We’re doing it again! This year we’re excited to offer a special goodie bag for the first 100 attendees! Want one of these awesome Mixed Remixed Festival water bottles? Then get there when the doors open at 9:30am and be one of the first 100 people at Mixed Remixed this year! You’ll also have a chance to receive Festival stickers and special discounts from our sponsors! Be there and claim your goodie bag first thing on June 10! See you soon!
Mixed Remixed Festival Team 2017: Meet Kyla Kupferstein-Torres
We are lucky to have Kyla Kupfurstein-Torres on the Mixed Remixed Festival Board and as one of our go-to on-site volunteers at the Festival. Learn more about Kyla and her mixed experience! And make sure you register for the 2017 Festival now! Spaces are limited in many sessions.
What are you?
I’m a Jamaican Jew.
What is your mixed experience?
I’m biracial – a Black Jamaican mom and Ashkenazi Jewish dad.
What is the most important thing you want people to know about the mixed experience?
The mixed experience is an American experience – almost more central to our story as a nation than any other.
Do you remember when you first started thinking about the mixed experience? Did it happen because of any particular moment or event?
I’ve always been thinking about the mixed experience. I lived in a deeply multiracial, immigrant family, in a diverse city, and attended a diverse elementary school. Gradations of difference have been central to my life experience.
Why did you want to be a part of the Mixed Remixed Festival? How did you get involved?
I got involved with the Mixed Remixed Festival through the founder, Heidi Durrow. Her passion and commitment to making the mixed experience visible is infectious!
What are you looking forward to most at the Festival this year?
I’m looking forward to hearing the voices of young people living the mixed experience. I’m the mother of a four year old who is even more mixed than I am, and I’m eager to hear how young people are redefining what it means to be mixed in the United States.
Day 50 Fun Fact Countdown: the 50th Anniversary Celebration of Loving v. Virginia at the Mixed Remixed Festival
Today we kick off our 50-day Fun Fact Countdown until the Mixed Remixed Festival where we are hosting the nation’s largest celebration of the 50th a
nniversary of Loving v. Virginia. We thought it would be fun to highlight a different aspect of the case and how it has changed America each day for 50 days. Do you have a fun fact about the case or the way it affected your life? We want to hear about it! Email us at info@mixedremixed.org with your story and we will feature it in one of our posts.
Today’s fun fact is:
The law Richard and Mildred Loving were accused of violating was the Virginia Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which prohibited interracial marriage and defined a white person as someone with “no discernible nonwhite ancestry.”
Okay, this is not a “fun” fact. But can you believe it?
4 Lies About Why People Identify as Biracial or Mixed Race
Identifying as Biracial or Mixed Race is Not a Pathological Stance
1. We think we are (or really want to be) white.
If only I had a nickel for every time I’ve read a comment like this. It’s really an offensive comment too. How on earth do YOU (read random hater) know what I want for myself. When I say that I am biracial or am specific about my racial and cultural background, it means that I want to be all of what my experience makes me. Period.
2. We are uncomfortable around people of color.
This comment is also so thoroughly offensive. Half of my family is made up of people of color. In fact, I’m a person of color. Just because I don’t buy into the idea of race as America insists I should doesn’t mean that I feel alienated from my own family or my own people.
3. We don’t understand the reality of white or light-skinned privilege.
Yes, we do. Can we just start the conversation there?
4. We harbor self-hating beliefs.
Okay, I did struggle with that growing up hearing that I didn’t belong anywhere. But as an adult I understand that my psychic health demands that I embrace and accept all of who I am–even if that identification makes other people uncomfortable!
5 Things That Will Make You Feel Like You Can Embrace a Mixed Race or Biracial Identity
1. Recognize that your psychic health may require self-acceptance of your mixed race and multiracial identity.
A study published in 2015 in Current Directions in Psychological Science by Sarah Gaither found that multiracial children who are “raised to identify with both parents and to understand their complex racial heritage [can] have higher self-esteem than mono-racial people. They are adaptable, able to function well in both majority and minority environments. They are more likely to reject the conception that race biologically predicts one’s abilities, which may, in turn, insulate them from the negative impact of racism or bias.” Source: New York Magazine.
2. Learn about historical figures who were mixed.
One of the things that helped me start to accept the fact that I could not hide from my complicated cultural and racial identity was learning about other mixed-race people of the past. For me, Nella Larsen who also wrote about being black and Danish (like me) back in the 1920s became an important figure. I saw her bravery about talking about being mixed in a racially divided world as a kind of permission. It’s important to feel like you have a history. Seek out mixed historical figures. Here’s one fun resource in The Mixed Experience History Month.3. Read books about biracial people (fiction and non-fiction).
There is an ever-growing literature about biracial and mixed-race characters and people. Read those stories and find yourself! We have a couple of resources here if you’re looking for memoirs or kids’ books. The Mixed Remixed Festival also has its own on-line book club. You should join us and read some great books!4. Watch films featuring biracial and mixed race characters.
Ditto films! It’s an amazing experience to be in a theater and see families that look like your own like the wonderful film, Loving, and now more recently A United Kingdom. Heck, you can find our stories on Netflix too. Stream one now! 5. Connect on-line and in-person with other mixed race and biracial people.
