Mixed Race Studies

School aims to give biracial kids a place to ‘be themselves’

Japan Times
2013-10-20

Michael Bradley, Special to the Japan Times

NAKAGUSUKU, OKINAWA – Melissa Tomlinson doesn’t have very happy memories of elementary school. As an 8-year-old, she “never had a chance to eat lunch normally — the other kids put something in it, or they mixed the milk and soup and orange together and told me to eat it.”

Like the three or four other mixed-race children in her class, Tomlinson was bullied on a daily basis. Now a 26-year-old high school English teacher, she still recalls how “they told me to go home to America, and they talked bad about my mom.”

Her teachers did little to stop the abuse — indeed, some, wittingly or not, even contributed to it. Every summer, on the anniversary of the end of the Battle of Okinawa — the three-month assault in which around 100,000 Okinawan civilians perished — Tomlinson would become the focus of the class. “The teacher always said, ‘Melissa, can you stand up? So, you are half-American, what do you think about this?’ For me, I was like, ‘I grew up here, I don’t know about American things.’ ” Tomlinson had no memory of her father, a U.S. serviceman who’d split from her mother when she was still a baby.

Tomlinson’s story is far from unique. Since 1946, many children here have been born to U.S. military fathers and Okinawan mothers. Sometimes (and especially when the fathers are deployed elsewhere) the mothers are left to bring up the children by themselves, and, like Tomlinson, those children don’t always have an easy time at school.

When five single mothers set up a school for their own “Amerasian” children in Okinawa 15 years ago, they were not so much worried about bullying as concerned about getting their kids a bilingual education. The only one of the women still involved with the school — the current principal, Midori Thayer — explains: “Our children needed to learn both languages because of their two different heritages. They had to be themselves.”…

Read the entire article here.

Identity Production in Figured Worlds: How Some Multiracial Students Become Racial Atravesados/as

The Urban Review
June 2013

Aurora Chang

Using Holland et al.’s (Identity and agency in cultural worlds, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1998) theory of identity and their concept of figured worlds, this article provides an overview of how twenty-five undergraduates of color came to produce a Multiracial identity. Using Critical Race Theory methodology with ethnographic interviewing as the primary method, I specifically focus on the ways in which Multiracial figured worlds operate within a racial borderland (Anzaldúa in Borderlands: La Frontera—The New Mestiza, Aunt Lute Books, San Francisco, 1987), an alternate, marginal world where improvisational play (Holland et al. in Identity and agency in cultural worlds, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1998) and facultad became critical elements of survival. Participants exercised their agency by perforating monoracial storylines and developed a complex process of identity production that informed their behaviors by a multifaceted negotiation of positionalities. I end by focusing on implications for urban education that can be drawn from this study.

Read or purchase the article here.

Diverse Millennial Students in College: Implications for Faculty and Student Affairs ed. by Fred Bonner II, Aretha F. Marbley, and Mary F. Howard-Hamilton (review)

The Review of Higher Education
Volume 37, Number 1, Fall 2013
pages 122-124
DOI: 10.1353/rhe.2013.0074

John A. Mueller

Scott E. Miller

Bonner II, Fred A., Aretha F. Marbley, and Mary F. Howard-Hamilton, eds., Diverse Millennial Students in College: Implications for Faculty and Student Affairs (Sterling, Virginia: Stylus Publishing, LLC., 2011).

In a pithy and direct manner, the introduction to Diverse Millennial Students in College makes it clear that the book “eschews the tendency to force students into constraining frameworks” (p. 1) that overly simplify college populations. In doing so, the editors challenge the utility and relevance of the defining traits of millennial students (Howe & Strauss, 2000) in describing students of color, multiracial students, and LGBTQ students. The editors and chapter authors also analyze how the Howe and Strauss “generational framework underestimates the potential of these students” (p. 113). After nearly a decade of the ubiquitous “millennials” in student affairs literature, conferences, and coursework, along comes a book that critically examines how diversity impacts generational status.

This book is structured around paired chapters that address particular diverse constituencies of millennial college students: African American, Asian American, Latino/a, Native American, LGBTQs, and bi/multiracials. While this is a fitting approach, the editors do not provide a rationale for their choice of chapter topics, nor do they forecast for the reader the content of each chapter in light of the book’s objective.

Chapter 1 is an extension of the introduction and, as the title suggests, tests our assumptions about generational cohorts. The author points out similarities among all millennials, such as the defining moments that have shaped their lives, their increased focus on social justice and service, and a significant increase in parental influence, among others. The author also identifies ways in which millennial students may experience college differently based on generation status and identity.

