Conversation Of The Week XXII: Mixed-Race Students And The College Experience

In January, The New York Times published “Black? White? Asian? More Young Americans Choose All of the Above,” a provocative and widely circulated article about college students of mixed racial and ethnic backgrounds, as well as the rise in population of a multiracial America.

As the article states, since 2000, when the U.S. Census Bureau allowed Americans to identify themselves in more than one race category, the number of mixed-race Americans grew by approximately 35 percent. Seven million people reported being of mixed race, making multiracials “one of the country’s fastest-growing demographic groups.”

In turn, the enrollment of multiracial students at colleges and universities throughout the U.S. is also swiftly expanding. In 2004, University of California, Berkeley conducted the UC Undergraduate Experience Survey, and found that 22.9 percent of UC Berkeley respondents identified themselves as multiracial or multiethnic, while throughout the UC system, the total averaged 25.8 percent. “The crop of students moving through college right now,” The New York Times article affirms, “includes the largest group of mixed-race people ever to come of age in the United States.”

Are U.S. institutions of higher learning adapting adequately to this upsurge in student population? Are a representative number of faculty and policy makers mixed-race? Are schools offering curricula relevant to multiracial and multiethnic students?

A look into course offerings at various universities reveals that higher education does in fact provide a framework for the comprehensive understanding of mixed-race heritage in America. The UC Berkeley’s “People of Mixed Racial Descent” class began in 1980, it was the first of its kind in the nation, and is still offered as part of the school’s Ethnic Studies program with between 150 to 250 students attending. The University of Washington in Seattle offers the course “Mixed Identities and Racialized Bodies,” Chicago’s DePaul University lists “Mixed Race America” in its course catalog, and “Mixed Race in the New Millennium” is part of Stanford University’s curriculum.

But even if multiracialism is addressed academically, how do students of mixed race “negotiate the racialized landscape of higher education?” asks Kristen A. Renn, associate professor at Michigan State University (MSU), and author of Mixed Race Students in College: The Ecology of Race, Identity, and Community on Campus (2004). What does being multiracial mean to today’s mixed-race student?

For Joseph Robele, 21, a MSU senior majoring in psychology; being multiracial means a connection to more than one heritage.

“My dad is from Ethiopia, and my mom is white of Jewish descent,” Robele says. “I either call myself half-Ethiopian or half-black or multiracial. I kind of go by different things, say half-Ethiopian and half white of ethnic Jewish background. It depends on how specific people want to get …. I think [being multiracial] is a bridge between racial backgrounds and cultural differences. A lot of injustice, I believe, comes out of the experience of not being in contact with other people, other cultures. Being “in” with white or black, or African culture, and use my experience and my acceptance of all of them to try and help other people understand … equality of the races or that different cultures have in their values.”

Robele is a student leader of MSU’s Multi-Racial Unity Living Experience (MRULE), a campus-wide organization whose mission is to build authentic relationships across conventional boundaries of race, nationality, class, gender, and sexuality, while advocating for social justice at MSU and elsewhere. For many multiracial students, joining ethnically diverse student organizations provides the opportunity to share common experiences in a welcoming environment and explore — sometimes for the first time — the various elements of their multiracial identities.

“Due to the MRULE organization, I’ve made lots of friends who are very open to diversity …,” Robele says. “Before I came to college, I went to a [somewhat] diverse high school, but there weren’t a lot of black students. When I came to Michigan State, it was my first opportunity to develop genuine friendships with people who consider themselves black. So, that’s when I first started to realize that I could use [black] as a category of myself, and that I could actually have some personal attachment to it. Because before then, in high school, people would say, [things like] ‘Oreo,’ or ‘half-black/half-white,’ or ‘white-on-the-inside,’ or ‘You might be half-black, but you’re a pretty-preppy white-middleclass-suburbanite kind of person.’”

A common dilemma for multiracial people is the feeling that society commands conformity to a preconceived racial category. Oftentimes the question “What are you?” is put forth, and as Professor Robert Allen states in the article “Mixed Emotions: The Multiracial Student Experience at UC Berkeley,” it’s an “insulting question because it denies your humanity.”

He says the questioner is attempting to fit the person into one of four or five mental categories for race, but something seems off the mark. Whether the inquiry is one of sincere interest or a “shortcut” to reinforce “racial stereotypes and cultural biases,” the “multiracial person … ends up feeling different, over and over again.”

In such situations, when asking people of mixed race to self-identify, they may practice “situational ethnicity” — the act of choosing one racial or ethnic identity in favor of another, the choice depends upon who’s asking the question, for what purpose, and the circumstances of the moment. Asserting this personal flexibility or self-labeling helps individuals acclimate to social environments where belonging to the racialized group seems preferable or mandatory.

Joseph Robele declares he’s definitely practiced situational ethnicity, yet, since he started college and with his involvement in MRULE, it is more of a “non-issue.” He says, “When I was younger I had a hard time trying to decide which one to pick, switching, or waffling between white and black …. I feel that in college it’s been more of an external thing. I don’t personally feel that I am really changing, but I am aware that the people I’m around are going to see me in a different light. I’m a very socially adaptive person, so I tend to act very similar to the people I’m around at the time. I guess in that way maybe I’m more easily adaptable to different contexts because of my multicultural background ….”

It’s believed by some cultural observers that the accelerating numbers of multiracials will bring about a transcendence of race, the idea that the end of racism will be achieved by a “trans-racial or trans-ethnic society in which people represent all gradations,” says Neil Howe, CEO of Life Course Associates, and an analytical researcher who examines generational trends and changing interests. The expected high population totals of mixed-race Americans from the 2010 U.S. Census, which is set to come out in the coming weeks, gives added weight to the notion that a blended America is a racially healed America.

While Robele has never experienced racism in the “explicit sense,” he recognizes that it’s a troublesome preoccupation “based on how many stereotypes people still have, based on different groups on campus. It still goes to show that people have not really removed race from their thoughts.” Therefore, Robele has the perfect plan to test people’s assumptions and attitudes about race.

“I’ve always wanted to trick someone into thinking I am one thing when I’m actually not to see how their beliefs change about it,” he says. “I can see myself as a good example of the social construction of race, because in the span of 10 minutes I can probably get [people] to think I’m Jordanian, or believing that I’m Egyptian, and then tell them, ‘No. I’m actually half-African and half-white,’ and see how their views might change from that. It’s a practical joke I’ve been thinking about for awhile, but I’ve never actually tried it.”

If put into practice, experiments like Robele’s would foster a deeper understanding of what it is to be multiracial in America. It’s a much needed lesson, if society is to adapt successfully to the nation’s changing demographics.