Redefining their races: More students choosing to identify as mixedPosted in Articles, Campus Life, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, United States on 2011-11-23 03:33Z by Steven |
Redefining their races: More students choosing to identify as mixed
The Western Front
Western Washington University
Bellingham, Washington
2011-11-18
Casey Malloy
When Western Washington University junior Emily Goronkin applied to the university three years ago, she came to a point in the application at which she was asked for her racial identity. She checked Hispanic because she is 25 percent Mexican.
Goronkin said she doesn’t always select Hispanic when she is asked for her race. The other three quarters that make up her ethnicity — Norwegian, Russian and Scottish — are considered white. She said she usually has trouble deciding what to choose.
“I’ve definitely selected just white on some forms,” Goronkin said. “I’ve also done mixed or chose both Mexican and Caucasian, if I could.”
Goronkin doesn’t celebrate any traditions of Mexican culture, but she believes selecting multiple races represents her accurately.
…When political science professor Vernon Johnson looks out his office window into Western’s Red Square, he doesn’t physically see these statistics represented on campus.
“If you’re walking across campus with a mass amount of people, you will pass people that consider themselves of mixed races, and with a quick observation of those particular students you could think they are white,” Johnson said. “However, they could be Hispanic, and they might have checked that box.”…
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