After watching Between and reading Diamond Grill, I have been very interested in finding out more about the status of mixed race peoples in North America and their experiences in society both in the past and today. After doing a bit of research on the internet, I came across an interesting article on the National Geographic website called “The Changing Face of America” written by Lise Funderburg with portrait photos taken by Martin Schoeller. http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/10/changing-faces/funderburg-text

The article discusses how the acceptance of interracial marriage and adaptation to the increasing number of mixed race people has changed just over the past 10-14 years. For example, it mentions how it was only in the year 2000 when the U.S. Census Bureau allowed multiracial people to check off more than one race on their form. When they finally allowed this, 6.8 million people utilized this new option. To me, that is a large number of people who were not being catered to, and were initially forced to choose one race over another, making many of them feeling as if they were betraying one part of their identity by having to choose one. It amazes me that this change to forms was made only 14 years ago.

The webpage also provides a link to a photo gallery of portraits taken by Martin Schoeller, which was put together as a representation of the “melting pot” quality of the U.S.

Here is a link to the gallery:

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/10/changing-faces/schoeller-photography

I was intrigued by his photos, and especially his purpose behind his artwork, which he explains as: “I like building catalogs of faces that invite people to compare them. I want to challenge the way we use appearance to shape identity.” As we discussed in class, and also relating back to Diamond Grill, identity is made up of many parts, of which appearance is only one. But, for some reason, people have gotten into the habit of judging other people’s identities by the way they look, or even just by the hue of their skin. An interesting scientific experiment was discussed in this National Geographic article as well. It is called the “eyeball test” and basically showed, using brain reaction testing, that people identify race in around one-tenth of a second. This is even faster than identifying gender.

As mentioned in the article, as well as demonstrated in Between and Diamond Grill, other factors such as politics, religion, history and geography all influence a person’s identity. For example, in Diamond Grill, the politics behind how Chinese would be allowed into Canada and the head tax affected how they identified themselves and how they were treated in society. Your family history also affects your identity, and is closely related to race.

In another National Geographic article (http://proof.nationalgeographic.com/2013/09/17/visualizing-change/), a woman by the name of Michele Norris started a project called the Race Card Project, which reminds me very much of the Six Word Memoirs website we looked at last term. For the Race Card Project, people are invited to send in short stories of only 6 words, to express their feelings and experiences with race and cultural identity.  Many of them, although short, pack in a lot of power and emotion.

“I am only Asian when it’s convenient”—Heather Brown, Seattle, Washington

“My mixed background means ‘White Enough’”—Maximilian Willson, Olympia, Washington

These two are interesting in that they show how mixed race people can sometimes have a “choice” at how they want to be identified. They can choose, for example, if they want to emphasize their Asian part when it could benefit them, or choose white in anther situation. These race cards remind me of the situation in Between when Fred Wah is at first put on a 5 year waiting list for Chinese people getting a visa to allow him to work in the U.S. However, when he shows up to the office and they see his face and see he is not fully Chinese, they immediately allow him to obtain a visa. It fascinates me how some rules like that can change, just because someone looks different.

by Chad Oiastad of Madison, Wisconsin: “My grandfather would hate my children.”

This one is very powerful, as it identifies how people’s views of interracial marriage have changed over the past few decades. It also reminded me of the similar situation in Diamond Grill, when Wah talks about how his grandparents did not really accept the interracial marriage between his Swedish mother and Chinese father, but when they saw how Wah looked very “white” they were more accepting of it.

Similar to the effect of Six Word Memories, The Race Card Project has given people who struggle with their race and identity to let go and express themselves and many of them include pictures and artwork in addition to their six words.

This project just shows that with the increase in interracial marriage, there comes a growing acceptance. Hopefully this acceptance will keep growing and becomes at least “less prickly than it’s been in the past.”