Part 2 focuses on African American millennials. Chapter 2 presents data on the differences between today’s African American students and previous generations of African American students with respect to enrollment, financial affluence, and levels of academic achievement. Taking a less quantitative approach, the authors of Chapter 3 provide a narrative analysis of an African American male who grew up in a small, rural town in Georgia from elementary school through graduate school. This narrative illustrates the challenges faced by African American students of rural backgrounds attending a predominantly White institution in a larger city.

Part 3 examines Asian American millennial college students. Chapter 4 presents research that compares Asian American millennial students to both their millennial counterparts and to Asian American students from previous generations. The author also outlines a number of current social and political trends in the United States that are likely to have an impact on Asian American millennials and their experience in higher education.

Chapter 5 expands on the previous chapter and homes in on three specific trends with respect to Asian American millennials: an increase in the diversity of Asian Americans in higher education (i.e., diversification); an increase in the use of technology, particularly among Asian American millennials (i.e., digitization); and the degree to which Asian American millennials are connected to national and global events and to Asian American and Asian communities (i.e., globalization).

The authors in Part 4 examine the Latino/a experience in higher education. In Chapter 6, the authors provide demographic data regarding the increase in the Latina/o population in the United States and compare and contrast this generation of students with those before it across different categories, such as enrollment, parents’ education, family structure and size, religion, technology, motivation, goals and aspirations, career objectives, and civic engagement.

In Chapter 7, the authors use the Howe and Strauss (2000) framework to demonstrate how findings from two studies on Latino/o college students parallel and diverge from the seven characteristics of millennials. In addition, they offer useful insights on how generation status (from an immigrant perspective) can be more useful than generational theory as a predictive theory.

Part 5 focuses on Native American millennial college students. Chapter 8 documents the challenges that Indigenous students face in higher education: a lack of academic preparation, inadequate finances, few higher education faculty as role models, cultural differences between their native home and the university setting, and institutional barriers. Chapter 9 places the millennial generation of Native American college students in a historical context. Examined in some depth are the boarding school era, tribal colleges, and Native American students’ entrance into predominantly White institutions. Complementing this history are…

Diverse Millennial Students in College: Implications for Faculty and Student Affairs

Stylus Publishing, LLC.
October 2011
320 pages
6″ x 9″
Cloth ISBN: 978 1 57922 446 2
Paper ISBN: 978 1 57922 447 9
Ebook ISBN: 978 1 57922 712 8
Library Ebook ISBN: 978 1 57922 711 1

Edited by:

Fred A. Bonner II

Aretha F. Marbley

Mary F. Howard-Hamilton

While many institutions have developed policies to address the myriad needs of Millennial college students and their parents, inherent in many of these initiatives is the underlying assumption that this student population is a homogeneous group. This book is significant because it addresses and explores the characteristics and experiences of Millennials from an array of perspectives, taking into account not only racial and ethnic identity but also cultural background, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status differences—all factors contributing to how these students interface with academe.

In providing a “voice” to “voiceless” populations of African American, Asian American, Bi/Multi-Racial, Latino, Native American, and LGBT millennial college students, this book engages with such questions as: Does the term “Millennial” apply to these under-represented students? What role does technology, pop culture, sexual orientation, and race politics play in the identity development for these populations? Do our current minority development theories apply to these groups? And, ultimately, are higher education institutions prepared to meet both the cultural and developmental needs of diverse minority groups of Millennial college students?”

This book is addressed primarily to college and university administrators and faculty members who seek greater depth and understanding of the issues associated with diverse Millennial college student populations. This book informs readers about the ways in which this cohort differs from their majority counterparts to open a dialogue about how faculty members and administrators can meet their needs effectively both inside and outside the classroom. It will also be of value to student affairs personnel, students enrolled in graduate level courses in higher education and other social science courses that explore issues of college student development and diversity, particularly students planning to work with diverse Millennial college students in both clinical or practical work settings.

Contributors: Rosie Maria Banda; Fred Bonner, II; Lonnie Booker, Jr.; Brian Brayboy; Mitchell Chang; Andrea Domingue; Tonya Driver; Alonzo M. Flowers; Gwen Dungy; Jami Grosser; Kandace Hinton; Mary Howard-Hamilton; Tom Jackson, Jr.; Aretha F. Marbley; Samuel Museus; Anna Ortiz; Tammie Preston-Cunningham; Nana Osei-Kofi; Kristen Renn; Petra Robinson; Genyne Royal; Victor Saenz; Rose Anna Santos; Mattyna Stephens; Terrell Strayhorn; Theresa Survillion; Nancy Jean Tubbs; Malia Villegas; Stephanie J. Waterman; Nick Zuniga.

