Mixed Race Studies

Johanna Workman to be Featured Guest on Mixed Chicks Chat

Mixed Chicks Chat (The only live weekly show about being racially and culturally mixed. Also, founders of the Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival) Hosted by Fanshen Cox and Heidi W. Durrow
Website: TalkShoe™ (Keywords: Mixed Chicks)
Episode: #192-Johanna Workman
When: Wednesday, 2011-02-09, 22:00Z (17:00 EST, 16:00 CST, 14:00 PST)

Johanna Workman

Dr. Johanna Workman recently received her doctorate in clinical psychology from Alliant International University, San Diego. She has worked in the mental health field for 20 years in a variety of treatment settings and modalities, including: outpatient psychotherapy, school counseling, inpatient psychiatric hospitalization, and residential substance abuse treatment. Her dissertation study investigated biracial daughter’s perceptions of self-mother relationships and body image. With a Black Caribbean mother, and a White British father, Dr. Workman was born in England and spent her early childhood years there before immigrating to the United States with her family.

This is who I am: Defining mixed-race identity

The Seattle Times
2008-09-28

Lornet Turnbull, Seattle Times staff

The story of race in the U.S. is changing, and so is the way many of us identify ourselves. That’s especially true in the Seattle area, which has a higher concentration of mixed-race people than any other metro area in the country.

Rachel Clad’s parents are a black woman from Detroit and a white man from California who met in the Peace Corps in Africa.

Clad, 26, was born in New Zealand and spent her early years in far-flung parts of the world before her family settled into a middle-class lifestyle in Washington, D.C.

She’ll tell you she’s multiracial.

“People look at me and see African American,” she said. “In my mind, that’s not who I am. I’m both and I’d like to be seen as both.”.

Aaron Hazard’s mother was a French-Canadian white woman who met his African-American father at a dance in Boston in the 1930s, at a time when such unions were forbidden.

When he signed up for service during the Vietnam era, the Army listed him as white, although Hazard has never referred to himself as anything other than black.

“It’s what my father was and that’s what I am,” the 62-year-old South Seattle resident said. “Back then there were too many white people to remind me of it.”

Barack Obama’s rise to prominence has broadened the dialogue around race in a country that has always done a poor job talking about it. And this new attention is prompting some people of mixed race to more closely examine how they define themselves.

That’s especially so in Greater Seattle, which has a higher concentration of mixed-race people — nearly 4 percent of the area’s population — than any other large metropolitan area in the country.

“One of the biggest mistakes people make in this discussion is assuming there’s only one correct way to be biracial,” said author Elliott Lewis, who grew up in Eastern Washington and has written about the biracial experience…

…”There were historical rules … that if you were mixed and had a parent who wasn’t white, then you checked the census box of the parent who wasn’t white,” said Maria P. P. Root, a Seattle clinical psychologist who has written extensively on mixed race in America.

“There was this gate-keeping around whiteness. The public still hasn’t gotten around to the fact that you can be blended.”…

Read the entire article here.

Identifications and cultural practices of mixed-heritage youth

Paper presented in the eConference on “Mixedness and Mixing: New Perspectives on Mixed-Race Britons”
Commission for Racial Equality
2007-09-04 through 2007-09-06
4 pages

Martyn Barrett, Professor of Psychology
University of Surrey

David Garbin, Research Fellow
Centre for Research on Nationalism, Ethnicity and Multiculturalism
University of Surrey

John Eade, Professor of Sociology & Anthropology
Roehampton University

Marco Cinnirella, Senior Lecturer in Psychology
Royal Holloway University of London

This paper summarises findings from a research study which investigated how 11- to 17-year-old mixed-heritage adolescents living in London negotiate the demands of living with multiple cultures. The study also explored how these adolescents construe themselves in terms of race, ethnicity and nationality. It was found that these individuals had multiple identifications which were subjectively salient to them, and that they were very adept at managing their various identities in different situations. There was no evidence of a sense of marginality, or of being ‘caught between two cultures’, and there was no difference in the strength of British identification exhibited by these mixed-heritage adolescents and white English adolescents of the same age. However, the identities and cultural practices of the mixed-heritage adolescents were fluid and context-dependent, and they appreciated the advantages of being able to negotiate and interact with multiple ethnic worlds.

