Mixed Race Studies

What Are You? Multi-racial and Bi-racial College Student Experiences [Session Handout]

Association of College Unions International Annual Conference
New York, New York
2010-03-01
13:00Z – 14:15Z
1 March 2010
11 pages

Megan E. Bell, Assistant Director
University Memorial Center
University of Colorado, Boulder

Seven million people checked more than one box to select their ethnicity in the 2000 census. As an increasing number of multiracial students enter campus, it is crucial to understand how identity development for these students is unique. This session will showcase student interviews on video, as well as include dialogue and a gallery exercise.

Read the entire handout here.

Biracial Student Voices: Experiences at predominatly white institutions

The Bulletin
Association of College Unions International
Volume 77, Issue 6 (November 2009)

Willie L. Banks Jr., Associate Dean of Student Life
Cleveland State University

Race is a complex issue for campuses to address. Often, universities tout their diversity by sharing statistics about the respective racial populations present within their study body, all boxes that can be neatly checked: African-American, Asian, Hispanic, etc. While “other” may be used as a catchall, rarely is a category for biracial or multiracial students included in this list. In the January 2002 issue of American Demographics, Alison Stein Wellner reported that 2.4 percent (approximately 6.8 million people) of the total U.S. population were living in households that included two or more races. In the Aug. 8, 2006 issue of Inside Higher Ed, Scott Jaschik indicated the biracial population was increasingly growing and attending institutions of higher education, requiring the need for research reflecting the experiences of these students on college campuses. Biracial students have been on campus for a number of years; however, their voice has not been adequately represented within the literature as Donna M. Talbot described in the 2008 book, “Biracial and Multiracial Students.”

April Jourdan commented in the 2006 Journal of Counseling and Development that the majority of research on minority populations on college campuses focused on monoracial ethnic categories (i.e., Asian, African American, or Hispanic) and not on the lives of biracial or multiracial individuals in higher education.

For many campuses, biracial individuals provide an interesting challenge and pose more questions than answers. Who comprises this population? What are this population’s needs? How can institutions provide resources and services to address those needs? Unfortunately, there is not one answer to these critical questions. Just as biracial individuals are complex and multilayered, so are their needs and experiences.

Earlier this year, a new study was conducted to examine the experiences of biracial students with one parent of African American heritage attending predominantly white institutions in the southern United States. The findings demonstrate some practical strategies that campus professionals can employ to improve the educational environment in which biracial students develop their identities.

Read the entire article here.

Strategies Multiracial College Women Use to Navigate Monoracial Systems

Education and Human Sciences, College of (CEHS) Open Access Theses and Dissertations from the College of Education and Human Sciences
University of Nebraska, Lincoln
May 2009
248 pages

Minisa Michiko Chapman-Huls
University of Nebraska – Lincoln

A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of The Graduate College at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln In Partial Fulfillment of Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

An exploration of the college experiences of multiracial women uncovered the strategies they used to navigate the monoracial system of predominately white institutions. A purposeful sample of 18 women who were multiracial was chosen. Data was collected through semi-structured face-to-face interviews. Participants’ stories represented multiracial experiences at thirteen different undergraduate institutions. A participant’s precollege experiences, identity and the college’s peer culture impacted how she approached social situations in the highly homogenous and monoracial setting at college. Participants took on the roles of pacifist, non-conformist, and activist to successfully navigate college environments and social scenarios. The findings also support prior study on the identity development of multiracial college students. Childhood experiences shaped the racial identity of participants that was affirmed and challenged, but not changed by college factors and experiences. Significant factors to the identity development of participants at college were academic courses, faculty and peers. Implications of the findings and limitations of the study are discussed.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1: Introduction
Significance of research
Statement of the Problem
Purpose of the study
Definitions
Limitations and delimitations

CHAPTER 2: Review of Literature
Identity Development of Multiracial Individual
Psychological Studies of Impact of Multiracial Identity
Racial Categorization of Mixed-race Persons
Racial Attitudes towards multiracial Individuals
Experiences of Multiracial College Students
Summary

CHAPTER 3: Methods
Purpose
Characteristics of Qualitative Research
Research Design
Data Collection
Managing and Recording Data
Data Analysis Strategies
Ethical Considerations
Validity
Particiment Vignettes
Findings

CHAPTER 4: Foundations for Success: Development of Strategies to Successfully Naviage Monoracial Systems
Racial Identity and formation
Childhood Experiences
Summary

CHAPTER 5: The College Experience: Test of Strategy
Challenges to identity
Resources for support
Summary

CHAPTER 6: Strategies for Success
Playing the role of Pacifist
Playing the role of NonConformist
Playing the role of Activist
Summary

CHAPTER 7: Thoughts and Suggestions
Implications
Further Research
Conclusion

BIBLIOGRAPHY

APPENDICES
Appendix A: Participant Consent Form
Appendix B: E-Mail Invitation to Participants
Appendix C: Interview Protocol

Read the entire dissertation here.

