Mixed Race Studies

‘Complicating my place:’ multiracial women faculty navigating monocentricity in higher education––a polyethnography

Race Ethnicity and Education
Published online: 2020-04-23
DOI: 10.1080/13613324.2020.1753679

Kelly F. Jackson, Associate Professor of Social Work
Arizona State University

Dana J. Stone, Associate Professor of Educational Psychology and Counseling
California State University, Northridge

E. Namisi Chilungu, Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychology
Georgia State University

Jillian Carter Ford, Associate Professor of Social Studies Education
Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, Georgia

This polyethnography is an interdisciplinary collaboration between four multiracial women faculty employed at different universities across the US to examine their experiences navigating monocentricity in higher education. This insightful study amplifies the voices of a particular subset of women of color faculty who identify multiracially – a group overlooked in existing literature examining diverse faculty experiences in higher education. Utilizing Multiracial Critical Race Theory (MultiCrit), we reflex on the similarities and nuances that exist within and between our written stories of experience. Conjointly, our critical reflections reveal the prevalence of monoracism within institutions of higher education, which places both internal and external pressures on multiracial women faculty to demarcate themselves monoracially, while simultaneously maintaining a clandestine borderland identity within their departments. Implications for this study reveal the importance of multiracial counterspaces for multiracial faculty as a form of resistance against monocentricity in US institutions of higher education.

Read or purchase the article here.

Race Policy and Multiracial Americans

Policy Press (Available in North America from University of Chicago Press)
2016-01-13
226 pages
234 x 156 mm
Hardback ISBN: 9781447316459
Paperback ISBN: 9781447316503

Edited by:

Kathleen Odell Korgen, Professor of Sociology
William Paterson University, Wayne, New Jersey

Race Policy and Multiracial Americans is the first book to look at the impact of multiracial people on race policies—where they lag behind the growing numbers of multiracial people in the U.S. and how they can be used to promote racial justice for multiracial Americans. Using a critical mixed race perspective, it covers such questions as: Which policies aimed at combating racial discrimination should cover multiracial Americans? Should all (or some) multiracial Americans benefit from affirmative action programmes? How can we better understand the education and health needs of multiracial Americans? This much-needed book is essential reading for sociology, political science and public policy students, policy makers, and anyone interested in race relations and social justice.

Contents

• Introduction ~ Kathleen Odell Korgen
• Multiracial Americans throughout the History of the U.S. ~ Tyrone Nagai
• National and Local Structures of Inequality: Multiracial Groups’ Profiles Across the United States ~ Mary E. Campbell and Jessica M. Barron
• Latinos and Multiracial America ~ Raúl Quiñones Rosado
• The Connections among Racial Identity, Social Class, and Public Policy? ~ Nikki Khanna
• Multiracial Americans and Racial Discrimination ~ Tina Fernandes Botts
• “Should All (or Some) Multiracial Americans Benefit from Affirmative Action Programs?”~ Daniel N. Lipson
• Multiracial Students and Educational Policy ~ Rhina Fernandes Williams and E. Namisi Chilungu
• Multiracial Americans in College ~ Marc P. Johnston and Kristen A. Renn
• Multiracial Americans, Health Patterns, and Health Policy: Assessment and Recommendations for Ways Forward ~ Jenifer L. Bratter and Chirsta Mason
• Racial Identity Among Multiracial Prisoners in the Color-Blind Era ~ Gennifer Furst and Kathleen Odell Korgen
• “Multiraciality and the Racial Order: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”~ Hephzibah V. Strmic-Pawl and David L. Brunsma
• Multiracial Identity and Monoracial Conflict: Toward a New Social Justice framework ~ Andrew Jolivette
• Conclusion: Policies for a Racially Just Society ~ Kathleen Odell Korgen