…Findings from the quantitative phase

The quantitative questionnaires revealed that, in the full mixed-heritage sample of 126 youth, British identification was weaker than both ethnic and religious identification; ethnic and religious identifications were of equal strength. It is noteworthy that there was no difference in the strength of British identification exhibited by the mixed-heritage and white English participants. When the black Caribbean-white mixed-heritage participants were analysed as separate group, it was found that they had the highest levels of identification with Britishness out of all the minority ethnic groups, and there were no significant differences in the strength of these participants’ ethnic, British and religious identifications. However, for the black African-white participants, ethnic identification was stronger than British identification, with religious identification being between the two. Analysed individually, neither of the two black-white mixed-heritage groups differed from white English children in their strength of British identification…

Read the entire paper here.

Biracial identity development in minority/minority individuals: A relational model

Alliant International University, San Francisco Bay
May 2009
383 pages
Publication Number: AAT 3358398
ISBN: 9781109176018

Michelle Grady

There are a growing number of biracial individuals in America, and while some studies have examined their experiences, few have focused on the experiences of biracial minority, minority individuals, whose parents are from different racial minority groups. This study qualitatively explored, through the use of in-depth interviews, the biracial identity development experiences of 6 biracial minority, minority individuals, between the ages of 25 and 34. Interview questions were informed by the literature on biracial identity development, in particular a previous study by Kich (1982), and by Josselson’s (1992) relational theory of identity development. Transcripts were used to create a biography for each respondent; the biographies were analyzed to identify themes and factors influencing biracial identity development. A major theme which emerged included respondents’ tendencies, in childhood, to develop a stronger racial identification with the side of the family they felt more emotionally connected to. Over the course of the respondents’ lives, conflicts about identity emerged and receded, in response to environmental and relational experiences. Relationships with peers and extended family members evoked an awareness of being racially different in respondents. Peer acceptance or rejection strongly influenced respondents’ biracial identity development both positively and negatively during their childhood and adolescence. A relational model of biracial identity development was proposed which was based on themes that emerged, as respondents described their identity development. Stages of biracial identity development were characterized by a search for a sense of belonging, acceptance, and validation, as well as, over time, an increased need for self-definition and consolidation of personal identity. Respondents experienced racism, rejection, and subjective experiences of being different. Acceptance from peers and extended family, communication with family members about their biracial experience, and being taught about both cultures, were longed for experiences that seemed to contribute to a positive experience of identity, when they occurred. Recommendations for future research include further exploration of the usefulness of Josselson’s relational identity development theory for understanding biracial identity development.

Purchase the dissertation here.

Not White Enough, Not Black Enough: Racial Identity in the South African Coloured Community [Review]

H-Net Reviews
May 2007

Sean H. Jacobs
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Mohamed Adhikari. Not White Enough, Not Black Enough: Racial Identity in the South African Coloured Community. Africa Series. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2005. xvii + 252 pp. Paper ISBN 978-0-89680-244-5.

Coloured Categories

What are “Coloureds“? For most South Africans and others familiar with South Africa the answer will be “people of mixed race.” This invocation of “mixing” inevitably links to a racial binary that relies on two opposing and ossified (primordial) identities of black and white. Linked to this view is of course the persistence of the stereotype of “tragic mulattoes“—long a trope in South African writing—in which the “products of miscegenation” can never be “true” South Africans. These were the views of apartheid’s planners and retain their resonance for most South Africans today, including many whom self-identify as Coloured.

Mohamed Adhikari’s work attempts a corrective to this kind of de-contextualized portrayal and assessment of Coloured politics and identity. In Not White Enough, Not Black Enough—a slim volume of 187 pages—Adhikari attempts to place Colouredness as a product, not of any biological process such as “mixture,” but rather as one of the politics of the last century or so. For him, Coloured identity is, in fact, both a product of apartheid category-making and of vigorous identity-building on the part of Coloured political actors themselves. That is, Adhikari also targets attempts to “do away” with Coloured identity, as by proclaiming it a species of false consciousness. The book’s main focus is on attempts by Coloureds themselves to construct identity and history. While much of the material he covers is useful and interesting, it is not clear that Adhikari has quite managed to get out from under the weight of inherited categories and analytic frames in quite the way he sets out to do.

Coloureds make up 4.1 million of South Africa’s 46.9 million people. Mostly working class and concentrated in (but not restricted to) the Western Cape Province (where they comprise 53.9 percent of the total population) and the more rural Northern Cape, they, along with Africans—despite some changes at the apex of the class pyramid—account for most of South Africa’s urban and rural poor…

Read the entire review here.

