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Helen Kim–Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the American Jewish Community: Lessons learned from JewAsians
December 6, 2017 @ 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm
The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life
2121 Allston Way
Berkeley,
CA
94720
In 2010 approximately 15 percent of all new marriages in the United States were between spouses of different racial, ethnic, or religious backgrounds, raising increasingly relevant questions regarding the multicultural identities of new spouses and their offspring. But while new census categories and a growing body of statistics provide data, they tell us little about the inner workings of day-to-day life for such couples and their children.
This talk will explore some of the dynamics and larger social dimensions of a particular slice of this growing population. Specifically, this talk focuses on three central questions. First, how do religion, race, and ethnicity interact in the everyday lives of Jewish Americans and Asian Americans who are partnered with one another? Second, how do Jewish Americans and Asian Americans think about their multiple identities in light of being partnered with one another? Finally, how do the adult children of intermarriages between Jewish Americans and Asian Americans think about and negotiate their racial, ethnic and religious identities?
Helen Kiyong Kim is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at Whitman College. Her work has been published in the Journal of Jewish Identities and Forward and has been anthologized in several publications. Her new book co-authored with Noah Samuel Leavitt, JewAsian: Race, Religion, and Identity for America’s Newest Jews, is a qualitative examination of the intersection of race, religion, and ethnicity in the increasing number of households that are Jewish American and Asian American.