Mixed Race Studies

Biracial Identity

The Lion’s Roar
Issue 27-2 (September 2010)
Student-Run Newspaper of Newton South High School
Newton, Massachusetts

Caroline Rosa, Managing Editor

Rachel Leshin, Managing Editor

Approaching the lunch table where her black friends were seated, sophomore Kayla Burton tried beginning to bridge the racial gap between her friend groups. But when she tried to introduce her white friend, one black girl at the table told her “we don’t want her over here.”

She asked Burton to either tell her friend to go away or to leave with her. Burton, a biracial student who identifies as half black and half white, said she was shocked. “It was the most immature thing I’ve ever heard,” she said. She then told her friends, who were laughing, that it was the most judgmental thing she had ever heard in her life.

Burton, along with many other biracial students at South, has a unique viewpoint concerning race relations.

Despite the racism she has witnessed first hand, Burton said she embraces her identity. “I love being biracial because you get to see both points of views,” she said.

Senior George Kurosawa also said he finds being biracial beneficial. Kurosawa said it allows him to have “more in common with more people.”

Senior Jenny Gerstner said she is glad that she is is grateful for her half Korean, half white background as well. “I think when you grow up with having two different races it does make you more aware of other people, just because you’re exposed to more,” she said.

Burton thinks her mixed identity allows her to understand both sides of race issues. “It’s definitely helpful to be biracial because if a black person got mad at me, and they say ‘you white people’ they can’t say that because I’m black too,” she said.

Though Gerstner is mixed racially, people often classify her as white at first glance while acknowledging that “there’s something a little off about it,” she said. Gerstner herself identifies more as white.

Like Gerstner, Kurosawa said he connects more to one half of his background. “We live in America, so more often I fit into the white role,” he said. Kurosawa said the extent of his connection to Japanese culture is visiting family in Japan and eating large amounts of rice at home.

Contrastingly, junior Sam Russell, who has a black father and a white mother, connects more with his black identity. Having grown up in Newton, Russell often stood out as the one of the only black students in his elementary and middle school classes, and peers often assume him to be fully black. Russell identifies this way because “growing up in a white society, anyone with a different color kind of gets separated.”…

Read the entire article here.