A Conceptual Model of Multiple Dimensions of Identity

Journal of College Student Development
Volume 41, Number 4 (July/August 2000)
pages 405-414

Susan R. Jones, Associate Professor of Education
Department of Counseling and Personnel Services
University of Maryland, College Park

Marylu K. McEwen, Professor Emeritus
Department of Counseling and Personnel Services
University of Maryland, College Park

A conceptual model of multiple dimensions of identity depicts a core sense of self or one’s personal identity. Intersecting circles surrounding the core identity represent significant identity dimensions (e.g., race, sexual orientation, and religion) and contextual influences (e.g., family background and life experiences). The model evolved from a grounded theory study of a group of 10 women college students ranging in age from 20-24 and of diverse racial-ethnic backgrounds.

…Reynolds and Pope (1991) drew attention to the importance of multiple identities through their discussion of multiple oppressions. They used several case studies to provide examples of how individuals might deal with their multiple oppressions and then extended Root’s (1990) model on biracial identity development to multiple oppressions. Specifically, Reynolds and Pope (1991), in creating the Multidimensional Identity Model, suggested four possible ways for identity resolution for individuals belonging to more than one oppressed group. These four options were created from a matrix with two dimensions—the first concerns whether one embraces multiple oppressions or only one oppression, and the second concerns whether an individual actively or passively identifies with one or more oppressions. Thus, the four quadrants or options become:

1. Identifying with only one aspect of self (e.g., gender or sexual orientation or race) in a passive manner. That is, the aspect of self is assigned by others such as society, college student peers, or family.
2. Identifying with only one aspect of self that is determined by the individual. That is, the individual may identify as lesbian or Asian Pacific American or a woman without including other identities, particularly those that are oppressions.
3. Identifying with multiple aspects of self, but choosing to do so in a “segmented fashion” (Reynolds & Pope, 1991, p. 179), frequently only one at a time and determined more passively by the context rather than by the individual’s own wishes. For example, in one setting the individual identifies as Black, yet in another setting as gay.
4. The individual chooses to identify with the multiple aspects of self, especially multiple oppressions, and has both consciously chosen them and integrated them into one’s sense of self…

 Read the entire article here.

Parent and Child Influences on the Development of a Black-White Biracial Identity

