Mixed Race Studies

The Color of American Genomics: Genetics in the Era of Racialized Medicine

University of California, Los Angeles
306 Royce Hall
340 Royce Drive
Los Angeles, California 90095
Friday, 2016-12-09, 13:30-16:30 PST (Local Time)

SPEAKERS:

Michael Montoya, Associate Professor
University of California, Irvine

Sandra Soo Jin Lee, Senior Research Scholar
Stanford University

Joan Donovan
University of California, Los Angeles

Élodie Grossi
University of California, Los Angeles/EPIDAPO

Since the 1960s, American ethno-racial categories have been increasingly used to respond to the inclusion of ethnic and racial minorities in biomedicine and genetics. It has been the researchers’ very dedication to the positive ideals of diversity and to the struggle against medical disparities that has paradoxically allowed racial categories to massively gain ground in science. This half-day symposium aims to shed light on the scope of racialized science and the political and ethical considerations raised by this new paradigm.

This workshop is free and open to the public

Presented by EPIDAPO.  Co-sponsored by the UCLA Institute for Society and Genetics.

For more information, click here.

Skin deep

North By Northwestern
Fall 2016

Mira Wang

Photo by Alex Furuya / North by Northwestern

Cracking the foundations of white beauty.

When I was younger, my Asian American friends and I would play house. We’d be older, popular and wise to the world. We’d have cars and phones and play dates at the mall. We had freedom there. I could be anyone.

I could even be white.

“Jordan,” my most-loved pretend character, had brunette-not-black, wavy-not-straight hair. She didn’t wear glasses. She played some white-dominated sport like volleyball and went to the mall whenever she wanted. All the boys wanted to date her – even the white boys. She was “American,” as my parents would say. She looked like she belonged.

I didn’t. I can tell stories about being paired automatically with the only other Asian boy in my classes, about “chink!” being screamed through an open car window as my sister and I walked home from school, about avoiding one of the only other Asian girls in my sixth grade class because the bullies were after her, for being too Asian, too quiet.

Instead, I’ll tell what I learned. People treat me differently because of how I look. White beauty norms are narrowly defined: My eyes are too small, and my hair too black, for white people to count as theirs. This means that I am “Asian” – I am labeled, and everything else they know about me will be in the context of that one racial signifier. It means people will meet me and think “Asian,” quiet, boring, studious – or even just “Asian,” chink. It means I am either only beautiful enough for Asian boys, or only beautiful because I am Asian…

Read the entire article here.

Caitlyn Jenner, Rachel Dolezal and instability in gender and race

Maclean’s
2016-12-04

Sujaya Dhanvantari

Sociologist Rogers Brubaker examines transgender and transracial differences

TRANS

By Rogers Brubaker

In Western culture, gender and race were traditionally thought to be unchangeable and fixed for life. Black or white, male or female: These were forever separated by the binary logic of absolute difference. But even as the old colonial theories of racial determinism have long been discredited, the notion of changing race is still ethically troubling. Not so for changing gender, which is now socially accepted in unprecedented ways. That is why celebrity trans woman Caitlyn Jenner and transracial civil rights activist Rachel Dolezal, born white but now identifying as black, are not the same kind of “trans.” Inspired by those two news stories, UCLA sociologist Rogers Brubaker explores the unstable categories of gender and race in his new book…

Read the entire review here.

Race In The Northwest: Hood River Man Learns His Family’s Surprising Truth

Oregon Public Broadcasting
2016-12-07

Anna Griffin, News Director

Hood River writer and cidermaker John Metta. Anna Griffin/OPB

Hood River, Oregon—John Metta grew up thinking of himself as mixed race: His mother was white. His father’s side of the family proudly proclaimed themselves a blend of African-American and Native American.

“Actually, I grew up always being the Indian kid at school,” he said. “I have pictures of myself in like fourth and fifth grade, and my hair was dead straight parted in the middle. I looked like the typical Native American.”

The family wasn’t entirely clear on where that Native American element entered the mix — someone at some point had spent time on the Seneca reservation in Western New York. Still, they embraced their native side…

…A few years ago, Metta’s sisters got curious about precisely which tribes and parts of the country their relatives came from. They asked an uncle to swab his cheek and had the sample tested. How much Native American blood did they find?…

Read the entire article here.

How Jews Became White Folks — and May Become Nonwhite Under Trump

Forward
2016-12-06

Karen Brodkin, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology
University of California, Los Angeles

Decades before I wrote the book “How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America,” I had an eye-opening conversation with my parents. I asked them if they were white. They looked flummoxed and said, “We’re Jewish.”

“But are you white?”

“Well, I guess we’re white; but we’re Jewish.” Then they wanted to know what I thought I was.

I’m white and Jewish…

Read the entire article here.

“Us versus Them” – A Thought on the Complexities of Multiracial Passing

Multiracial Media: Voice of the Multiracial Community
2016-12-08

Joanna L. Thompson, Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Criminology, Law, and Justice
University of Illinois, Chicago

Is this an example of “Multiracial Passing?” Photo credit: YouTube

Recently, a post on TheRoot.com discussed the challenges Sofia Richie, daughter of iconic singer Lionel Richie, faces in the fashion industry. As a mixed-race, half Black/half White individual, Richie presents more White than Black. Because Richie presents more White than Black due to her light-skinned complexion, she mentioned in the interview that many White people who work around her feel comfortable saying racist things because ultimately, they forget or do not even know she is also Black. In a world that is growing more multiracial each day, the topic of passing is more prevalent than ever. The topic also raises questions which have yet to be answered. How do light-skinned multiracial individuals handle the racism that exists around them, whether it is directly or indirectly intended at them? And how can people who are not mixed-race do better at not only decreasing their racist remarks, but respecting spaces where the presence of light-skinned multiracial individuals are high?…

Read the entire article here.