Legal Aspects
Legal Aspects
Legal Aspects
Forging Families in a Black & White World: Changing Majority Views with Minority Perspectives is an oral-history seminar that aims to capture diverse stories of the modern 21st-century family, specifically interviewing those who are trans-racially adopted, inter-racially or inter-religiously married, and mixed-race children. In documenting these stories, our hope is that they can be used to provide voices to perspectives unrecorded before.
Meet the Team
Rehannah Baksh
Rehannah Baksh, the student project manager: coordinated, supervised, and directed the student and project progress. She also worked with the research teams: writing a narrative on the history of interracial marriage, and the factors affect them.
Additionally, Rehannah worked with the art team to create the images for the various topics the seminar researched.Rehannah interviewed two women; Kaylan Higgins on her experience as a biracial woman, and Leslie Brown who is in an interracial, intersex marriage.
Lola Cabigeos
Lola interviewed Adam Baksh and Xenia Scyzer. Both of these interviewees were multiracial. In this project, Lola was a member of the Video Selection and Editing team, where she chose movies under the interracial category.
Lola was also a member of the Text selection and Editing team; where we look through writing from their peers and choose the most valuable pieces to put on the website. I was head in the interracial marriage group; where everyone had specific points throughout history on the progression of interracial marriage.
Emma Ervin
Emma interviewed Lisa Baksh, she is mixed Puerto Rican; and Izzy Veyssi who is multiracial. Emma was the head of the Transracial Adoption research team. Emma and the transracial adoption team researched: media vs. reality, domestic v. international adoption, domestic v. transracial adoption, and adoption as an identity. She researched the media; and how it portrays adoption. She also researched adoption from around the world: Korea, China, and Ethiopia. Emma found research on Ethiopia's ban on international adoption.
Emma is the co-webmaster. She and her partner, Isabel Veyssi worked on: the design of the website uploaded the interviews, photos, and art pieces.
Jack Feder
Jack was a member of the multiracial identity research team and the video selection and editing design team. He interviewed Areum Kim on the topic of interracial same-sex marriage.
Julia Frischling
Julia interviewed Genya Bernstein, an adoptive parent. and Estella Lopez, who is multiracial. Julia researched the law aspects of international and domestics transracial adoption in the adoption research team.
Julia was also a member of the interview selection and editing team where she helped analyze and edit interviews conducted by member of the seminar.
Samuel Hort
Sam interviewed Ms. Mercado, a woman in an interracial marriage and Sandy Goldstein, a woman in a same-sex relationship. Sam was the equipment manager for the seminar, where he kept track and collected recorders, tripods, and headphones.
The research team that Sam was a part of was the interracial marriage team. His specific research was to find different interracial counselors that the seminar could contact with additionally sources were needed. He was also a part of the video team and the text editing team.
Natalie Mason
Natalie interviewed Daniel Lewis, who is transracially adopted. She also interviewed Steven Robinson, who adopted transracially. Natalie researched adoption statistics and the media's different portrayals of adoption through time. Natalie was the leader of the Video Selection team. She and her team members worked on selecting media for the website.
Safeerah Moteen
Safeerah as a member of the interracial marriage research team and concentrated on colorism among Muslim immigrants in New York City. In addition, she served on the text selection and editing design team. She interviewed Ellen Mason on transracial adoption and Tallulah Leon on multiracial identity.
David Park
David interviewed Natasha Roberts and Naomi Szycer. Both Natasha Roberts and Naomi Szycer are interracially married. David was a member of the interracial marriage research team.
David was a member of the interview selection team. He analyzed a total of nine interviews. David also was a member of the interracial marriage research team.
Ming Robinson
Ming conducted two interviews: Caroline Matticoli and Veronica Webb. Both her interviewees were transracially adopted.
In addition to conducting interviews, Ming served as a student research director and art & design director as well as working on the transracial adoption research team.
Anna Rogoff
Anna interviews Riaz Baksh, interracially married, and Albert Hug-Martinez, a biracial son. Anna was a member of the multiracial identity research team. She was also a member of the video-selection and editing team.
Anna conducted research on how Asians are depicted in American media, such as movies, tv shows, and videos. Anna assisted to select the most appropriate clips for the website.
Graziana Rutigliano
Grace interviewed Lydia Shanen who is transracially adopted from Korea, and Rachel Cohen who fit in the category of bi/multiracial identity. In between interviews I participated in two groups : research and interview analysis.
In the research portion of the seminar, Grace primarily focused on the definition of family and how that's been represented in the media (1950’s - present). After the research team, Grace was the leader of the analyzing and editing interviews, conducted by members of the seminar.
David Scheuer
David interviewed Kathia D. and Lily Brown. Kathia is biracial, and Lily is transracially adopted. He was the leader of the Multiracial identity group. He was also the leader of the Text Editing team.
Robert Schofield
Robert interviewed: Nancy Fedder and Mrs. Gay Hugo-Martinez. Nancy Fedder is a Jewish lesbian who grew up in Queens, New York. Mrs. Gay Hugo-Martinez is a straight woman from a middle-class background who faced immense struggle growing up, and in her professional life as a Stat prosecutor for the San Diego DA’s Office.
During the seminar, Trip participated in two teams for the website. The first was a research team where he contributed by researching data about Transracial adoption. The second was the design team, he was assigned to find stories from the interviews everyone in the seminar did to be uploaded on the website.
Xenia Scyzer
Xenia interviewed Micheal O’Brien, interracially married (with a biracial daughter) and Janet Weiss. Xenia researched African-American stereotypes in film, and Xenia was in the art design group for the website. Xenia was the leader of her group, who was researching film and media.
Isabel Veyssi
Isabel interviewed Heidi Robinson, an adoption consultant who focuses on helping families find children to adopt. She also interviewed Ramon Mercado, a biracial man who is in an interracial marriage. Izzy served as the correspondent where she helped set up an official email to contact interviewees and helped with communication between the interviewees and the students who interviewed. Additionally, Isabel researched couples counseling and the different issues or problems that they faced, in the interracial marriage research team.
She was also a part of the upload team. In the upload team, she served as a co-webmaster, alongside Emma Ervin, where she helped create, design, and upload photos, text, interviews, and video to the website. She also created the equipment database to help keep tract of the recorders, and tripods with her partner, Louise Wade.
Louise Wade
Louise was the archivist. Her responsibilities were to archive the legal papers for each interview. Louise interviewed Shurube Aliminsky, an Ethiopian adoptee. Louise also researched Arlene West the woman who adopted Shurube. Louise conducted research about the Asian Exclusion Act and how stereotypes and the perception of Asians have changed over time.
Louise contributed to the text and editing team, but then transferred to the interview selection team. She also created the equipment database to help keep tract of the recorders, and tripods with her partner, Isabel Veyssi.