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
2009-10-07
286 pages

Dana J. Stone Harris

Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Human Development

In this qualitative study, the interactive process of exploring and developing shared, familial meanings about biracial identity development was investigated from the perspectives of both parents and children in Black-White multiracial families. Specifically, this study examined how monoracial parents and their biracial children describe the influence parents have on the biracial children’s identity development process from the biracial individuals’ youth into adulthood. Monoracial parents and their children were also invited to share how they negotiated the uniqueness of a biracial identity in both the parents’ and the children’s social arenas. Data were obtained through in-person, semi-structured interviews with 10 monoracial mothers and 11 of their adult (ages 18 to 40) biracial children. The data were analyzed using phenomenological methodology. The analysis of participants’ experiences of biracial identity development revealed four major themes: that family interactions and relationships contribute to the creation of identity for biracial individuals, that mothers intentionally worked to create an open family environment for their biracial children to grow up in, that parents and children affect and are affected by interactions with American culture and society throughout their development, and finally that growing up biracial is a unique experience within each of aforementioned contexts. While there were many shared experiences among the families, each family had its own exceptional story of strength and adjustment to the biracial identity development process. Across cases, the overarching theme was one of togetherness and resiliency for the mothers and their adult children. Data from this study has important implications for research and practice among a number of human service professionals.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• LIST OF TABLES
• LIST OF FIGURES
• DEDICATION
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
  • BACKGROUND AND SIGNIFICANCE
  • JUSTIFICATION: BLACK-WHITE INDIVIDUALS AND FAMILIES
  • STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
  • PURPOSE STATEMENT
  • CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK: SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM
  • DEFINITIONS OF KEY TERMS AND CONCEPTS
  • RESEARCH QUESTIONS
• CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
  • IDENTITY DEVELOPMENT
  • RACIAL IDENTITY DEVELOPMENT
  • BIRACIAL IDENTITY DEVELOPMENT
  • RACIAL SOCIALIZATION: THE ROLE OF FAMILIES
  • INTERRACIAL COUPLES: ATTITUDES AND EXPERIENCES
  • INTERRACIAL PARENTS AND RACIAL SOCIALIZATION
  • THE PRESENT STUDY
• CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY
  • PHENOMENOLOGICAL INQUIRY
  • SAMPLE
  • PROCEDURES
  • MEASURES
  • ROLE OF THE RESEARCHER
  • DATA ANALYSIS
  • TRUSTWORTHINESS
• CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS
  • INTRODUCTION OF THE PARTICIPANT FAMILIES
    • Participant Demographics: Mothers
    • Participant Demographics: Biracial Adults
    • Descriptions of Participant Families
  • MULTIGENERATIONAL FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS
    • Family Constellations and Parental Dating Practices
    • Supportive and Close Parent-Child Relationships
    • Supportive Siblings: Sharing the Biracial Experience
    • Grandparents and Great-Grandparents
  • FAMILIAL INFLUENCES ON THE BIRACIAL IDENTITY DEVELOPMENT PROCESS
    • Raising Biracial Children: An Intentionally Unique Responsibility
    • Racially Labeling Children
    • Acknowledging Potential Challenges for Biracial Children
    • Family pride: We are Comfortable and Proud to be an Interracial Family
  • NEGOTIATING OUR RACIAL IDENTITY WITH THE “OUTSIDE” WORLD
    • Friendships
    • Neighborhoods and Local Communities
    • Trying to Fit Me into a Box: Pressure to Choose Black or White
    • Fighting Discrimination and Racism as a Family
    • The Impact of Racially Historical Events
  • THE EXPERIENCE OF GROWING UP WITH A UNIQUE RACIAL HERITAGE
    • How I Describe My Racial Identity
    • The Color of My Skin Matters
    • “The Biggest Issue I’ve had is Hair”
    • Stuck in the Middle and “The Best of Both Worlds”
    • Resiliency: My Racial Identity Makes me a Stronger Person
  • SUMMARY OF FINDINGS
• CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
  • OVERVIEW
  • REFLEXIVITY AND PERSONAL PROCESS
  • DISCUSSION OF THE FINDINGS
    • Mother’s Perceptions of their Influence on Biracial Identity Development
    • Biracial Children Describe the Influence of their Parents and Families
    • Biracial Identity from Childhood into Adulthood
    • Negotiating Biracial Identity in the Social Arenas of Mothers and Children
  • LIMITATIONS
  • PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS
    • Mental Health Implications
    • Treatment Suggestions
    • Social and Political Implications
    • Community
    • Social Change
  • RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
  • FINAL CONCLUSIONS
• REFERENCES
  • APPENDIX A: ADVERTISEMENT FLYER
  • APPENDIX B: RECRUITMENT EMAIL/LETTER
  • APPENDIX C: IRB APPROVAL LETTER VIRGINIA TECH
  • APPENDIX D: IRB APPROVAL LETTER UNIVERSITY OF OREGON
  • APPENDIX E: INFORMED CONSENT
  • APPENDIX F: INTERVIEW GUIDES
  • APPENDIX G: DEMOGRAPHIC QUESTIONNAIRES
  • APPENDIX H: THEMES DRAFT 1
  • APPENDIX I: THEMES DRAFT 6
  • APPENDIX J: EMAIL LETTER FOR MEMBER CHECKS

LIST OF TABLES

• TABLE 1 SUMMARY OF THEMES
• TABLE 2 MOTHER DEMOGRAPHICS
• TABLE 3 BIRACIAL ADULT DEMOGRAPHICS

LIST OF FIGURES

• FIGURE 1 VINCENT FAMILY GENOGRAM
• FIGURE 2 NELSON FAMILY GENOGRAM
• FIGURE 3 SIMON FAMILY GENOGRAM
• FIGURE 4 EDWARD FAMILY GENOGRAM
• FIGURE 5 RULE FAMILY GENOGRAM
• FIGURE 6 COLLINS FAMILY GENOGRAM
• FIGURE 7 JACOBS FAMILY GENOGRAM
• FIGURE 8 OLSON FAMILY GENOGRAM
• FIGURE 9 MONROE FAMILY GENOGRAM
• FIGURE 10 BROOKS FAMILY GENOGRAM

Read the entire dissertation here.

Black? White? Asian? More Young Americans Choose All of the Above

The New York Times
2011-01-29

Susan Saulny, National Correspondent

Race Remixed: A New Sense of Identity. Articles in this series will explore the growing number of mixed-race Americans.

COLLEGE PARK, Md.—In another time or place, the game of “What Are You?” that was played one night last fall at the University of Maryland might have been mean, or menacing: Laura Wood’s peers were picking apart her every feature in an effort to guess her race.

