Spring semester at the Multi-Cultural Center is being spiced up with an innovative idea for a mixed heritage series.

The series will be launched with a premiere performance titled “Race, Sex, and Tattoos: The Kip Fulbeck Experience” by Kip Fulbeck at 7 p.m., Feb. 18 in Sacramento State’s University Union.Fulbeck is a professor, slam poet, filmmaker and author who focuses on embracing heritage. Fulbeck himself is of English, Welsh and Chinese descent.

He will be speaking about topics dealing with race, sex and tattoos, while exploring the issues of mixed race and identity through comedy and various art media.”They will see a lot of funny images, how lots of people are seen, spoken word, stuff that’s inspiring and sad,” Fulbeck said.This idea for a focus on heritage was created by Liz Redford, Sac State student and newsletter and marketing intern at the Multi-Cultural Center, who is proud to be a quarter Japanese.”I never really thought of myself as multiracial until recently when I was brainstorming with Janet, who works front desk at the Multi-Cultural center, and brought this series up as a possibility,” Redford said. “So, I started looking at what other schools did, and noticed that Sac State doesn’t have anything or any resources for mixed students.”Redford said through this heritage series, her ultimate goal is to create a dialogue between mixed students on campus.”It’d be great if a student group came out of this, and for them to be acknowledged,” Redford said. “This is really a first of its kind at Sac State.”Charlene Martinez, Multi-Cultural Center director who is of Columbian and Taiwanese descent, brought Redford’s idea to life by introducing her former Asian American Visual Media professor, Fulbeck, into the picture.”The reason I know him is because he was my mentor at UC Santa Barbara,” Martinez said. “There were a few professors who worked on multiracial studies and he was one of the merging faculty who was already working on mixed race and “Hapa’ (part of Asian American or Pacific Islander descent) identity.”Zenia LaPorte, who is the UNIQUE programs adviser, agreed that co-sponsoring the event to have Fulbeck perform “would be both entertaining and educational.””We really haven’t done many events that address issues of multiracialism,” LaPorte said. “We’ve done events to celebrate specific cultures and ethnicities but this is a little bit different.”Before preparing for the Heritage Series, Redford first became familiar with Fulbeck through his spoken word performances on YouTube.”I’ve seen one of Kip’s things on YouTube about his spoken word on “Check One Box,'” Redford said. “It was about him filling out applications and it says “check one box please don’t make your own category.'”Redford said it reminded her of someone she knew who had a similar experience.”I know that it’s something a lot of people can relate to,” Redford said. “One of my friends was white and El Salvadorian, and he would get frustrated and just check Alaskan-Native or African American or something else.”Fulbeck said that when he was younger he wondered how many kids had to deal with their self-identity.In trying to find ways to make the most impact on audience members, Fulbeck said, he combines media because it is the best way to express the issues at hand.During college, Fulbeck said, everyone goes through a time when they redefine who they are and their different personas. “I explored more of my self-identity in grad school,” Fulbeck said. “I drove cross-country with my friend and the kind of reaction we got was “hey, two Asian guys,’ then I went across country with a white girlfriend I had at the time, and we didn’t get served in Louisiana.”Identity is something that Fulbeck said “you’ve got to claim.””Only you get to define who you are,” Fulbeck said. “People love to put a label on you no matter what it is.”As a child, Fulbeck said he was always trying to find a place to fit in.”My family was entirely from China and I was like the white kid who didn’t eat the food or speak the language and at school I was the Chinese kid.”LaPorte said that Sac State is a diverse campus, and that a lot of what Fulbeck has to say can be relatable to the students.”Rather than just a straight-forward lecture, he adds comedy, spoken word, multimedia and among other things to make the event that much more dynamic,” LaPorte said. Fulbeck hopes that attendees of his performance will laugh, enjoy themselves and leave being more conscious of other ethinicites. “I want people to say “that was really funny, what do you think he meant by that?’ and think of things, and not leave and say “that was funny, what’s on TV?.'” Fulbeck said.

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