Newly Minted

Newly Minted
Right after I was hooded

Saturday, March 30, 2013

Mixed Race Asian

I am not going to be able to say too much about this. I am just putting some thinking out in the world... On our campus we are trying to think about the "asian" question. This question comes from administrators concerned that we are not attractive to Asian students (forget the fact that this question is a conflation of all things Asian, South Asian, Indian, Pakistani, Vietnamese, Thai, Pilipino, Hawaiian…please fill in the ellipses) and how do we become more attractive. This conversation is happening parallel to a deep concern by "race counters" that students are more frequently not self-identifying by race. I say good for them but the "race counters" assure me that this is a problematic trend. That is another post altogether. My observation, linking these two conversations together, is that our "asian" students are overwhelmingly mixed race. I have started to think about the students that I would "visually" identify as Asian and the majority of them are mixed race. I have had amazing conversations with these students and they have self-reported not identifying on our institutional forms as "Asian/South Asian/Pacific Islander" because it doesn’t MEAN anything to their lived and intimate realities. Many report not identifying a race at all or identifying as mixed race/other. I also have a sense through these conversations that these students would be more inclined to look for programing targeting mixed race students rather than "asian" students. I also know that our last president of the Asian Pacific Island Student Union was a young woman of Indian descent who was a transracial adoptee. The other two students in that group were white and Chinese, both also adoptees. The Asian Pacific Island Student Union has folded and no students have tried to revive it. I would be most interested in finding out how to support the Asian, South Asian, Indian, Pakistani, Vietnamese, Thai, Pilipino, and Hawaiian mixed race identities on our campus in a real and authentic way. I am also interested in becoming attractive to students from these populations as well. So much to do... ...more soon

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Marriage Equaltiy is about all of us

On this morning of momentous possibility we each must take a moment to appreciate that the marriage equality act is directly related to the history of mixed race people in the United States. Africans in America were not allowed to legally marry (and those who did had to have permission from their masters) during slavery. African Americans were not allowed to marry white people during Jim Crow. Even after the 1967 Supreme Court ruling that the anti-miscegenation laws were unconstitutional; many states still had the anti-miscegenation laws on their books through the late 1990s. As recent as 2010 interracial couples were being denied marriage licenses. How do we, as people who have been historically denied the right to marry who we love, dare restrict that right for any other human being? The criminalization of love and intimate relationships is not only unconstitutional it is inhumane. Every time I hear an argument against same sex marriage I immediately remember that when my husband and I married in 1999 it was still "illegal" in two states in our country. If marriage equality doesn't pass, how long will it be before my marriage becomes illegal again? Marriage equality is about all of us. This IS our fight. ...more soon