It’s been so amazing to connect with other mixed folks and families on line in various Facebook groups and on Twitter and Instagram. Our favorite way to connect though is the Mixed Remixed Festival. It’s the largest nationwide gathering of mixed families and people held each year in June. You should join us! It’s free! 5 Great Videos About Growing Up Biracial and Mixed Race
1. The Struggles of Being Mixed Race via Buzzfeed Yellow
This video has been incredibly popular. It has its fans (because it tells hard truths) and detractors (because, well, you tell us). What do you think?
2. Mixed Kid Problems: Growing Up Multicultural via Liza Koshy
Liza is fun and funny. We know that you will agree!
3. Being Multiracial in America via New York Times
This video is almost 10 years old now! But you’ll be surprised at how much the conversation has stayed the same.
4. What’s So Funny About Being Mixed? via Mixed Remixed Festival
This will make you laugh and remind you that no, we are not tragic mulattos. Mixed folks got jokes too.
5. What Are You? via Mixed Remixed Festival
This great video features Festival favorites Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele as well as the cute as a button Cheerios girl!
3 Clever Tools to Simplify Your Curly Hair Days
3 Clever Tools to Simplify Your Curly Hair Days
Some days I wonder why people use the term “naturally curly” when talking about my hair. I have been in a life-long search to figure out how to make my naturally curly hair look curly. These are some of the tools that have helped me on my curly hair days.
1. Mixed Chicks Hair Products
Mixed Chicks Hair Products have worked wonders on my hair. The products define my curls without weighing them down. And the product doesn’t flake off like other products can. My favorite product is the leave-in conditioner, but check out the whole line of shampoos, conditioners, and now hair brushes and hair accessories too!2. Fast-drying hair towel
If you have long, thick curly hair, a fast-drying hair towel is a real life saver. In the past, my hair has been damp up to five hours after I’ve washed it. And maybe you too have experienced that ring around the shoulders of a tshirt when your hair was still wet? Your curls will dry happily in a fast-drying hair towel without getting smushed. Try it.
3. Lavender Water in Spray Bottle
You know how you finally have a great curly hair day and you want it to last forever. Well, you don’t have to wet your hair completely to make that happen. Why not just use a little lavender water in a spray bottle to spruce it up. Here are tips on how to use it from Naturally Curly.
Join us for the largest gathering of multiracial and mixed-race families and people in June 2017 for the 4th Annual Mixed Remixed Festival.
Mixed Love Notes: I’m pro human . . . I’m a mixed child . . .
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Join us for the largest gathering of multiracial and mixed-race families and people in June 2017 for the 4th Annual Mixed Remixed Festival.
Mixed Love Notes: I say I am mixed because . . .
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Sign up here to get your daily #mixedlovenotes!
Join us for the largest gathering of multiracial and mixed-race families and people in June 2017 for the 4th Annual Mixed Remixed Festival.
3 Trends You Need to Know About How to Talk About Mixed-ness, Mixed Race and Multiracial Experience and Identity
Sometimes it feels like the needle is not moving fast enough on the conversation about mixed-race and multiracial identity and experience. But if we take a moment to take a look at the conversations that we’re having today, there are some changes happening in the way that people are talking. Here are 3 trends you should know about if you’re talking about mixed-ness these days:
Intersectionality
Legal scholar Kimberle Crenshaw provides a very good explanation of what intersectionality is about in this essay. (See also her 2016 TED Talk.) She’s not writing about mixed-race issues in particular but the ideas still apply.
“Intersectionality is an analytic sensibility, a way of thinking about identity and its relationship to power. Originally articulated on behalf of black women, the term broug
ht to light the invisibility of many constituents within groups that claim them as members, but often fail to represent them. Intersectional erasures are not exclusive to black women. People of color within LGBTQ movements; girls of color in the fight against the school-to-prison pipeline; women within immigration movements; trans women within feminist movements; and people with disabilities fighting police abuse — all face vulnerabilities that reflect the intersections of racism, sexism, class oppression, transphobia, able-ism and more. Intersectionality has given many advocates a way to frame their circumstances and to fight for their visibility and inclusion.” Kimberle Crenshaw
Multi-Generationally Mixed (MGM)
More people are connecting with their mixed backgrounds. That means people who felt like they didn’t have permission before are claiming a heritage that had been denied them before. Many of those people are “multigenerationally mixed” — a kind of remix of mixing. NPR’s Leah Donella wrote a really great piece about this changing landscape and terminology for mixed-ness. You can read it here: All Mixed Up: What Do We Call People Of Multiple Backgrounds?
Reclaiming the Word “Mulatto”
There is a lot of discussion about this word that many consider perjorative. But there are many thought leaders in the mixed race community who are eager to reclaim it in the same way that the LGBTQ movement reclaimed the word queer. I myself am sometimes one of these people when I jokingly refer to myself as a professional mulatto. You can check out the wonderful work of Tiffany Jones of the Mulatto Diaries (still relevant now a couple of years later). And definitely make sure that you read Mat Johnson’s defense of the word mulatto here: Why You Can Kiss My Mulatto Ass
“Yo, I’m a mulatto. And I have to tell you, it’s great. I was black for most of my life, which is also great, but the thing is I look white and, coincidentally, my dad’s also white (he’s great too), and after a while I needed a word that offered me a better fit, and acknowledge my father and his whole family’s impact on my life, which was also a big part of my identity. So I converted to mulatto, which I see as a subset of the larger African American experience. I actually love the word mulatto.” – Mat Johnson
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