{"id":38695,"date":"2014-12-03T15:59:34","date_gmt":"2014-12-03T15:59:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=38695"},"modified":"2014-12-03T16:00:12","modified_gmt":"2014-12-03T16:00:12","slug":"a-look-at-looking-different","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=38695","title":{"rendered":"A Look at Looking Different"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Look at Looking Different<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a>
\n2014-12-02<\/p>\n

Felicia R. Lee<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2018Crossing Borders,\u2019 at the Brooklyn Historical Society<\/em><\/p>\n

Alexander David grew up with a Chinese mother and a white Jewish father in the liberal Park Slope<\/a> neighborhood of Brooklyn<\/a>. He attended the predominantly Asian elite Stuyvesant High School. He was comfortable in his skin in both places, but in a world of tribes, the Asian kids considered him white, and the white ones considered him Asian.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not like a racially blind kind of society,\u201d Mr. David said in an interview recently.<\/p>\n

Mr. David\u2019s experience is now part of an unusual project by the Brooklyn Historical Society<\/a> called \u201cCrossing Borders, Bridging Generations<\/a>,\u201d which has as its centerpiece a collection of more than 100 oral histories of people who identify themselves as being of mixed heritage, whether through race, ethnicity, religion or nationality.<\/p>\n

Three years in the making, \u201cCrossing Bridges\u201d will be completed in mid-January and is uncommon in subject and scope for a historical society, said Annie Valk<\/a>, vice president of the Oral History Association. It comes with public programs, a school curriculum and an interactive website<\/a>…<\/p>\n

…About 30 of the oral histories are now gathered on the website, which includes photographs, audio clips, transcripts and scholarly articles. The full oral history collection will be available next year at the historical society\u2019s Othmer Library, the repository of more than 1,200 oral history narratives on a variety of topics. In February, educators will also be offered a curriculum for grades six through 12.<\/p>\n

All the oral history subjects were volunteers who live or work in Brooklyn, or did so in the past. They were a diverse flock, including biracial lesbian couples and Jewish couples from different European countries. Their stories reflect changes from the time when mixed marriage often meant spouses of different religions to a time when it means gay or interracial marriage, or both, said Sady Sullivan<\/a>, the former director of oral history at the historical society. Ms. Sullivan, who conceived the project, has been named the curator of oral history at Columbia\u2019s Rare Book and Manuscript Library.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea I get really excited about is that this is for the future,\u201d Ms. Sullivan said. \u201cWhat will it be like to listen to stories about the social construction of race in 150 years?\u201d…<\/p>\n

…Championing multiracial families \u2014 including the struggle for the right to check more than one census box for race \u2014 has also had detractors. Some argue that multiracial identity only increases racial stratification. Others have argued that discussions about multiracial identity too often fail to examine how race is related to wealth and power.<\/p>\n

Nitasha Tamar Sharma<\/a>, an associate professor of African-American studies and Asian-American studies at Northwestern, wondered how the oral histories would be framed. \u201cIs it going to be used only as a celebration?\u201d asked Professor Sharma, who writes about and researches issues of racial identity…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Look at Looking Different The New York Times 2014-12-02 Felicia R. Lee \u2018Crossing Borders,\u2019 at the Brooklyn Historical Society Alexander David grew up with a Chinese mother and a white Jewish father in the liberal Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn. He attended the predominantly Asian elite Stuyvesant High School. He was comfortable in his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,459,125,8,394,20],"tags":[18605,6675,6560,18607,18606,4913,4912,2711,2640,5357,3696,6576,2327],"class_list":["post-38695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-history","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-socialscience","category-usa","tag-annie-valk","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-historical-society","tag-deborah-schwartz","tag-elizabeth-velazquez","tag-felicia-lee","tag-felicia-r-lee","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-times","tag-nitasha-tamar-sharma","tag-renee-romano","tag-sady-sullivan","tag-the-new-york-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38695\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}