“How many mixtures do you have?” one young man asked above the chatter of about 50 students. With her tan skin and curly brown hair, Ms. Wood’s ancestry could have spanned the globe.

“I’m mixed with two things,” she said politely.

“Are you mulatto?” asked Paul Skym, another student, using a word once tinged with shame that is enjoying a comeback in some young circles. When Ms. Wood confirmed that she is indeed black and white, Mr. Skym, who is Asian and white, boasted, “Now that’s what I’m talking about!” in affirmation of their mutual mixed lineage.

Then the group of friends—formally, the Multiracial and Biracial Student Association—erupted into laughter and cheers, a routine show of their mixed-race pride.

The crop of students moving through college right now includes the largest group of mixed-race people ever to come of age in the United States, and they are only the vanguard: the country is in the midst of a demographic shift driven by immigration and intermarriage…

…No one knows quite how the growth of the multiracial population will change the country. Optimists say the blending of the races is a step toward transcending race, to a place where America is free of bigotry, prejudice and programs like affirmative action.

Pessimists say that a more powerful multiracial movement will lead to more stratification and come at the expense of the number and influence of other minority groups, particularly African-Americans.

And some sociologists say that grouping all multiracial people together glosses over differences in circumstances between someone who is, say, black and Latino, and someone who is Asian and white. (Among interracial couples, white-Asian pairings tend to be better educated and have higher incomes, according to Reynolds Farley, a professor emeritus at the University of Michigan.)

Along those lines, it is telling that the rates of intermarriage are lowest between blacks and whites, indicative of the enduring economic and social distance between them.

Prof. Rainier Spencer, director of the Afro-American Studies Program at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and the author of “Reproducing Race: The Paradox of Generation Mix,” says he believes that there is too much “emotional investment” in the notion of multiracialism as a panacea for the nation’s age-old divisions. “The mixed-race identity is not a transcendence of race, it’s a new tribe,” he said. “A new Balkanization of race.”…

…The Way We Were

Americans mostly think of themselves in singular racial terms. Witness President Obama’s answer to the race question on the 2010 census: Although his mother was white and his father was black, Mr. Obama checked only one box, black, even though he could have checked both races.

Some proportion of the country’s population has been mixed-race since the first white settlers had children with Native Americans. What has changed is how mixed-race Americans are defined and counted…

Read the entire article here.

‘Land of our Mothers’: Home, Identity, and Nationality for Anglo-Indians in British India, 1919–1947

History Workshop Journal
Volume 54, Issue 1
pages 49-72
DOI: 10.1093/hwj/54.1.49

Alison Blunt, Professor of Geography
Queen Mary, University of London

This paper explores the symbolic and material intersections of home, identity and nationality for Anglo-Indians (previously known as ‘Eurasians’) in the period between the Montague Chelmsford Reforms and Indian Independence. Community claims for a legitimate heritage were articulated through images of Britain as fatherland and India as motherland, and were closely tied to political attempts to gain a legitimate stake in national life. The paper examines public debates about home, identity and nationality with reference to the two main Anglo-Indian leaders of the twentieth century, Henry Gidney and Frank Anthony. While a British imperial lineage was imagined through the figure of a British forefather, political debates about home, identity and nationality largely erased the figure of an Indian maternal ancestor and instead focused on Mother India and on the domestic roles of Anglo-Indian women. The political recognition of both women and the home was an attempt not only to domesticate Anglo-Indian women, but also to domesticate a new national identity that regarded India more than Britain as home. But the home life of Anglo-Indians remained more British than Indian and political attempts to foster national loyalty to India as motherland were contested on a domestic scale. The mixed descent of Anglo-Indians was thus both manifested and erased in public debates about the future and status of the community.

