Mixed Race Studies

Giving Loving Day Its Due

Truthdig
2011-06-11

Marcia Alesan Dawkins, Visiting Scholar
Brown University

If you’re reading this, then you’ve probably been invited to commemorate or at least think about Loving Day this year. And with good reason. In 1958, newlyweds Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving were indicted on charges of violating Virginia’s ban on interracial marriages and were banished from their home state. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the law in 1967.

Many multiracial individuals and interracial couples celebrate the anniversary of the Loving v. Virginia decision, June 12, as Loving Day. While celebrating this important civil rights milestone, we should remember that increased visibility of interracial couples and offspring does not promise increased racial harmony. Let’s face facts. It’s very sexy to congratulate ourselves based on reports that today’s interracial families can live harmoniously in the former Confederacy. We’re entertained as we watch Khloe and Lamar’s relationship work out. It makes us feel good to think that we have overcome, that we have reached a state of racial harmony and that we are all finally equal—and becoming equally beige and beautiful.

But a desire to congratulate ourselves doesn’t erase the fact that racial mixing has been occurring in our nation and hemisphere for more than 500 years. Colonists and indigenous people married and engaged in extramarital sexual relations. White indentured servants mixed with African indentured servants and then with African slaves. And there’s a long history of black freedmen and freedwomen intermarrying with Native Americans, as well as white males (often forcibly) having sex with black females. There are the interracial children fathered by U.S. soldiers and born to foreign lovers and “comfort women” in war-torn Asian and Middle Eastern nations. Add this to centuries’ worth of Asian and Hispanic immigration and 40 years’ worth of official interracial marriage patterns and you have what many might call the recipe for a melting pot where race doesn’t matter.

Sadly, this isn’t the case…

Read the entire article here.

Panel by Hapa and Critical Mixed Race Studies Scholars and Artists

Oregon Nikkei Legacy Center
Japanese American History Museum
2011-08-04

Emily Momohara, Assistant Professor of Art
Art Academy of Cincinnati

Laura Kina, Associate Professor of Art, Media and Design
DePaul University

Dmae Roberts

Moderated by

Tim DuRoche, Director of Programs
World Affairs Council of Oregon

This talk will showcase their work as the artists talk about how they address hapa identity through art. Emily Momohara is currently an Assistant Professor of Art at the Art Academy of Cincinnati where she heads the photography major. Dmae Roberts is a two-time Peabody award-winning independent radio artist and writer who has written and produced more than 400 audio art pieces and documentaries for NPR and PRI programs. Laura Kina is Associate Professor of Art, Media, and Design; Global Asian Studies affiliated faculty member; and a distinguished Vincent de Paul Professor at DePaul University in Chicago, where she has also been involved in the emerging field of critical mixed race studies. This panel will be moderated by Tim DuRoche, Director of Programs for the World Affairs Council of Oregon.

For more information, click here.

Through Eyes Like Mine

Createspace Publishing
2010-11-20
164 pages
5.2 x 0.4 x 8 inches
ISBN-13: 978-1450535786

Nori Nakada

Through Eyes Like Mine is the story of a childhood told through the present-tense voice of Nori Nakada. Born to a Japanese American father and German-Irish mother in rural Oregon, Nori’s family becomes increasingly diverse when they adopt a six-year-old boy from Korea. She struggles to find comfort within a family, a community and a world that is both simple and complex. By examining her family’s silences, she begins to understand life, death and her own identity. The joys and challenges of growing up invite the reader to recall the world through eyes like mine.