Mixed Race Studies

Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference 2018: Resisting, Reclaiming, and Reimagining (Call for Papers)

March 1-3, 2018 at the University of Maryland, College Park
Deadline: August 18, 2017
Notification: Early September 2017

Conference Description: Resisting, Reclaiming, and Reimagining, the next Critical Mixed Race Studies conference seeks to highlight resistance against white supremacy around the globe, the reclamation of community, kinship, and identity within the mixed-race community, and the reimagining of racial difference. The conference will be hosted at the University of Maryland, March 1-3 2018 and will include film screenings and a live performance showcase produced by Mixed Roots Stories. Recent events demonstrate that white supremacy, coupled with sexism, xenophobia, transphobia, homophobia, and unchecked capitalism, is still central as an organizing principle and tool of domination. For example, borders and walls (both real and imagined) are being invoked by the current United States administration to marginalize people and combat the inevitable demographic shifts which will see this country become majority minority. By focusing on the resistance, reclamation, and reimagination of multiraciality, this interdisciplinary and transnational conference will be a forum dedicated to fostering relationships between people of color, dismantling racial hierarchies, and affirming an ethics of love to subvert dominant paradigms of social identity.

Proposals: CMRS welcomes submissions from scholars from all fields, cultural workers, and activists and invites posters, panels, roundtables, and individual papers that address the conference theme in a broad sense. Presentation formats may be varied and diverse, and we welcome proposals that involve poetry, visual art, storytelling, and other non-academic formats. Although not limited to these examples, proposals might explore the following:

• A proposal from the social sciences might describe epistemological frameworks that center multiraciality and reclaim the heterogeneity of the mixed experience.
• In the humanities, presenters might share how dominant cultures drive cultural norms and how this informs the global mixed experience.
• Community activists and/or scholars engaged with the public may share how social justice work operates between and across minority communities.
• Historians might explore legacies of revolution and resistance shaping the mixed experience in the Americas, Africa, Asia, and beyond.
• Artists may share important works that decenter whiteness and reimagine social norms of identity.

IMPORTANT: Presenters at the conference must be members of the CMRS Association. Membership must be renewed annually and is available here. Presenters must be available to present on any of the 3 days of the conference.

Members of the CMRS Program Committee will be reviewing abstracts based upon the quality of the proposal. UMD class/meeting rooms are equipped with a Dell laptop, microphone and projector. Mac laptop users will need to provide their own projection adapters. Please note that all abstracts are to be submitted online using the CMRS form located here.

For more information, see our website. Contact us at: cmrsmixedrace@gmail.com

Blackness Behind White Skin

Mixed Roots Stories
2017-03-22

Kenneth Miks

Professor: Now everyone stand up

Class: [shuffling around to stand up]

Professor: Take a look around at all the Black men standing around you.

Class:[Everyone begins looking around awkwardly]

Professor: Now, everyone sit down, but all the black men remain standing…

It is in this very moment I begin to panic. My mind starts to race at a 100mph and I begin to nervously look around as I see everyone sitting down, but all the black men standing tall. “Do I keep standing?…

Read the entire article here.

The fourth Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference celebrates the 50th anniversary of Loving v. Virginia

Critical Mixed Race Studies Association
2016-12-08

Laura Kina
Telephone: 773-325-4048; E-Mail: cmrsmixedrace@gmail.com

LOS ANGELES, CA – The fourth Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference, “Explorations in Trans (gender, gressions, migrations, racial) Fifty Years After Loving v. Virginia,” will bring together academics, activists, and artists from across the US and abroad to explore the latest developments in critical mixed race studies. The Conference will be held at The University of Southern California from February 24-26, 2017 at the USC Ronald Tutor Campus Center, 3607 Trousdale Parkway, Los Angeles, CA 90089 and is hosted by the Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture.

The conference will include over 50 panels, roundtables, and caucus sessions organized by the Critical Mixed Race Studies Association as well as feature film screenings and live performances organized by the non-profit Mixed Roots Stories. The conference is pleased to run concurrently with the Hapa Japan Festival February 22- 26, 2017.

The year 2017 marks the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Supreme Court decision in Loving v. Virginia, which declared interracial marriage legal. With a focus on the root word “Trans” this conference explores interracial encounters such as transpacific Asian migration, transnational migration from Latin America, transracial adoption, transracial/ethnic identity, the intersections of trans (gendered) and mixed race identity, and mixed race transgressions of race, citizenship, and nation…

Read the entire press release here. View the program guide here.

