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K-State Today

April 24, 2019

Public lecture: 'Taking Back Transracial' by Tina Rulli, hosted by philosophy department

Submitted by Jonathan Herington

The philosophy department will host a public lecture by Tina Rulli, assistant professor of philosophy at the University of California, Davis, as part of this year's diversity lecture series.

Rulli will present "Taking back Transracial" from 4-6 p.m. Thursday, April 25, in Room 109 in Justin Hall.

The department encourages faculty and students, particularly those who are interested in the intersection of adoption and race, to attend.

Rulli's talk will discuss the changing meaning of the term "transracial." In recent years, the term "transracial" has come to be used to describe people who desire to or purport to have changed their race from their socially assigned one. But for 50 years, "transracial" has been used to describe the identities of minority children adopted into white families. Transracial adoptees have a unique and complex racial identity that is distinct from that of putative race changers. Co-opting "transracial" to describe race change constitutes erasure of transracial adoptees' identities. She will argue for taking back "transracial" to describe the experiences and identities of transracial adoptees and people, who like them, are transracialized. She argues for the unique identity of transracial people, distinguishing them from race changers. Ultimately, she will aim to illuminate transracial identity, properly speaking, to show that it is an identity worthy of its own name.