Revising Race: How Biracial Students are Changing and Challenging Student Services

Journal of College Student Development
Volume 51, Number 2 (March/April 2010)
pages 115-134
E-ISSN: 1543-3382 Print ISSN: 0897-5264
DOI: 10.1353/csd.0.0122

Patricia E. Literte, Assistant professor of sociology
California State University, Fullerton

This research investigates the relationship between biracial college students and race-oriented student services (e.g., Office of Black Student Services). These services are organized around conventional understandings of race that assume there are five, discrete racial categories, namely, Black/African American, Latino/a, White, Asian American, and Native American. Drawing on interviews (n = 60) with students and administrators at two universities, this article examines the problems that arise when students’ racial identities are incongruent with universities’ views of race. This study can assist practitioners in the development of services on campuses that are characterized by increasingly fluid racial terrains in the post–Civil Rights era.

Read or purchase the article here.

Multiracial students speak out on campus

The Vermont Cynic
2010-03-15

Patrick Dowd

The question of racial identity isn’t always black and white. 

Multiracial students on campus  say that struggle for identity extends beyond stereotypes and name mispronunciations, according to the four student panelists who spoke on behalf of UVM’s multicultural students at Harris/Millis.

“Since I came to UVM, I’ve become confused about my racial identity,” senior Tania Khartabil said. “I don’t feel authentic anymore.”

The panelists all shared this feeling and expressed similar frustration in constantly being culturally labeled without acknowledgement of their mixed identity…

Read the entire article here.

Who am I?

Middlebury Magazine
Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vermont
Winter 2010

Kevin Charles Redmon, [class of 20]10

As Janet Mondlane Rodrigues [class of 20]12 grapples with her own complex racial identity, she implores others to take a look in the mirror, as well, and ask themselves this loaded question.

Early in Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, before clips of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s more polemical sermons looped endlessly on cable television and Obama was forced to publicly denounce his pastor, the neologism “postracial” was on a lot of lips. A hopeful word with an elusive definition, it seemed to have as much to do with Obama’s fair skin and poise as it did with any message he espoused. Indeed, postracial was more about what the junior senator didn’t say than what he did—here was a man of color who appeared to transcend his mother’s whiteness and father’s African heritage, an editor of the Harvard Law Review who could acknowledge the tribulations of being a black man in America without letting it consume him. In short, a man who had moved beyond race. The implication being, so should we.

Janet Mondlane Rodrigues ’12 hasn’t moved beyond race, and she’s determined not to let others move beyond it, either. Mozambican born and Brooklyn raised, she shoulders a complicated identity: Her maternal grandfather was a black African revolutionary, her maternal grandmother a tenacious, white Indiana girl. Her mother is a multiracial world musician; her father is white Portuguese. From this vantage point, Rodrigues sees an America and a campus still struggling to address racism and privilege. To her, talk of a post-racial era is a way of silencing an argument mid-sentence…

…In high school, Rodrigues was already probing what it meant to have a multiracial identity, particularly in a borough so heavily segregated. With her Latina friends, “I was known as the white girl, because of how I spoke.” Others mistook her for Dominican or Puerto Rican. “By the black community, I was seen as privileged because I didn’t have the hair; I didn’t have the totally dark skin; I could pretend like I didn’t have this black identity. But among whites, I didn’t have the privileges they had; I didn’t go to private school.” Indeed, race was as much about the deep chasms between socioeconomic classes as it was about skin color…

Read the entire article here.

What are you? For multiracial students, declaring an identity can be complicated

Princeton Alumni Weekly
Princeton University
2010-01-13 Issue

Maya Rock (Class of 2002)

In my first few weeks at Princeton, I became accustomed to fielding questions: What’s your background? Where are your parents from? And the strikingly ­existential: What are you?  

