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Our next featured guest is Tiffany Morrison, owner of Mix It Up, a new line of greeting cards for interracial couples and multiracial consumers (www.Mix-It-Up.net).

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Tiffany Morrison

Previous Interviews

Monica McGoldrick
Director of the Multicultural Family Institute

Jaiya John
Author, Black Baby White Hands: A View from the Crib

Marie Myung-Ok Lee
Author, Somebody‘s Daughter

Matt Kelley
Founder and President, MAVIN Foundation

Mardie Caldwell
Founder, Lifetime Adoption

Arun Narayan Toke’
Publisher and Editor, Skipping Stones

Laura Gannarelli
President, Paper Lantern

Cheri Register
Author, Beyond Good Intentions

Nancy Kim Parsons
Documentary Filmmaker

Five Questions with Matt Kelley

(View Biography)

We would like to thank Matt for answering some personal questions with great honesty. His inspirational answers encourage us to be proactive about fighting against racism as well as respecting all cultures, people, and abilities no matter the situation. Matt's continuous efforts to promote multiculturalism is something we all should aim to model after. Thanks, Matt for helping us spread the importance of celebrating the diversity of cultures and teaching us the value of self-confidence regardless of what others tell us!

1. Why did you start MAVIN? What did you think was missing and how do you think that MAVIN filled the void?

I started MAVIN because I grew up without resources to help me understand and celebrate being multiracial (Korean and White). I grew up outside Seattle, but went out East to college. As a 19-year-old freshman at Wesleyan University, I learned that there was a student group for multiracial students. Up until that moment, I didn‘t even know there were words like "biracial" to describe being "mixed." Learning words to cohesively describe who I was filled a deep void for me, and I wanted to share this with others. MAVIN started as a magazine, but expanded into a nonprofit organization with several programs a couple of years later.

I think MAVIN has done a great job of raising awareness of the millions of mixed heritage people and families. From our Multiracial Child Resource Book, which educates parents and professionals about the unique needs of raising multiracial and transracially adopted youth to our MatchMaker Bone Marrow Project, which has registered over 10,000 live saving donors, our programs are working to celebrate and empower mixed heritage people and families.

2. Was there a defining event in your childhood in regards to your race/ethnicity that continues to drive you?

There have been so many events over the course of my childhood that drove home the point to me that I was different. From my first day of Kindergarten when a classmate told me that I "was Black and had purple eyes," to an 8-year-old kid saying "Hello, Chinese people!" to me and my sister as we walked down the street in Denver, to an American tourist assuming I was Mexican to a guy on the plane telling me that I was Hawaiian when I ordered pineapple juice on a plane... it‘s all told me that our society still assumes that everyone belongs in a single race box, and seldom considers the realities of those of us who are in-between or even outside of those boxes.

3. Does race really matter in the US? My son was born in Korea-he joined our family through adoption-and we are white. I can‘t believe that in today‘s US that race really matters. Haven‘t we become ‘color-blind‘?

This is an issue that I am very passionate about. If there‘s one thing that I hope that MAVIN helps people to understand is that race still matters. It‘s incredibly arrogant for parents to dismiss that racism exists in institutional forms in our country, just because they are not personally aware of it. Although White people can experience racism, it isn‘t typically thrown in their face on a regular basis. I think this is why it‘s mostly White people who I hear dismissing the existence of racism. It scares me when adoptive parents dismiss the role that race will inevitably play in their child – and their family‘s — life. It is incredibly irresponsible for parents of a transracially adopted child to not accept their fundamental responsibility to obtain resources to help them access and accept their own internalized racism. This may sound extreme, but I think that a failure to do so approaches psychological abuse. I wish that transracially adoptive parents were required to receive anti-racist training.

4. How do you think growing up in a transracial or biracial family affects a person‘s identity? What can parents do to help their children develop a positive racial identity (particularly if they don‘t share their child‘s race/ethnicity)?

I think it can definitely impact how someone views race. Our family‘s prove that people of different (sometimes historically opposing) cultures can come together and create families. For me, it has helped me be skeptical of the way that our society seems to assume that every issue must be divided into two, opposing viewpoints: right/wrong, good/bad, black/white, male/female, red state/blue state, gay/straight, etc., instead of recognizing that identity exists more on continuums, rather than binaries, and that most of us exist somewhere in between the polar opposites, rather than on them. I think that this understanding has helped me to better resolve conflicts.

5. Was bullying a problem for you in school due to your race/ethnicity or culture? What did you do about it? What did your parents do about it? What role did your teachers play?

Fortunately, bullying wasn‘t much of a problem for me growing up. I was a confident and popular kid. I know that some multiracial and adopted kids do experience bullying, often because they are easily singled out because their school lacks diversity and teachers aren‘t equipped to handle these issues effectively. What‘s most important, however, is that parents help kids to be confident, so when an incident happens, they are equipped to deal with it. This can be helping kids to be proud of their hobbies or talents, and by giving them language to understand their heritage and family. I wish that my parents had told me that people would be curious and confused about my heritage and the composition of our family, despite the fact that we were "normal" and that our multiple cultural heritages was something to celebrate. That way, we would have been ready to respond in an empowering way to the inevitable questions from strangers. I am thankful, however, that despite not having these conversations, I never tried to hide my Korean-ness or fully assimilate to match my mostly White peers. I see a lot of kids doing this and it‘s sad and unnecessary.

If people want more information, they should visit our site: www.mavinfoundation.org or feel free to contact us. I travel frequently to speak to audiences about race and diversity issues, so I may be in your community soon!

Our next featured guest is Tiffany Morrison, owner of Mix It Up, a new line of greeting cards for interracial couples and multiracial consumers (www.Mix-It-Up.net).