Table of Contents

• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• INTRODUCTION / Fred A. Bonner, II
• PART ONE: DIVERSE MILLENNIALS IN COLLEGE: A National Perspective
  • 1. A NATIONAL PERSPECTIVE: Testing Our Assumptions About Generational Cohorts / Gwendolyn Jordan Dungy
• PART TWO: AFRICAN AMERICAN MILLENNIALS IN COLLEGE
  • 2. AFRICAN AMERICAN MILLENNIALS IN COLLEGE / Terrell L. Strayhorn
  • 3. THE PERSON, ENVIRONMENT, AND GENERATIONAL INTERACTION: An African American Rural Millennial Story / Corey Guyton and Mary F. Howard-Hamilton
• PART THREE: ASIAN AMERICAN MILLENNIALS IN COLLEGE
  • 4. ASIAN AMERICAN AND PACIFIC ISLANDER MILLENNIAL STUDENTS AT A TIPPING POINT / Mitchell James Chang
  • 5. ASIAN AMERICAN MILLENNIAL COLLEGE STUDENTS IN CONTEXT : Living at the Intersection of Diversification, Digitization, and Globalization / Samuel D. Museus
• PART FOUR: LATINA/O MILLENNIALS IN COLLEGE
  • 6. LA NUEVA GENERACIÓN: Latina/o Millennial College Students at Four-Year Institutions / Victor B. Saenz, Manuel Gonzalez, and Sylvia Hurtado
  • 7. MILLENNIAL CHARACTERISTICS AND LATINO/A STUDENTS / Anna M. Ortiz and Dorali Pichardo-Diaz
• PART FIVE: NATIVE AMERICAN MILLENNIALS IN COLLEGE
  • 8. INDIGENOUS MILLENNIAL STUDENTS IN HIGHER EDUCATION / Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy and Angelina E. Castagno
  • 9. NATIVE AMERICAN MILLENNIAL COLLEGE STUDENTS / Stephanie J. Waterman
• PART SIX: LGBTQ MILLENNIALS IN COLLEGE
  • 10. LGBTQ MILLENNIALS IN COLLEGE / Lori D. Patton, Carrie Kortegast, and Gabriel Javier
  • 11. IDENTITY MAKEOVER MILLENNIAL EDITION / Using Contemporary Theoretical Frameworks to Explore Identity Intersections Among LGBTQ Millennial Populations / Lori D. Patton and Stephanie Chang
• PART SEVEN: BI- AND MULTIRACIAL MILLENNIALS IN COLLEGE
  • 12. MULTIRACIALIZATION, ‘‘MIXING,’’ AND MEDIA PEDAGOGY / Nana Osei-Kofi
  • 13. MIXED RACE MILLENNIALS IN COLLEGE: Multiracial Students in the Age of Obama / Kristen A. Renn
• PART EIGHT: VOICES OF MILLENNIALS IN COLLEGE: A Diversity of Perspectives
  • 14. MOVING UP AND OUT: Students of Color Transitioning From College to the Workforce / Lonnie Booker, Jr., Tonya Turner-Driver, Tammie Preston- Cunningham, Theresa Survillion, and Mattyna L. Stephens
  • 15. CURRICULUM DESIGN FOR MILLENNIAL STUDENTS OF COLOR / Rosa Maria Banda, Alonzo M. Flowers, III, Petra Robinson, Genyne Royal, Rose Anna Santos, and Nicholas Zuniga
• CONCLUSION: FROM ONE GENERATION TO ANOTHER GENERATION: New Realities, New Possibilities, and a Reason for Hope / Aretha F. Marbley
• ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
• INDEX

New mixed-race student group holds first meeting

North by Northwestern
2013-10-01

Julia Clark-Riddell

North by Northwestern is Northwestern University’s leading independent online publication, updated around the clock with stories about campus and culture.

Wildcat Connection lists exactly 100 student groups in the “cultural” category, from the African Students Association to the Women in Leadership program, but, before this year, none had addressed the mixed-race community specifically.

MIXED, formally known as the Mixed Race Student Coalition, held its first official meeting Tuesday night, beginning what co-presidents and founders Tori Marquez and Kalina Silverman hope will be a student group that can provide a safe space for mixed-race students on campus, as well as students interested in mixed-race culture.

