The Mixed Heritage Center is LIVE! (ok so this post is a few weeks late, but I was busy at work)

The welcome reads as follows:

The Mixed Heritage Center (MHC) is a clearinghouse of information relevant to the lives of people who are multiracial, multiethnic, transracially adopted or otherwise affected by the intersection of race and culture. It is the product of collaboration between the Association of MultiEthnic Americans and the MAVIN Foundation. Funding was provided by the K and F Baxter Family Foundation.

The MHC is an “organic” resource that will grow and change with contributions from visitors, student groups, and community based organizations who care about mixed heritage issues. Please share your own knowledge and experiences either through participation in the discussion forums, by recommending the addition of a resource, or by submitting your own work to content@mixedheritagecenter.org .

- Mixed Heritage Center (MHC) Home Page

A long time ago I had contacted the people at Mavin who were in charge of the old MHC. I was told that it was being rebuilt and I even got the opportunity to help out a bit (although I didn’t end up doing too much because I got busy with other stuff). Anyway, just knowing what was coming was exciting and now its live and I get to spread the word about the site. So now is the part where I tell about the good stuff.

Resources – The Mavin Foundation and AMEA (Association of MultiEthnic Americans) are two of the best known national mixed heritage organizations. The Mixed Heritage Center has been built as a place to bring together their combined resources as well as begin to build a greater library. The idea is that not only will the site link to information already in their combined libraries, but that people who visit the site or join as users will also be able to submit resources that will then be posted. With mixed heritage being a topic of study that is still fairly new the number of documents out there are still in many far off places. The MHC with the help of the mixed community will begin to grow those resources and bring together those existing resources from their far off places. Additionally, by allowing users to submit inks to resources it is easier to keep information up to date and make sure that it is relevant to a rapidly changing population.

Scope – Whereas my site has a more constrained focus, the MHC has links to all sorts of resources. And with new content being added regularly the scope and depth of what they have is sure to increase. When those who are interested in this field are able to see what research already exists I would think that it makes it more possible to know what has been addressed and what issues still need to be addressed.
One of the things I really am excited about is that they are including the arts (movies, music, visual arts, literature) as resources. I know for a fact (because I am an artist) that for some there are things that can only be expressed through art, and to have the ability to see that from others is going to be very powerful.

Community – The new MHC has been built with creating and supporting an online community in mind. Users can register for an account which will allow them greater access to the site as well as more opportunities to communicate with each other and create community.

I am very excited about this site. It was built with intellectual growth and community in mind which in my opinion are both very important when it comes to a population that is so diverse and so new (in terms of its visibility and acceptence). I look forward to exploring the site and discovering new and important information as well as contributing to the community.

This site is great for everyone as it has resources that touch on many different topics.

I was referred to this site by a friend who thought I might find it interesting. The Mixed Chicks are two women of mixed racial and ethnic heritage who are longtime friends who do a podcast where they talk about what its like to be mixed. One of them is Mixed Jamaican and White, and the other is mixed African American and Dutch.
While this is not the most polished podcast, what I really appreciate is how candidly they talk about their experiences with figuring out their identities, dating, interacting with the different sides of their families and so on. When you listen to the podcast you feel like you could just jump in at any time because they touch in a very real way on many experiences that mixed people have.
Not being a mixed black/white person myself it is also very interesting to hear about the experiences of being light skinned in the black community and living the implications of that. Some of the experiences that I have been most interested in hearing about have been those in which they talk about their experiences with campus black student groups in college. They really highlight how poorly the commonly used models of black student development or monoethnic student development are at addressing the ethnic identity issues that students of mixed heritages go through

While this may not be the most academically structured resource, I think its a really good one because it reflects the experiences of people who are “normal” mixed people.

This could be a good podcast for white parents. It is sometimes hard for them to hear about experiences of being mixed from their own children if they don’t really see them as mixed or have never experienced any of the identity issues that their children have.

The only thing that I wish were better with this podcast is the sound/recording quality. It sounds like they use a service where they record the episode in a phone conference manner. Sometimes the sound quality is not that great which is (for me at least) a bit distracting. On the upside, the service they use allows them to have people call in and comment on the episode as they are recording it, so in that respect it has the potential to be something very interactive where people can really ask their questions or add in their own two cents. I think its great that they are using that service and making it possible for people who listen to their podcast to really get involved should they want to.

Over all I like the podcast, the energy of it, the positive message that we mixed folks are just fine the way we are.

“An international association organizations dedicated to advocacy, education and collaboration on behalf the multiethnic, multiracial and transracial adoption community.”

AMEA is a wonderful national organization that works to educate people about the issues that affect the mixed heritage/ethnicity population. They are well know for their activism in the areas of mixed heritage eductional issues, health issues and policy issues pertaining to the collection of useful and appropriate demographic data by the federal government.
While I have not personally had experience working with this group, I do know that they commonly work with many other national organizations such as MAVIN as well as with other organizations on a more local level.
AMEA (this link opens a new page) This link can also be found on the Web Resources Page.

