Images from the Lovings – Now showing (January 20, 2012 – May 6, 2012) at the International Center for Photography.
International Center of Photography
1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street
New York, NY 10036
The Loving Story: Photographs by Grey Villet
Seeking Participants for a Study on Race-Transcendence
Carlos Hoyt is a PhD study who is studying issues related to racial identity. Mr. Hoyt is seeking to interview/study individuals who are commonly identified as black (or African American), biracial or multiracial identity groups, but whose self-understanding does not incorporate race or racial identity.
Mr. Hoyt refers to this type of self-understanding as race-transcendent. Please visit his website to learn more about his research.
Hapa-Palooza Festival: September 7-10, 2011
Hapa-Palooza Festival: September 7-10, 2011
A Vancouver Celebration of Mixed-Roots Arts + Ideas
Hapa-Palooza: A Vancouver Celebration of Mixed-Roots Arts and Ideas is a new cultural festival that celebrates the city’s identity as a place of hybridity, synergy and acceptance. A vibrant fusion of music, dance, literary, artistic and film performances, Hapa-Palooza places prominence on celebrating and stimulating awareness of mixed-roots identity, especially amongst youth. (more…)
Upcoming Transracial Parenting Workshop
Thinking of adopting across racial and/or cultural lines? Adoption Mosaic is offering workshops that you might find useful. Information below.
Instructor: Astrid Dabbeni
When: September 17, 2011 and February 11, 2012
Time: 9 am to 4 pm
Where: SE UpLift Neighborhood Coalition, Portland, OR
Cost: $90 per person
The decision to adopt across racial and cultural lines is a lifelong commitment to exploring matters of race, confronting racism in all its forms and constantly developing new skills and aptitudes. This workshop will provide you with information, tools, and resources and create a sense of hope as you explore you and your children’s future as a transracial family. This workshop is appropriate for adoptive parents, waiting parents, and professionals. (more…)
Kissing Outside the Lines – An Author Event
Author Event
Actress and comedian Diane Farr (Rescue Me) will be at Barnes & Noble Tribeca in NY to discuss her introspective and outrageous memoir Kissing Outside the Lines: A True Story of Love and Race and Happily Ever After.
Diane Farr at Barnes & Noble Tribeca
Wednesday, July 6th at 6:30pm
97 Warren Street, New York, NY 10007
About this Author
Diane Farr is a television actress, TV and magazine writer, nationally syndicated columnist, and the author of The Girl Code. She is the female lead on CBS’s most-watched Friday night drama, Numb3rs, starred on the critically acclaimed FX series Rescue Me, and played a supporting role on Showtime’s Californication in its third season; and she contributes to Glamour, Esquire, GQ, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Jane, Parents, Los Angeles, Gotham, Self, and O magazine.
Farr lives in Los Angeles, CA with her husband and three children.
About the Book
Diane Farr—Numb3rs star, Loveline veteran, and FunnyorDie.com contributor—always took for granted that she could love anybody she chose. But when she, a white woman, fell in love with a Korean-American man, she quickly learned a tough lesson: When it comes to navigating the landscape of interracial love in America today . . . you’re going to step on some landmines.
At turns introspective and outrageous, Kissing Outside the Lines is Farr’s unapologetic—often hilarious—look at the complexities of interracial/ethnic/religious/what-have-you love, told through the lens of her own experience of dating, marrying, and creating a family with someone from a race and culture different from her own. Along the way, she exposes the many ways in which prejudice rears its ugly head—whether subtly or overtly—when you dare to love “outside the lines,” and she shares the stories of other multiracial couples from different corners of the U.S. who have made a similar leap.
Kissing Outside the Lines tackles love, family, and prejudice head-on. With sharp wit and deft humor, Farr confronts the fears and reservations that come with loving outside of one’s race, and she emerges with a powerful message: Love is love and family is family.