More than 40 students attended Tuesday’s meeting, where the seven executives of the group led introductions, icebreakers and small group discussions in a tucked away classroom of Seabury…

…Medill professor Loren Ghiglione is writing a book about a cross-country trip he took with a couple of Medill students interviewing people about issues of race, sexual orientation and immigration. He was looking for signs of progress on these issues to add to his epilogue when he was saw that an organization like MIXED could be a good example…

Read the entire article here.

Northwestern sophomores form group for mixed race students

The Daily Northwestern
Evanston, Illinois
2013-09-26

Julian Gerez (@JGerez_news), Reporter

One year ago, Medill sophomore Kalina Silverman, a half-Chinese, half-White, Jewish student browsed through the bustling activities fair. Amid the numerous student cultural groups, Silverman couldn’t find a home.

“I went to a couple events hosted by the Chinese Students Association, and Hillel and I didn’t feel like I fully fit in,” Silverman said.

Silverman’s friend, SESP sophomore Tori Marquez, had a similar problem.

“I identify as mixed race because I don’t feel completely comfortable identifying myself just as Caucasian or just as Hispanic … Even as a Hispanic, I’m also Mexican and Peruvian,” Marquez said.

A year later, what started as two friends joking about forming a club for people like them became the Mixed Race Student Coalition, known as MIXED.

The club was recognized by the office of Multicultural Student Affairs this summer. Marquez and Silverman are now the co-presidents…

Read the entire article here.

Government forms limit mixed race people

Daily Trojan
University of Southern California
2013-09-26

Ida Abhari

According to The New York Times, the current generation of college students is the largest group of mixed race people in America so far. The number of individuals who identified as mixed race is at 9 million. Increasingly more Americans find themselves in a gray area when it comes to defining their races. You might have heard of “Hapas” — people of partially Asian/Pacific Islander ancestry — or “Blasians,” people of mixed black and Asian ancestry. Though these types of self-identification are becoming more common in everyday language, a conflict arises when the standard “Check the box” race forms can’t properly identify a growing population of Americans. Most people do not cleanly fit into the four standard racial categories of black, white, American Indian or Pacific Islander.

The  problem with racial identification lies in faulty methods of collecting data about such groups. Questions of race in the United States have always been a particularly sensitive topic. With its peculiar mix of European colonists, American Indians and Spanish and French explorers, the U.S. has always struggled with race relations. In an effort to better resolve and address race questions in the modern era, the federal Office of Management and Budget has issued Directive No. 15. According to the official White House website, this directive “requires compilation of data for four racial categories (White, Black, American Indian or Alaskan Native, and Asian or Pacific Islander), and an ethnic category to indicate Hispanic origin, or not of Hispanic origin.” And  here is the problem: A person is now forced to identify him or herself as one of only four races even though changing demographics show that there are more possibilities…

Read the entire opinion piece here.

‘Making a Non-White America’

inside: CSUF News
California State University, Fullerton
2009-08-18

Mimi Ko Cruz

Allison Varzally’s Book About California’s Ethnic History Wins National Award

Interracial marriages and other ties in diverse communities throughout California during the formative years of the 20th century are explored in Allison Varzally’s book, “Making a Non-White America: Californians Coloring outside Ethnic Lines, 1925-1955.”

Published by University of California Press, Varzally’s book has won the Immigration and Ethnic History Society’s 2009 Theodore Saloutos Memorial Award in American Immigration History.

The award, which comes with $1,000, is presented for the book judged best on any aspect of the immigration history of the United States.

Varzally, assistant professor of history, said the honor “is exciting recognition from an organization that I admire.

“Some of my favorite books in the field have won this award,” she said.

Varzally, of Los Angeles, uses the voices from oral histories she conducted to weave a scholarly interpretation on the state’s history. She touches on World War II, the Zoot suit riots, discriminatory laws, segregation, class, politics, religion, work and education.

The book’s cover features a picture of Sugar Pie De Santo, a Filipina-black woman who grew up in San Francisco’s Fillmore District in the 1940s.

De Santo, Varzally said, “creatively and selectively borrowed from her parents’ cultures, enjoyed her blended family background and became a famous musician.”…

Read the entire article here.