Year: 2001

This is a great book on the subject of mixed heritage students of the high school and college ages. I would strongly recommend this book to counseling and student development professionals. Parents and families could get some insights from this book as well, but the focus of this book is really more on introducing patterns of identity development that are different from those currently in use in the fields of counseling and student development.Wallace began the book with a brief summery of demographic trends for mixed heritage individuals. She continued by giving an overview of the design and methodology of this study, which included a snapshot of each of the individuals interviewed. The second chapter of this book, called ‘Surveying the US Racial Ecology’, did a great job of giving the reader an up to date (up to 2001) overview of the state of race and ethnicity in America. This included a concise overview of the one drop rule, which is something that has impacted the way generations of mixed heritage people in America have been treated. Wallace then moved on to give the reader a brief yet well described explanation of race and ethnicity and the differences between them which I felt this was important because too often in discussions of mixed heritage issues the terms are used interchangeably when in fact they are two very different things. She concludes this section by briefly touching on the deficiencies of prior research on mixed heritage people as well as briefly discussing new directions in research which gives the reader a taste of the study to come.

The majority of the book then covered how students understood and experienced many of the environmental and societal factors that have been shown to impact the ethnic identity development of mixed heritage individuals. The influences she explored were things like: What kinds of interactions did students have with their different heritage communities? Did their families participate in community activities associated with their different heritages? What is the role of faith or religion in the household and, was participation in a faith or religious tradition important in the heritage communities? If parents spoke a language other than English, had they taught it to their children? Was one language used more than another, and if so did a students fluency in a particular language (or lack there of) have implications for their participation in the heritage community with which it was associated? In addition, Wallace looked at how the parents themselves lived their heritages (as reported by the students) and how they did or did not pass it down to their children. What information did students get about being mixed from their parents and families? Was the emphasis on one heritage over the other in the home, and if so was there an explicit reasoning for it? A very important portion of this study had to do with the peer aspects of community. The role of peers in an adolescent’s development is very important. In this context, how did peer messages about a students mixed status influence the way they expressed themselves ethnically? In addition, Wallace was interested in how students expressed their identities to others in light of all the different messages they received from the people they interacted with. What words students use to express their ethnicities? Did they identify more with one heritage than another, and if so how did they express that? Was that identification stable over time or did it change? If it changed, what influenced it to change?

Over all I thought this book was pretty good. Because the book was focused on the results of one particular study, aside from the first couple chapters, there was not a lot of referencing of outside materials. However I didn’t find this to be detrimental to the book. One critique that I might have, that has been a critique of mixed heritage research before, was the small number of participants. Wallace interviewed 15 high school and college students in the San Francisco area. The students were found through a sort of snowball method where the solicitation for participation in the study was aimed at mixed heritage students, and then students interested in participating were asked to refer any others who might be interested. Of the 15 students who participated 13 were “first generation majority/minority (i.e. white or of color) biracial heritage” (p9). One of the remaining students was of Asian/Latina heritage and the other was Asian/Afro Caribbean heritage (both of which were female). One of the things I would like to see more of would be research including greater numbers of students with two parents of non-white racial heritage. This sample is far from being “representative” so it is hard to generalize the outcomes of this particular study to the mixed heritage population. This being said, I don’t think it should take away from the contribution to the conversation that this piece does make. What we can see from this small number of students is the beginning of a snap shot of a population (one grouped around the fact that they are all different) that we can use as the basis for future research.

What Wallace does with this work is give the reader a realistic view of some of the ways these students interacted with their environments as well as the ways that the students environments (including social, physical, and historical aspects) acted upon them and influenced the ways they expressed themselves. This is one of the first books or articles I have read (aside from the work of Maria Root) that began to really lay out a frame work for the idea that, for mixed heritage people, ethnic identity can be situationally dependent, and that any shifting that might take place in the expression of ethnicity for a mixed heritage person is not problematic.

The information below is from the homepage of their site (http://www.jewishmultiracialnetwork.org/)

The Jewish Multiracial Network’s Mission
The mission of the Jewish Multiracial Network is to build a community of Jews of color and multiracial Jewish families for mutual support, learning, and empowerment. Through education and advocacy, we seek to enrich Jewish communal life by incorporating our diverse racial and ethnic heritages.
The Jewish Multiracial Network brings Jewish multiracial families and individuals together to learn about and celebrate their Judaism. We are committed to diversity and inclusive community-building, and seek to help our members strengthen their identities as Jews and members of other ethnic groups. We create opportunities for learning, nurturing and support for a large and growing part of the Jewish community that often feels marginalized by mainstream Jewish organizations. We invite you to become a part of a developing national Jewish multiracial network.