MIXED IN AMERICA
Louie Gong, an education resource coordinator at Muckleshoot Tribal College in Auburn, Wash., is wellversed on issues of multiculturalism and mixed-race heritage but he isn’t an expert and has no intentions of becoming one.
In fact, he’s the “anti-expert.” As an emerging voice for mixed-race populations, Gong refuses to make sweeping generalizations about a diverse group of people in the way an expert might.
“Th ere is no one mixed-race experience. You can’t generalize what it is like to be a mixed-race person across geographical regions or socioeconomic statuses,” he says.
Gong, who has Native American, Chinese, Scottish and French heritage, is trying to assist a new generation in comprehending what it means to be multiethnic in America, and he is using technology and the nonprofit organization he leads, called MAVIN, to do it.
Founded in 2000, MAVIN, which means “one who understands” in Yiddish, aims to raise awareness about the mixed-race experience. The organization sponsors a magazine, community events and an online resource library for people of mixed race.
The mixed-race experience is larger than the Black and White relationships that are most oft en explored, says Eric Hamako, a doctoral candidate at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a MAVIN board member. “Louie is really raising the profile of the mixed native, bringing socioeconomic status into the conversation and making connections between community members and the academic world.” Th e 2000 U.S. census was the first to give Americans the option to check more than one box for race. Nearly 7 million people declared themselves multiracial that year, a number that’s expected to increase in the 2010 count.