This Weekend’s Important Anniversary – Lovings vs. Virginia
This weekend marks the anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court case of the Lovings vs. Virginia. The Lovings were an interracial couple that, despite the laws of Virginia banning interracial marriage, were married in the District of Columbia.
After being married, the Lovings returned to their home state of Virginia, where they were arrested and charged with the criminal act of marriage (interracial marriage).
In 1959, the Lovings pleaded guilty and were sentenced to prison. In the 1959 hearing, the judge in the case proclaimed that:
Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix (source).
However, the judge agreed to suspend their sentence on the condition that the Lovings leave the state of Virginia, for which they did. After years of court battles, the US Supreme Court finally overturned the convictions in a unanimous decision, dismissing Virginia’s argument that a law forbidding both white and black persons from marrying persons of another race, and providing identical penalties to white and black violators, could not be construed as racially discriminatory.
It was not until 2000 that the final state, Alabama, had repealed its laws against mixed-marriages. Today, it is legal in all US states to marry inter-racially.
You can learn more about the Lovings at http://lovingday.org/the-loving-story.
Photo Credits: NY times and Associated Press
4th Annual Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival
The 4th annual “Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival” is only weeks away. If you will be in the Los Angeles area June 11-12th, definitely check out this free 2-day event that celebrates stories of interracial relationships, transracial adoptions and Mixed identity.
Films being showcased this year include: Multiracial Identity, Yelling to the Sky and One Big Hapa Family.
June 11-12, 2011
Los Angeles, California
Japanese American National Museum
The Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival is a two-day free public event, showcasing stories of multiracial families, individuals and relationships to encourage a dynamic conversation about the connectedness of all races and cultures. Through film screenings, readings, workshops and performance, the Festival provides a safe, positive forum for honest discussions about race & culture; encourages emerging storytellers’ careers; and promotes the Mixed experience as a valuable prism with which to view issues of social justice and change.
The Festival, a fiscally sponsored project of the New York Foundation for the Arts, is an inclusive event which brings together film and book lovers, innovative artists, and families interested in the Mixed racial and cultural experience. The Festival also hosts the largest West Coast Loving Day celebration with music, food and fun.
Call for Papers for the Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference
CRITICAL MIXED RACE STUDIES CONFERENCE
“What is Critical Mixed Race Studies?”
NOVEMBER 1-4, 2012
DEPAUL UNIVERSITY, CHICAGO, IL
Conference Description: What is Critical Mixed Race Studies? will be hosted at DePaul University in Chicago, November 1-4, 2012. The CMRS conference brings together scholars from a variety of disciplines nationwide. Recognizing that the diverse disciplines that have nurtured Mixed Race Studies have fostered different approaches to the field, the 2012 CMRS conference is devoted to the general theme “What is Critical Mixed Race Studies?”
Proposals: Organizers invite panels, roundtables, and papers that address the conference theme, although participants are also welcome to submit proposals that speak to their own specialized research, pedagogical, or community-based interests. The primary criterion for selection will be the quality of the proposal, not its connection to the conference theme. Proposals might consider the ways different disciplines approach or provide methodologies for critical analyses of mixed race issues. (more…)
Location, Location, Location
Location, Location, Location
Recently my son’s school held an International Day where they could dress to show their heritage/culture. As my three children sat at the table and discussed the best way for my son to accomplish this I observed how “comfortable” they were with being part of two cultures. They were equally excited to help my son capture both their Black American heritage as well as their Puerto Rican heritage. They do not claim one more than the other and they identify with both.
I often hear about biracial and multicultural children who only identify with one culture, have a hard time “fitting in” to either of their cultural backgrounds, or just struggle socially all together. I thought about how my children’s experience may be different from these children . I came up with lots of possible reasons. There are the obvious things like, they are being raised by parents who encourage them to be proud of both of their cultures, they are loved and embraced by both sides of their families and they are taught that all people are the same regardless of their heritage or culture. However, there was another reason that I kept coming to and that is (more…)