Can We Talk

Mixed Roots Stories
2016-11-02

Chelene Knight

Please check one of the following boxes:

Black

White

Asian

Indigenous

Métis

Other

In my younger days I remember filling out a job application and staring at that question about race for so long. Do I check the ‘Black” box? What the hell is “Other?” My hand hovered over the question for a long time …

The more I write about life as a mixed-race person, and what this means to me as a mother, woman, writer etc, the more the writing itself tends to be less about race and more about missing pieces, and figuring out the order of these pieces and how to put them together. And not only the pieces I’ve never had, but re-working and making do with the ones I do have…

Read the entire article here.

Rebooting beyond the idea of Race

Mixed Roots Stories
2016-07-06

Temu and Elisabeth Diaab

“Remember how we always wanted to write a children’s book?” Elisabeth asked me one morning over coffee. “Let’s do it now, she said.” Our son had just moved into a college dorm, we were juggling two internet businesses, and even considering having a second child.

Although, I was born in Los Angeles, California, and Elisabeth, a world away, in Constance, Germany, we were amazed by how similar our experiences were. We were both of mixed racial heritage, our parents were both Muslim and Christian, we had both answered a long list of “interesting” questions regarding our ethnicity. We were drawn together in a very special way…

Read the entire article here.

Mixed Student Union Hosts Fourth Annual Heritage Conference

Pacific Ties
University of California, Los Angeles
2016-05-13

Ayesha Sheikh

UCLA’s Mixed Student Union (MSU) hosted their fourth annual Mixed Heritage Conference on April 30 in the James West Alumni Center. The organization’s goal for hosting the conference on campus, according to the organization’s co-director Ariel Pezner, was to spread awareness of mixed identity among student audiences within UCLA as well as circles of mixed groups outside UCLA.

The reach of the organization’s efforts go well beyond the campus, with its connections to several other student organizations such as those at the University of Southern California. Chelsea Strong, co-director of MSU alongside Pezner, shared that the conference was the biggest event hosted by the organization to attract students, staff, and faculty of all backgrounds “to get a chance to learn critically about mixed heritage.” To manifest the appropriate space for this exchange of ideas and learning, prominent speakers from various mixed backgrounds were invited to speak.

The keynote Speaker Dr. Velina Hasu Houston, who wrote her senior thesis at UCLA and received her doctorate from USC, is recognized locally and internationally for her analytical playwriting on genres of mixed heritage, a topic often overlooked as “too uninteresting” for the arts.

The conference brought into projection the importance of using art as a medium to communicate beyond the subjects of the composition itself. Among Dr. Houston’s most renowned works is “Tea, with Music” and “Cinnamon Girl.” She is a leadership force for many organizations such as HapaSC, a mixed heritage organization at USC, and Multiracial Americans of Southern California (MASC), whose mission statement is “to advocate for and foster multiracial community and identity.”….

…Some of the other organizations’ representatives in attendance included Dr. Chandra Crudup, from One Drop of Love and the co-director of Mixed Roots Stories (MRS), who sponsored the conference. In addition to teaching at Arizona State University, Dr. Crudup is also a social worker. She said, “Race is in the face a lot more than in the past,” and that there needs to be a healthy way to deal with social justice issues. She spoke on what a healthy lifestyle looks like, a survival guide to not getting “jaded out by issues that affect life at work and socially.”…

Read the entire article here.

2017 Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference Call for Papers

University of Southern California
Los Angeles, California
2017-02-24 through 2017-02-26

Explorations in Trans (gender, gressions, migrations, racial) Fifty Years After Loving v. Virginia

Deadline: 2016-04-30
Notification: 2016-07-31
Presenters at the conference must be members. Registration/membership will be available in 2016. Details below.
Subject Fields: We welcome submissions from scholars from all fields, cultural workers, and activists.

The next major Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference will be held February 24-26, 2017, at University of Southern California and will be hosted by the Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture. The conference will include film screenings and a live performance showcase produced by Mixed Roots Stories.

Download the CMRS 2017 Call For Papers [PDF]

The year 2017 marks the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Supreme Court decision in Loving v. Virginia, which declared anti-miscegenation laws unconstitutional. As a commemoration to Loving’s golden anniversary coupled with the geographic location of California, this conference provides an excellent site to examine critical mixed race issues. With a focus on the root word “Trans” this conference aims to explore interracial encounters relating, but not limited to, transpacific Asian migration, transnational migration from Latin America, transracial adoption, transracial/ethnic identity, interracial marriage from a transregional perspective, the intersections of trans (gendered) and mixed race identity, and mixed race transgressions of race, citizenship, and nation.

