Mixed: A Mixed HeritagePosted in Articles, Campus Life, Census/Demographics, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, United States, Women on 2010-11-11 23:26Z by Steven |
Daily Bruin
University of California, Los Angeles
2010-11-09
Nicholas Greitzer
America has always been considered a melting pot – a melting pot of ideas, of ethnicities, of religions, of experiences and of people.
In the 2000 census, for example, this miscegenation resulted in more than 6.8 million Americans self-identifying as multiracial. While there may not be any similar statistics for UCLA, a look at the enrollment figures for 2009 lists 4.4 percent of students as having an ethnicity of unstated, unknown or other, close to the national percentage in 2000 of 2.4 of those who identify themselves as multiracial.
Second-year international development studies and Chicana/Chicano studies student Camila Lacques falls into that group that cannot be adequately fit into the racial options provided by the U.S. Census Bureau or the University of California undergraduate application.
“People want to put you in a box, but mixed people don’t fit into a box,” said Lacques, who identifies herself as half Mexican, a quarter Irish and a quarter eastern European Jewish.
Lacques’ cultural makeup is not limited to those backgrounds found within her blood, as she was raised in a predominantly black neighborhood and attended an elementary and middle school that was comprised primarily of Korean students…
…In a similar vein, for second-year sociology student Ay’Anna Moody, being multiracial revolves around teaching others that they need to be intellectually curious.
“I needed to know who I was in order for me to move forward, culturally and socially,” said Moody, whose dad is black Creole and whose mom is Scott-Irish, German and black.
While Moody said that Irish traditions such as St. Patrick’s Day held a prominent place in her family, it was the black cultural influence that dominated her household, which she shared with her mother and stepfather…
Read the entire article here.