By Michael GsovskiThe Daily Northwestern

As rain poured outside, the conversation in room 212 of Parkes Hall Tuesday began with a quip about the weather.

“Coming to Chicago, the weather was the biggest shock,” said Jennifer Lee, associate professor of Sociology at the University of California – Irvine, to her rain-soaked audience of 22 students and faculty. “In California, it’s always sunny and warm.”

Lee, who is currently a visiting associate professor at the University of Chicago, then launched into her talk, “Are Asians and Latinos Becoming White? Immigration, Multiracial Identification and Changing Color Lines.”

“Eighty five percent of all new immigrants are from Latin America, the Caribbean and Asia,” Lee said. “The question we asked is ‘Do Asians and Latinos more closely resemble whites or blacks? Are they, like European Americans, assimilating, or are Asians and Latinos (like blacks) becoming more ‘racialized’ minorities?'”

Lee was invited to lecture as the Asian American Studies program’s Spring Quarter speaker. Prof. Carolyn Chen said she invited Lee because of the strength of her research, in which she studied how various multiracial individuals identified themselves and their children.

“She is a very prominent sociologist in the study of race,” Chen said. “She’s doing really fascinating research, and her findings are very interesting.”

Lee began by describing a debate over racial identities in America and integration into society. One side of the debate believes that the distinction whites make in integration is seeing all non-Europeans as non-whites. The other side argues that whites accept the integration of all other racial groups, but not blacks.

Lee’s research responded to this debate by interviewing adults and mixed race couples who identify themselves or their children as multiracial, and using this qualitative data to flesh out information from the 2000 U.S. Census.

Lee spoke about the difficulty in finding multiracial interview subjects.

“I didn’t want to use (multiracial) groups, because those people already identified themselves as multiracial,” Lee said. “What I wound up doing was going to ethnic restaurants and beauty salons and asking the owners whether or not anyone who came had more than one ethnic group in their parents.”

The study concluded that there is the most evidence of whites accepting integration of all racial groups except for blacks. Every multiracial black individual in Lee’s study identified themselves as black, rather than their other ethnicities or mixed. Nationwide, only four percent of blacks reported themselves as multiracial, though regional estimates vary widely.

She said she believes this is because society’s view of what constitutes being black is much broader then what defines other ethnic groups, which are often based on narrow generalizations, Lee said.

“Drawing on Hollywood examples (of multiracial individuals), Keanu Reeves and Cameron Diaz both have played leading roles in which they are white,” Lee said. “I don’t think there’s a chance that Halle Berry will ever play a white role.”

Many students were seen taking notes, which Weinberg freshman Emily Escovar explained might have been due to a class requirement.

“All of the students here are probably in her class,” said Escovar,, pointing to an Asian American Studies professor in the middle of the room. “You have to attend an out-of-class event.”

Meanwhile, Chen was glad about the attention the topic was getting.

“Race in the United States is shifting and changing, largely due to immigration,” Chen said. “Oftentimes we talk about race in the United States being black or white. Her work looks at how we incorporate these new racial groups.”

Reach Michael Gsovski at [email protected].