…This paper is about India as ‘land of our mothers’ at a time when questions of home, identity and nationality were bound together in complex and contested ways for Anglo-Indians and other minority communities in India. Through my focus on a distinct community of mixed descent, I examine the ways in which national identity was embodied in gendered and racialized ways that reflected and reproduced a dual affiliation to both Britain and India as home. Community claims for a legitimate heritage were articulated through images of Britain as fatherland and India as motherland, and such claims were closely tied to political attempts to gain a legitimate stake in national life. For this reason, I analyse public debates about home, identity and nationality, drawing on political representations by Anglo-Indian leaders and on articles and letters published in the Anglo-Indian Review. I focus on the period from the Montague Chelmsford Report of 1919, which laid the foundations for Indianization in government employment and political representation, to independence in 1947. This also allows me to contrast the policies of the two main Anglo-Indian leaders of the twentieth century. Henry Gidney led the community from 1919 until his death in 1942, when he was succeeded by Frank Anthony, who served as president of the [All-India Anglo-Indian Association] AIAIA and as a nominated member of parliament representing community interests from 1942 until his death in 1993. Rather than render spaces of home as more symbolic than actual in forging a national identity, I argue that political attempts to foster a greater national loyalty to India as motherland rather than Britain as fatherland were contested on a domestic scale. Anglo-Indian homes continued to be imagined as more British than Indian despite political attempts by Gidney and Anthony to identify the community as a nationalist minority. Rather than explore the home merely as a feminized space, I am interested in how it also came to be shaped by a masculine imperial heritage. While a British imperial lineage was imagined through the figure of a British forefather, political debates about home, identity, and nationality largely erased the figure of an Indian maternal ancestor and instead focused on Mother India and on the present and future political roles of Anglo-Indian women within and beyond the home. While ideas of home and identity were potent sites in shaping ideas of nationality, the mixed descent of Anglo-Indians was thus both manifested and erased in public debates about the future and status of the community…

Read the entire article here.

Patterns of Situational Identity Among Biracial and Multiracial College Students

The Review of Higher Education
Volume 23, Number 4 (Summer 2000)
pages 399–420
E-ISSN: 1090-7009, Print ISSN: 0162-5748
DOI: 10.1353/rhe.2000.0019

Kristen A. Renn, Associate Professor of Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education
Michigan State University

Using qualitative grounded theory framed by postmodern racial identity theory, the author explored the experience of 24 bi- and multiracial students at three postsecondary institutions. Five patterns of racial identification emerged, with peer culture and campus demographics as the major determinants of students’ identity. These findings, with insights into multiracial students’s experiences, can model how to explore other areas of socially constructed identity. It also introduces a conditional model for how students create new identity-based space on campus.

Despite significant and increasing numbers of biracial and multiracial students, almost nothing is known about their development and interactions in the college environment. This topic has special relevance to higher education at a time when multiraciality has become a matter of political and popular interest. A political movement of mixed-race people emerged in the last decade, demanding attention to mixed-race students in K-12 education and changes in data collection by racial group membership on the U.S. 2000 census (Schnaiberg, 1997; Yemma, 1997). For the first time, census respondents will be offered the option of selecting one or more racial categories (Baron, 1998; U.S. Office, 1997).

Prior to the October 1997 change in the census guidelines, studies showed that less than 2% of the population claimed to belong to more than one of the government’s existing racial categories (Schmidt, 1997). While this number is not very large compared to the general population, a change in how these individuals indicated their racial group categorization on the census could significantly influence racial group statistics used to enforce various civil rights laws (Baron, 1998). In the ongoing battle over access, equity, and affirmative action policy in higher education, racial statistics matter. At present there is no accurate count of multiracial students and no systems in place to deal with the new check-as-many-as-apply option.

This study does not attempt to develop such a system, but it begins to explore how multiracial students might see themselves in the context of higher education. While raising larger questions about the use of racial categories in higher education, this study focused on how campus peer culture influenced the ways in which multiracial students made meaning of their racial identity in college. Using qualitative grounded theory framed by postmodern racial identity theory, I explored how multiracial students’ interactions with peers, involvement in activities, and academic work influenced the kinds of identity-based spaces they chose to occupy and what caused them to create new, multiracial spaces on the monoracially defined campus landscape. Among 24 students at three institutions who identified themselves as biracial or multiracial, five patterns emerged in how students occupied existing identity-based spaces on campus or created new, multiracial spaces. The major determinants of students’ identity choices were campus racial demographics and peer culture. I developed a conditional model to explain the construction of public multiracial space on campus and ask how it might be applied in other situations.

The results of this study provide insight into the experience of multiracial students and can be used as a model to explore multiracial students’ lives at other institutions, as well as to explore other areas of socially constructed identity (gender, sexuality, class) on campus. The study builds on the multiracial identity development literature and fills a gap in college student development literature. It does not claim to represent the lives of all multiracial students, but it raises issues and questions that transcend institutional boundaries: How do students choose, create, and occupy public space on campus? How does peer culture mediate these choices? How might higher education address the needs of a growing population of multiracial people through programs, services, and policies?…

Read the entire article here.