature on the topic of immigration and race in Mexican history. Previous work on the Mexican Chinese has mostly highlighted the 1930s anti-Chinese violence in the northern part of the country. Romero departs from this historiography by focusing instead on the economic links that the Chinese in Mexico maintained with other regions of the Americas as well with home communities in Guangzhou. In addition, he offers a substantive social history of the pre-1940 Chinese community in Mexico. His work argues that the Chinese in Mexico were not passive victims of anti-Chinese violence and instead possessed a greater amount of agency than previously acknowledged. In both the United States and Mexico, the Chinese took concrete steps to resist and adapt to anti-Chinese movements and legislation.

Central to Romero’s work is the transnational commercial orbit, an economic network created by the Chinese on both sides of the Pacific and extended to Mexico after the passage of the U.S. Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. It allowed the Chinese to smuggle and recruit migrant labor, collect capital for investment, and import goods for sale to Chinese businesses, all “in resistance, and adaptation, to the Chinese exclusion laws” (p. 5). The transnational commercial orbit helps explain why, after the Chinese Exclusion Act, Mexico would become an important nexus in the Chinese migrant networks of North America and the Caribbean. One aspect of this was the practice of substitution, in which Chinese workers who landed at U.S. ports of entry and obtained a transit visa en route to Cuba or Mexico switched places with Chinese merchants already based in the United States. By exchanging an undocumented Chinese migrant for a documented one, Chinese workers circumvented immigration restrictions under the Exclusion Act. The practice required coordination between Chinese communities across the Americas. In his discussion, Romero makes a case for the significance of the Chinese community in Mexico to other Asian migrations to the Americas…

Read the entire review here.