Mixed Race Studies

How to Talk to Multiracial Kids About Race

KQED News
San Francisco, California
2020-06-12

Lakshmi Sarah, Digital Producer

Eva Lourdes, 7 Stella Marèsol, 3, at a table in their garage filled with art and books on June 11, 2020. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)

June 12 is celebrated as “Loving Day,” a day commemorating Loving v. Virginia — the landmark 1967 Supreme Court case that declared laws against interracial marriage unconstitutional in the United States. With this in mind, we spoke with a few Bay Area families and experts on the importance of talking about race in multiracial families.

Sarah Baltazar-Pinheiro identifies as Filipino American and works in the education field. She lives in Walnut Creek with her husband, who is Afro-Brazilian, and their two daughters, ages 7 and 3-years-old.

“What is the right way to educate a 7-year-old who’s, like, half farts, half losing her teeth? And also 10% attention span?” she said.

At home, they are doing history lessons she calls “American heroes are Black women.” Baltazar-Pinheiro calls to her daughter to see if she remembers who they talked about the last few days — Rosa Parks, Ida B. Wells and Shirley Chisholm. Her daughter recounts the names, with a few small hints…

…“If you think your whiteness will protect your mixed kids from this country as it currently stands, you’re misguided,” she said. “We have words and we have language to talk about … race and class and gender — and gender fluidity and how we all want to live in this world. I just want to teach her the words that she needs so that she can always express herself.”…

…We also spoke with Mark and Kelley Kenney, who are both counselors teaching and working in academic settings. They co-authored the book Counseling Multiracial Families and led the writing of Competencies for Counseling the Multiracial Population.

“It’s kind of interesting to me that, on some level, things have shifted,” Kelley Kenney said, when thinking back on their years of studying the topic. “But, you know, we’re still dealing with the same inherent issue of racism and bias and lack of understanding. … I’m hoping that we’re moving forward in at least starting to dialogue more about it.”

Kelley Kenney said talking about race within family is not just a singular event. “It’s not just a one time conversation, but it’s very, very, very much a part of the whole family dynamic.”…

…“In cases where the relationship involves a white partner for whom this is perhaps their first interactions … dealing with issues of slavery, it is important to spend some time being honest with folks and really talking about what that all means in terms of how they want to proceed in a relationship and a family and all of those things.” — Mark Kenney, counselor…

Read the entire article here.

Am I Black Enough?

KQED.org
KQED Perspectives
San Francisco, California
2020-01-23

Valencia White
El Cerrito, California

Picking a college isn’t easy. For teens weighing their options there are a lot of factors to consider. YR Media’s Valencia White says her racial identity played a big role.

As a senior, the question I get asked the most is: Where do you want to go to college? My answer is always the same. I want to go to Howard University or Spelman College, both of which are historically Black colleges. But sometimes I ask myself, “Am I Black enough to go to an HBCU?”

I’m biracial — my mom is mixed with Black and Filipino and my dad is white. In seventh grade, my parents switched me from a majority-white Catholic school to a more diverse school. I quickly realized how little diversity I had been exposed to at my old school. I was happy for once not to be the only Black kid in the class.

But adjusting to a new school didn’t come easily.

Kids would ask me, “Why do you act so white?” I felt like I had to change my personality just to be accepted. I know I’m Black and that’s something I’ve never doubted. But when my peers constantly doubted my blackness, I started to question my identity…

Read the entire story here. Listen to the story (00:02:08) here.

National Park Service’s Betty Reid Soskin Publishes Memoir at 96

Forum
KQED Radio
San Francisco, California
2018-02-16

Mina Kim, Host

Betty Reid Soskin’s lectures at Richmond’s Rosie the Riveter Museum have garnered her national attention, including a visit with President Obama in 2015. Soskin’s talks reflect on the oft-overlooked African-American wartime experience and how opportunities for black women have changed throughout her lifetime. Now the 96-year-old has written a memoir, “Sign My Name to Freedom,” documenting her history as a political activist, musician and entrepreneur. A longtime resident of the East Bay, Soskin illustrates how the Bay Area laid the groundwork for the national civil rights movement.

Listen to the interview (00:34:56) here. Download the interview here.