What the questioners really meant was, what race was I? The question said a lot to me about how important race was in America, even if direct discussion of the topic seemed reserved for special holidays or ­incendiary news stories. My answer was, “I’m half black and half white” — a response that made me an anomaly. People were used to divvying one another up into five neat racial categories. After giving my response, I knew, white students would censor what they said about race in front of me, and black students would expect a certain solidarity. I often wished I did not respond at all; I didn’t want to be a spokeswoman for an experience many considered fascinating but which was, for me, ­completely normal…

Read the entire article here.

Negotiating Social Contexts: Identities of Biracial College Women

Information Age Publishing
2007
79 pages
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-59311-596-8
eBook ISBN: 9781607527107

Edited by:

Andra M. Basu, Dean of Adult and Professional Studies
Albright College, Reading, Pennsylvania

This book examines the identification choices of a group of biracial college women and explores how these identifications relate to their choices and constructions of different social contexts. It is a qualitative study that draws on recent psychological literature, as well as personal interviews and focus groups with a group of biracial college women. The book includes 1) a review of the relevant literature concerning biracial individuals, 2) a discussion of some of the unique issues facing researchers who work with biracial populations, and 3) an indepth examination of the relationship between identity and different social contexts for a group of biracial women. The book addresses issues critical to educators, counselors, policy makers and researchers who work with biracial students, as well as biracial individuals and their families. For example, it shows how, for this group of biracial college women, identity choices did influence their choices and constructions of social contexts, particularly at the school that they all attended. Yet while identification choices did influence their perceptions about their social contexts, other factors such as social barriers also influenced them. Family members played a role in their identification choices as well, but siblings were found to be more influential than parents. In addition, the book demonstrates how educators and biracial mentors had a significant impact on this particular group of biracial women. The implications of these findings for parents, educators and future researchers are considered, as the number of biracial individuals living in the United States continues to grow.

Identity & Issues for Multiracial Students and College Campuses (Pre-Conference Institute #111)

NCORE^® 2010
23 Annual National Conference on Race & Enthnicity in American Higher Education
National Harbor, Maryland
2010-06-01 through 2010-06-05

A three‑part, highly interactive institute designed to provide participants a greater understanding of racial identity development for multiracial people and the issues surrounding them as they interface with different racial groups in their respective sociocultural environments. Using an assortment of educational approaches, the institute (1) presents historical and current models of racial identity development in multiracial people; (2) provides in‑depth reflection on personal perspectives and assumptions about multiracial identity; (3) discusses the implications of defining one’s self as multiracial, in campus and contemporary social settings; and (4) outlines some ways to promote inter‑group dialogue and coalition building between different racial groups and multiracial people on campuses and in community settings. The institute includes dialogue among participants who bring a wide range of perspectives about what it means to be multiracial on campus. In addition, the institute provides opportunities for participants to assess programs at their colleges and universities and develop action plans to further address the multiracial issues on their campuses. Presentations, experiential activities, and small- and large-group discussions allow participants to actively engage throughout the institute.

Overall Objectives:

1. Provide an overview of theoretical approaches to identity development of multiracial people.
2. Provide a minimum of three creative and experiential tools for exploring and understanding multiracial identity.
3. Provide roundtable discussions to address contemporary issues faced by Multiracial people on college campuses.
4. Provide roundtable discussions to assist participants in evaluating and growing their own institution’s multiracial programs.

Facilitated by: Charmaine L. Wijeyesinghe, Meg Chang and Dennis Leoutsakas.

For more information, click here.

Race Bending: “Mixed” Youth Practicing Strategic Racialization in California

Anthropology & Education Quarterly
Volume 35 Issue 1 (March 2004)
Pages 30-52
DOI: 10.1525/aeq.2004.35.1.30

Mica Pollock, Associate Professor of Education
Harvard University

As more U.S. youth claim “mixed” heritages, some adults are proposing to erase race words altogether from the nation’s inequality analysis. Yet such proposals, as detailed ethnography shows, ignore the complex realities of continuing racialized practice. At an urban California high school in the 1990s, “mixed” youth strategically employed simple “race” categories to describe themselves and inequality orders, even as they regularly challenged these very labels’ accuracy. In so “bending” race categories, these youth modeled a practical and theoretical strategy crucial for dealing thoughtfully with race in 21st century America.

Read or purchase the article here.