Originally a derogatory label derived from the Hawaiian word for half, Hapa is now being embraced as a term of pride by many people of Asian or Pacific Rim mixed-race heritage. Award-winning film producer and artist Kip Fulbeck has created a forum in word and image for Hapas to answer the question they’re nearly always asked: “What are you?” Fulbeck’s frank, head-on portraits are paired with the sitters’ own statements of identity. A work of intimacy, beauty, and powerful self-expression, Part Asian, 100% Hapa is the book Fulbeck says he wishes he had growing up. An introduction to the rest of the world and an affirmation for Hapas themselves who now number in the millions it offers a new perspective on a rapidly growing population.

Amazon.com product Description

What I like about this book is that you get to see a broad range of faces and mixes. Even though it focuses on a particular group (Hapa/Asian Mixes ) and the notes written reflect a great deal of variation, the sentiments are all ones that people of other mixed groups can relate to.

Another intersting aspect of this book is the broad range of ages of people in the book.  Older generations of mixed heritage people have historically had very different experiences with being mixed, how they were treated by others, and what they were told about the normality of being mixed.  Contrast that with the notes from some of the younger participants who have grown up in communities where being mixed heritage is not as unusual as it might have been for some of the older subjects.

This is a great book to just sit back and look through.  Its not a long book, but its certainly one that you could go back to from time to time just to read what people had to say.

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.

Our mission is to offer a view of the mixed-race experience, highlighting icons, film, books, poetry, parenting techniques, celebrities, real lives and much more.

This site seems very interactive where users can participate in forums, and such. As a resource for Americans I think this is a great place to go to begin to learn about how other countries and cultures concieve of race and issues of mixed race/mixed ethnic heritage. Our own concepts of race and racism are so driven by our country’s history with race and power as it relates to race that it could really broaden our frame of reference to see what is going on in other countries.

The link to the site can also be found in the Web Resources section.

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.

When you subscribe to the feed you get updated every time I post a new article. If you are interested in what people are saying about different articles you can keep up with that by subscribing to the Comment feed.

Enjoy!

I heard Sundee Tucker Frazier on NPR once as a guest on a show whose focus was on the mixed race experience. I really liked the way she spoke and what she had to say. In this book she pulls primarily from her own life to talk about the mixed experience. Sundee is black and white and talks about that experience. She does do a fairly good job of trying to bring in other mixes when she talks about other mixed race people that she has worked with or worshipped with. However when doing so however she does not really addressed the differences in experience that their various mixes may have contributed to their experiences. What she did do was talk about how through their relationships with their faith they were able to overcome some of the hurts they had experienced and embrace their multiraciality, or become more whole people.

This book placed a great emphasis on reflection and action which was meant to help the reader explore his or her own feelings about being of a mixed heritage family. Some of these reflection exercises had to do with secular subjects, like thinking about how you see yourself, how you have or have not experienced racism, how has your family history influenced how you see yourself and other such questions. She also offers questions for reflection that have the reader thinking about their relationship with their faith, their faith communities and so on.

This book has prompted the creation of a new category on the site that I will call Faith and Race, and will contain resources that will hopefully speak to the experiences of mixed heritage folks within the context of faith or religion and how race and faith interact with respect to being mixed race.

The reason I put this in the Students and Families category and the Counseling category is that I could see a couple things happening. One might be that a family whose faith is very important to them, as it is to Sundee, may find that this is the exact conversation they needed to be having. Or the ideas may just resonate with them. In a counseling situation this might be a good book to refer someone to who is struggling with issues of faith and racial acceptance, or perhaps for ministers or people of the church looking to integrate mixed issues into the conversations they have with their ministry (if that’s the right term).

I would be very interested to hear what other people thought about this book. If you are a person who is not very religious or of a different faith than Sundee how did you relate to this book?

What parts did you find useful to the greater mixed race conversation?

The first thing I appreciate about this piece of work is the fact that it is based on “normal” mixed race students. What I mean by “normal” are students that are not in treatment for some issue already. This is a trend in research that has been taking place in the last decade or so as people of mixed heritage grow up and begin producing and reacting to research. While Renn herself is not of mixed heritage (as she states in the book) she really understands that while mixed-race students may have a different experience of race and ethnicity and all the issues associated with them, they are not inherently flawed or doomed individuals like research of yore used to suggest.

From a student development point of view I found her use of the ecology model very effective. First it highlights the situational nature of the mixed experience. Looking at how a students environments influence the way he or she identifies to others is something that I think has not been researched very deeply in the past. Another reason I liked the use of the ecology model on this group of students is that it focuses on the interaction between the student and their environment which allows for the student to also have an impact on the environment as well. Having that piece of the puzzle to look at allows us as researchers and administrators to have a better understanding of how to possibly design our environments such that these students could also have an educational impact on their peers. The ecology model also highlights the need for school administrators to really consider how their actions on various levels affect a students experiences and opportunities for self exploration and growth. How do policies at the highest levels trickle down and impact the students immediate environment?

The number of subjects used, while still relatively small, is the largest of any of the research I have read. I would have liked to have seen more students whose parents were both non-white, but over all I felt that the group had a pretty good diversity of mixed heritage types.

I highly recommend this study for several reasons. 1. Students are seen as normal, and their experience of ethnicity and race and seeking of identity is not seen as problematic. 2. The idea that students can experience race and ethnicity in different ways, and then identify situational (and that that process is different for every student) is accepted and seen not as problematic, but as a “normal” way of navigating these waters. 3. The students used for this study were not just Black/White mixed. In the past there has been a tendency to focus solely on this group.

I would love to find out if there is any research pertaining to the difference in experience (if any) between students with one white parent and students with two non-white parents. I would also love to find out if there is more research on any differences between how students with two American born and students with one or both parents who were born abroad.

Interracial Family Circle (Link can also be found on the Web Resources Page)From the home page -

Welcome to the official web site of the Interracial Family Circle (IFC), Washington, DC Metro Area Chapter. Located in the seat of the nation’s government, IFC members enjoy many of the beautiful buildings and vistas that abound the nation’s capital. Our members get together for fun events at local parks, museums, book readings, and more! Members also gain support and advice from each other by sharing their experiences as multicultural families. I hope that you will join us for many of these activities, from hosting “Circle Chats” to leading book club discussions and writing articles for the newsletter. Leave your comments below to get involved.

This is a really basic article that introduces the idea that multicultural education fails to recognize biracial and multicultural students. I had never thought about this myself, but the arguments that the author introduces are interesting. Wardel asserts that the idea of multicultural education is to teach students about different cultures and to emphasizes having pride in ones (monoracial/monoethnic) culture. What he believes is the problem is the assumption that teachers and counselors make that children will have only one culture to be proud of. As a result students of mixed heritages become invisible within the context of multicultural education. The article calls for educational administrators to change teacher training and curriculum to incorporate more training about issues unique to this emerging population.

While the focus of this article is on the k-12 educational environment, I think there are some things that higher education can take away from it as well. I think that as higher ed. administrators, teachers, and counselors, we all need to look at our own assumptions and see if we too are delivering a multicultural education that emphasizes monoracial or monoethnic ideals to the exclusion of different combinations of race and ethnic heritage and experience.

Full Article: Understanding Youth Culture - Journal of Educational Leadership, Dec 1999 - Jan 2000, V 57, No 4, Pg 68-72

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.