I enjoy a lot of privileges. I’m middle class and I go to a good school. On top of that Asian Americans just seem to fare better in terms of bias and racism — at least these days.

I think it’s important to acknowledge that privilege exists. We don’t have to become defensive, and we don’t have to feel guilty for it, but we do have to know when it’s there.

Sierra Fang-Horvath, “Mixed Race Privilege?” KQED Radio, March 9, 2017. https://ww2.kqed.org/perspectives/2017/03/08/mixed-race-privilege/.

Mixed Race Privilege?

KQED Radio
San Francisco, California
2017-03-09

Sierra Fang-Horvath
Oakland, California

My mom is Chinese, with black hair and tan skin. My dad is white, with light eyes and skin the color of office paper. I, on the other hand, am an awkward midway point: dark skin, but not super dark; black hair, but not super black.

It used to be that I never thought about my mixed race. But as I’ve gotten older, and now that I attend a predominantly white suburban school, race is constantly on my mind.

Recently, my classmates and I participated in a survey calculating our privilege…

Read the story here. Listen to the story (00:02:20) here.

Multiethnic Adults Grapple With Questions of Identity

KQED News
San Francisco, California
2015-10-14

Adizah Eghan

In his 1964 Nobel Prize lecture, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. described humanity as a “world house,” filled with family of all backgrounds who must somehow learn to live with each other.

Within the borders of our countries, cities and states, our own homes are increasingly becoming multi-ethnic, multiracial microcosms of the greater world house to which King refers.

Today, nearly one in six newlyweds marries across racial or ethnic lines. If we continue in this direction, the U.S. Census Bureau projects that the multiracial population will triple by 2060…

On the most recent episode of So Well Spoken, we dove into the complex world of multiethnic families, interracial marriages and cross-cultural adoptions. How do families handle racial issues and celebrate who they are?

Read the entire article here. Listen to the episode (00:51:26) here.

DNA Ancestry Tests: Simultaneously Powerful and Limited

KQED QUEST
KQED: Public Media for Northern California
2013-04-08

Dr. Barry Starr, Geneticist-in-Residence
Tech Museum of Innovation, San Jose, California

Using a common DNA ancestry test, President Obama would be 100% Caucasian.

Sometimes genetic tests aren’t as useful as you think they will be. For example, if President Obama were to take a common ancestry DNA test, it would almost certainly come back as 100% Caucasian. Useful, huh?

This sort of test, a mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) test, can look into the deep past but it can only see mom’s side of the family. And it isn’t even really that powerful. It not only ignores dad’s side of the family, but in reality it can only see a sliver of mom’s as well…

…The other kind of test, the Y chromosome test, can go as far back along the paternal line as the mtDNA test can along the maternal line but it suffers from the same problems. In fact, a surprising number (35%?) of African-American men actually have Caucasian Y chromosomes (well, given plantation life, maybe not so surprising). None of these men will learn anything about their African heritage with this test.

So the bottom line is don’t put too much faith into DNA testing alone. It is kind of fun to trace back your history this way but you are really only following one strand of your ancestral web back in time. The rest of the web is invisible to DNA testing…

Read the entire article here.

Hapa: One Step at a Time [KQED Upcoming Broadcasts]

KQED: Public Media for Northern California
KQED World (Comcast 190, Digital 9.3)
2013-01-21, 07:30 and 13:30 PST (Local Time)

Race remains a powerful symbol in the US; it still is a shorthand notation for most Americans. This program speaks to how individuals of Asian and Pacific Islander descent are embracing their ethnic experiences as a symbol of change in an ever-evolving multicultural society. It is a thought-provoking exploration of what it means to be a mixed-race American today. The program is a first-person treatment of the struggles people of diverse cultural backgrounds and perspectives face. “Hapa” comes from the Hawaiian phrase hapa haole, which means half white/foreigner. Once considered a derogatory term, Hapa has come to be accepted as a way to describe a person of partial Asian ancestry. By Japanese American Midori Sperandeo, who provides a personal narrative about her evolution from a novice runner into a national class marathoner andshares the parallel path of her personal growth in searching for her racial identity.

For more information, click here.