ChicaMarya

Please bear with me, but I’m moving my website blog that was at http://www.chicamarya.com/ to this blog, http://www.chicamarya.wordpress.com.  In this process, I’m converting all that was on it so it can be on it’s new WordPress home.  This means I will look like I’m more than a prodigious poster, when I am really a little lax at times in blogging.  Anyway, here goes the first one.

Chica has been a very, very busy girl! I’ve been busy writing, writing, writing:

The New Cultural Mix
So much of our nation’s colorlines have historically been divided as white, the dominant culture, and black.  However, as we move toward 2050, the nation’s racial mix of non-European whites will equal and then be surpassed in population numbers by people of color.  African Americans will comprise the smallest growth percentage, while the majority of this demographic shift will occur from he rapidly growing Hispanic/Latino populations, the Asian American populations and the First Nation populations.  Census 2000 was the first time people of mixed race were allowed to indicate that they were of mixed race.  This research paper looks at how the historical experiences of monoracial ethnic development vis a vis the white/European dominant culture has shaped identity and perceptions of mixed race both from the minority and dominant culture perspective.  It also looks at how the  changing attitudes toward race in the United States has contributed toward a more inclusive society but one which still struggles with the monoracial/dominant culture paradigm.  This tome was developed with the purpose of publishing it as a book, and it was edited by a professor that specializes in Industrial and Organizational Psychology and Diversity Management.

Marketing to Pan-ethnic groups:  Asian Americans, Hispanic/Latinos & First Nation/Native Americans
This was my second extensive research project.  In order to understand where ethnic psychographics are today, it is important to look at where members of these groups have been sociologically and historically in the past, to understand what has and what is changing and why, and what is happening within our dominant popular culture today.  This project first looked at the structural imposition by the dominant culture in creating the ethnic lumping used in today’s US Census and social programs that derive from these classifications, taking the reader through what Cornell refers to as “the transformation of the tribes” or what Espiritu refers to as Pan-ethnicity.  This research looked at historical injustices and laws that were created to marginalize, exclude and eliminate populations of people and how the process of ethnic renewal, an outgrowth of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, has created first internal and then external views of ethnic ethnicity by both minority and the dominant culture.  This research begins with understanding how the dominant culture impacted minority cultures, and ends with exploring how minority cultures are now influencing the dominant culture in both our popular culture and our sense of social awareness and justice.

Marketing to Asian American Subcultures.
This extensive research concentrated on reaching the Asian Pacific American populations on the West Coast.  The focus of this research was in developing the psychographics and the research model that indicates that in-culture and in-English marketing to Asian Americans is a viable market segment.  Currently marketing to “Asian Americans” is assumed to be done with foreign language marketing, thus perpetuating what Frank Yu calls, “the perpetual foreigner syndrome.”  This work has been edited by the Director of the Integrated Marketing Communications program at Loyola University and me, the author.  It’s current status is that it needs to be shortened substantially before submitting it to a research journal.

Published Works

I’ve been published in Spirit-Mag.com, my work being the cover story of their magazine.  This was for an article on mixed race people in the USA.  Unfortunately, the photos that were chosen by the magazine to complement the article were all monoracial people, sigh!

Webworks

Other written works of mine include developing all the content for the following websites: http://www.culturalmarketingcommunications.com/, http://www.needleslaw.info, and CustomShoji.com (no longer active but the domain was hijacked)).  I’ve also developed  content and did a website redesign, including mapping, (as well as search engine optimization and internet marketing), for http://www.lighthealing.com/ My other written works include:

Press Releases and marketing communications collateral:
Ghost written articles for ‘product of the month’ for a specialty lighting client.

Pitch letters to reach strategic alliances and for other promotional venues.
I am also a DMOZ Editor for editor for several categories.
My other webhead venues include email marketing (double opt-in) campaigns,  blog development (which is why I don’t have enough time for my own!), and podcasting to help clients reach new audiences.