What are you? For multiracial students, declaring an identity can be complicatedPosted in Articles, Campus Life, Identity Development/Psychology, New Media, Social Science, United States on 2010-01-24 03:01Z by Steven |
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.