Latina/o Healing Practices: Mestizo and Indigenous Perspectives

Routledge
2008-05-19
360 pages
Hardback ISBN: 978-0-415-95420-4

Edited by:

Brian McNeill, Professor and director of training for the Counseling Psychology Program
Washington State University

Joseph M. Cervantes, Professor in the Department of Counseling
California State University, Fullerton

This edited volume focuses on the role of traditional or indigenous healers, as well as the application of traditional healing practices in contemporary counseling and therapeutic modalities with Latina/o people. The book offers a broad coverage of important topics, such as traditional healer’s views of mental/psychological health and well-being, the use of traditional healing techniques in contemporary psychotherapy, and herbal remedies in psychiatric practice. It also discusses common factors across traditional healing methods and contemporary psychotherapies, the importance of spirituality in counseling and everyday life, the application of indigenous healing practices with Latina/o undergraduates, indigenous techniques in working with perpetrators of domestic violence, and religious healing systems and biomedical models. The book is an important reference for anyone working within the general field of mental health practice and those seeking to understand culturally relevant practice with Latina/o populations.

Contents

• An Appreciation of Dr. Michael W. Smith (1960-2006) Lorraine Garcia-Teague
• Contributors
• Introduction: Counselors and Curanderas/os—Parallels in the Healing Process Brian W. McNeill and Joseph M. Cervantes
• Part One: Mestiza/o and Indigenous Perspectives
  • Chapter 1: What Is Indigenous About Being Indigenous? The Mestiza/o Experience Joseph M. Cervantes
  • Chapter 2: Latina/o Folk Saints and Marian Devotions: Popular Religiosity and Healing Fernando A. Ortiz and Kenneth G. Davis
  • Chapter 3: Santeria and the Healing Process in Cuba and the United States Brian W. McNeill, Eileen Esquivel, Arlene Carkasco, and Rosalilia Mendoza
• Part Two: Indigenous and Mestiza/o Healing Practices
  • Chapter 4: The Use of Psychotropic Herbal and Natural Medicines in Latina/o and Mestiza/o Populations German Ascani and Michael W. Smith
  • Chapter 5: Brazil’s Ultimate Healing Resource: The Power of Spirit Sandra Nuñez
  • Chapter 6: La Limpia de San Lazaro as Individual and Collective Cleansing Rite Karen V. Holliday
  • Chapter 7: Resé un Ave María y Encendí una Velita: The Use of Spirituality and Religion as a Means of Coping with Educational Experiences for Latina/o College Students Jeanett Castellanos and Alberta M. Gloria
• Part Three: Contemporary Aspects of Mestiza/o and Indigenous Healing Practices: Reclamation and Integration
  • Chapter 8: Los Espiritus Siguen Hablando: Chicana Spiritualities Lara Medina
  • Chapter 9: Religious Healing and Biomedicine in Comparative Context Karen V. Holliday
  • Chapter 10: Curanderismo: Religious and Spiritual Worldviews and Indigenous Healing Traditions Fernando A. Ortiz, Kenneth G. Davis, and Brian W. McNeill
• Part Four: Epilogue
  • Epilogue: Summary and Future Research and Practice Agendas Joseph M. Cervantes and Brian W. McNeill
• Index

‘It’s not written on their skin like it is ours’: Greek letter organizations in the age of the multicultural imperative

Ethnicities
Volume 13, Number 5 (October 2013)
pages 519-543
DOI: 10.1177/1468796812471127

Joanna S. Hunter, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Radford University, Radford, Virginia

Matthew W. Hughey, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of Connecticut

Today’s students wrestle with the continued salience of racial identity on campuses that encourage the celebration of ‘diversity’ while at once digesting messages that the USA is now largely ‘post-racial’. Based on data collected through fieldwork observation, focus groups and in-depth interviews with a local Multicultural Greek Council for fraternities and sororities, we argue that ‘multicultural’ student organizations engage in a variety of racial identity tactics that simultaneously constrain and enable the perception of their racial identities. By relying on the two cultural narratives of multiculturalism—abstract and organizational—members of Greek organizations that do not conform to the White/Black binary can construct identities and a movement understood as rational, progressive and generally innocuous. Yet, in practice, the dominant expectations to perform ‘multiculturalism’ were manifest in narrow, essentialist and singular expressions of ethnic pride as an oppositional identity to Anglo-conformity and color-blindness, rather than an embrace of pluralism and multiculturalism per se. By highlighting how members of multicultural student organizations navigate this troubling paradox, our study raises important questions about the concept of multiculturalism, especially as it is constructed and enacted by the millennial generation.

Read or purchase the article here.