Kip Fulbeck, a Santa Barbara artist, filmmaker, athlete and art professor who is of Chinese, Irish, Welsh and English descent, was born at a time when several states still banned mixed-race marriages and the children of such unions were routinely stigmatized.

• But 41 years later, as interracial marriages have exponentially increased, Fulbeck is now celebrated as one of the nation's leading artists focused on work about mixed-race Asians, known as "hapas."
• He recently published a book on hapa identity, "Part Asian 100% Hapa," and this weekend opened a related photographic exhibit at the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo
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• "Before, people would look at you like you were a science experiment," said Fulbeck, a lanky Fontana native who sports a surfer's tan and a waist-up Japanese tattoo."Now, we're everywhere."
  • Hapas number 1.6 million in the United States, according to the 2000 census, which for the first time allowed people to claim more than one race.
  • Nearly one-third of the nation's hapas live in California, 11% of the state's total Asian American population and the largest concentration of hapas outside Hawaii.
  • Hapas and other mixed-race groups have their own websites, social clubs, campus groups, films and literature. Their ranks include golfer Tiger Woods, actor Keanu Reeves, supermodel Devon Aoki and musician Sean Lennon. Lennon, son of the Japanese Yoko Ono and the British John Lennon, wrote the forward to Fulbeck's book.

Asian Americans populate America's elite colleges more than ever—and campus ministries even more than that.

From 1990 to 2000, Asian American homeownership rates increased in 19 top metropolitan areas in the nation, most notably Minneapolis-St. Paul, Boston and Fresno, Calif.