The intersections of transmigration/national/regionalism with respect to miscegenation are clear in light of varying marriage proscriptions across geographical regions within the continental United States. California enacted its anti-miscegenation law in 1850, forbidding whites (this category included Mexicans) from marrying blacks, Filipinos, and Asians. Twelve states additionally prohibited intermarriage with Asians, nine prohibited intermarriage with Filipinos, and some prohibited intermarriage with American Indians. Intermarriage with “Hindus” was prohibited in Arizona. Oregon prohibited whites from marrying Native Hawaiians or Kanakas; and Virginia’s anti-miscegenation law forbade intermarriage with anyone of non-Caucasian strain. During Reconstruction, rampant fears of hypersexualized Chinese men marrying white women underscored the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Even following World War II soldiers faced dilemmas as Congress enacted restrictions regarding non-citizen wives entering the U.S that affected the mixed race children of these interracial unions whose occupancy within an interstitial racial space remains a confusing and complex reality in 21st century America. It was not until 1948 that anti-miscegenation laws were abolished in California.

As this conference commemorates the 50th anniversary of Loving v. Virginia with a focus on “Trans” issues relating to interracial encounters, participants from all fields are invited to present new insights, which will contribute to a broader and deeper understanding in Critical Mixed Race Studies…

For more information, click here. Additional Questions? Contact us at: cmrsmixedrace@gmail.com.

What Does my Body Mean?

Mixed Roots Stories
2016-03-30

Carly Bates

Carly Bates (Photo by: Bethany Brown)

As a student of jazz at my university, I often occupy white male dominated spaces. I am the only woman of color (a black/white biracial woman) in a jazz history class, “Jazz Musicians as Composers,” a course that explores the gray areas of jazz as a concert music. Sometimes, I wonder if I can give myself permission to be a woman of color in this space. In a discussion surrounding the “Freedom Now Suite,” Max Roach’s response to the Greensboro sit ins, I have 75 minutes to say something—anything— so that my professor doesn’t think that I’m “just a shy student.” Rather, I negotiate with myself for 75 minutes what I am allowed to say, how what I say is a reflection of the body I occupy. Pressure mounts as someone questions the rigidity of jazz as a “black” art form. Pressure mounts as students discuss the auto-exoticism of African-American jazz musicians. Pressure mounts as the professor asks if anyone has ever felt that they had to represent a group of people, to act as a monolith. I scream silently: “Yes, every time I enter your class. Every time, for 75 minutes, I measure the amount of voice and the amount of blackness that I allow myself to have.”

What does my body mean here?…

Read the entire article here.

BOOK REVIEW – Raising Mixed Race: Multiracial Asian Children in a Post Racial World

Mixed Roots Stories
2015-12-10

Chandra Crudup, PhD, MSW

Sharon H. Chang’s inaugural book, Raising Mixed Race: Multiracial Asian Children in a Post Racial World, lays out a blue print that outlines the history of white supremacy and how it has corrupted the way people treat each other, specifically Mixed Race/Multiracial and Multiracial Asian individuals. She develops an important foundation that provides a glimmer of hope for moving forward toward improving our future world, despite the powerful suppressive system before us.

The title might make you think it is a parenting book, and it is (or could be), but it so much more! The language/verbiage used in the book makes this potentially academic/research strong book accessible for those who might have the most questions…parents. Though this book has a focus on multiracial Asian children, it is not just a book for parents of multiracial Asian children. It is a book for all children of color…and even for parents of white children! This book is for anyone who comes in contact with children in any way. This means if you are a teacher/educator, a child care worker, do research with children or on race and intersectionaility…or if you are a parent, sibling, aunt, uncle, grandparent, or once was a child. This book is for everyone!…

Read the entire review here.

White Dads

Mixed Roots Stories
2015-12-16

Sarah Gladstone

Being brown and having a white dad means something, whether people want to acknowledge it or not. Right now, I’m working on an anthology project—“WHITE DADS: Stories and experiences told by people of color, fathered by white men.” I’ve been loving the ways people are taking this idea, supporting it, and helping it grow. Thing is, though, absolutely none of us have the same story to tell about what it’s like being brown, raised by a white guy in a society that ranks validity based on melanin and race. This is a part of my story and the story behind WHITE DADS.

Answers are never just black and white–but in the case of biracial identity, sometimes, that’s exactly what they are…

Read the entire article here.