Mixed Race Studies

“Unknown” Students on College Campuses: An Exploratory Analysis

The James Irvine Foundation
December 2005
20 pages

Campus Diversity Initiative Evaluation Project Team (Claremont Graduate University and the Association of American Colleges and Universities):

Daryl G. Smith, Co-principal Investigator
José Moreno, Senior Research Analyst
Alma R. Clayton-Pedersen, Co-principal Investigator
Sharon Parker, Co-principal Investigator
Daniel Hiroyuki Teraguchi, Research Associate

with

Suzanne Benally, Campus Liaison
Susan E. Borrego, Campus Liaison
Jocelyn Chong, Research Associate
Mari Luna De La Rosa, Research Associate
Mildred García, Campus Liaison
Jennie Spencer Green, Campus Liaison
Belinda Vea, Research Associate

A research brief from The James Irvine Foundation Campus Diversity Initiative Evaluation Project

In response to the increasing number of students who fall into the “race/ethnicity unknown” category of post-secondary demographic data, this exploratory study devised a method to ascertain the racial/ethnic backgrounds of these students by comparing existing enrollment data to a second, independent data set. The method was tested at three small private institutions in California. Our findings suggest that overall, a sizeable portion of students in the unknown category are white, in addition to multiracial students who may have selected white as one of their categories. These findings—while not necessarily generalizable—alert campus leaders of the need to attend to this growing segment of the student population and to how the United States is diversifying in more complex ways than ever before. The brief concludes with recommendations for future research and for both campus and federal data collection and use.

Table of Contents

• Executive Summary
• Introduction: The Rise in “Unknown” Students on College Campuses
• Methodology: Identifying the “Unknowns”
• Findings: A Sizeable Portion of “Unknown” Students Are White
• Implications: Accuracy Depends on the “Unknowns”
• Recommendations: Improving Data Collection and Use
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Appendix
• Contributors

Read the entire report here.

Many Biracial Students Game Racial-Classification Systems, Study Suggests

The Chronicle of Higher Education
2010-12-14

Peter Schmidt

A study of biracial people with black and white ancestry has found that many identify themselves solely as black when filling out college applications and financial-aid forms, raising new questions about the accuracy of educational statistics and research based on racial and ethnic data derived from students.

The study of 40 biracial people—all of whom reported having one black parent and one white one—found that 29, or nearly three-fourths, reported concealing their white ancestry in applying for college, scholarships, financial aid, or jobs.

“Frequently unaware that being biracial is often sufficient for affirmative-action purposes, they presented themselves exclusively as black,” says a summary of the study’s findings being published this month in Social Psychology Quarterly, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Sociological Association…

…The new study suggests that many researchers start out with bad data that conflate information on students with two black parents with information on students with one white parent and one black one, even though those biracial students are less likely, on average, to have grown up with the same disadvantages.

The researcher behind the study—Nikki Khanna, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Vermont, and Cathryn Johnson, a professor of sociology at Emory University— recruited their 40 research subjects by distributing fliers in an unnamed Southern urban city, asking “Do you have one black parent and one white parent?” They base their analyses on extensive interviews of the respondents conducted by Ms. Khanna in 2005 and 2006…

…Susan Graham, executive director of Project RACE (Reclassify All Children Equally), an advocacy group for multiracial Americans, said she believes the article overstates how much people base their racial identification on self-interest. She also argued that, given how much racial-classification systems have changed in recent years, it is inappropriate to draw conclusions based on interviews conducted four or five years ago…

Read or purchase the article here.

Note by Steven F. Riley: See: Lawrence Wright, “One Drop of Blood”, The New Yorker, July 24, 1994…

Those who are charged with enforcing civil-rights laws see the Multiracial box as a wrecking ball aimed at affirmative action, and they hold those in the mixed-race movement responsible. “There’s no concern on any of these people’s part about the effect on policy it’s just a subjective feeling that their identity needs to be stroked,” one government analyst said. “What they don’t understand is that it’s going to cost their own groups”—by losing the advantages that accrue to minorities by way of affirmative-action programs, for instance. [Susan] Graham contends that the object of her movement is not to create another protected category. In any case, she said, multiracial people know “to check the right box to get the goodies.”

Room For Debate: Does It Matter Where You Go to College? Merit and Race

New York Times
2010-11-30

Luis Fuentes-Rohwer, Professor of Law and Harry T. Ice Faculty Fellow
Indiana University

What sensible and ambitious students should keep in mind about where they go to school.

Notwithstanding our commitment to egalitarian norms, where one chooses to go to college continues to matter, greatly. Intuitively, for most people, matriculation at an elite institution is a no brainer: the better the school, the higher the payoff for its graduates. The research supports this intuition. Attendance at elite colleges and universities has a positive effect on the likelihood that a student will graduate; on future earnings; on the likelihood that a student will attend graduate school; and even to lower divorce rates and better health…

…The calculations are relatively the same for many minority applicants with some added considerations. I have two particular issues in mind.

The first is an extension of the debate over affirmative action in higher education, and particularly the notion of “critical mass.” This is the concern, largely unexpressed yet often at the forefront of our consciousness, of being a racial minority at a predominantly white institution. This point raises the question of who is a racial minority worthy of special consideration. For example, fewer and fewer historically disadvantaged African-American students are being admitted to elite colleges. Increasingly, elite colleges are admitting biracial students and first- or second-generation black students from the Caribbean and from Africa. Historically disadvantaged African-American students are being left behind in the elite college lottery. This is a tragedy. This also underscores the remaining importance of our historically black colleges and universities…

Read the entire article here.

Between boxes

the Burr
Kent State University
Fall 2005
pages 50-55

Story by Jessica Rothschuh
Photo illustration by Clarissa Westmeyer
Photos by Lauren Arendt

For some multiracial students, college becomes a time to discover their heritages and shape their identities

HER DARK HAIR IS PULLED BACK IN BRAIDS, LEAVING HER FACE OPEN, TWO large, dark eyes peering out from long eyelashes. Her skin is a warm almond color. Her ethnicity is hard to put a finger on. She could pass as Hispanic or Native American.

Jalayna Nadal, freshman Latin American studies major from Edinboro, Pa., is both. Her father is black and Cherokee, and her mother is Puerto Rican and white.

Developing her multicultural identity has been a lifelong process for Nadal, and college is a time to further explore her multiple heritages, shaping her cultural identity as she learns more about herself and her roots.

For biracial and multiracial students like Nadal, college may prove both exciting and difficult. Mixed-race students in particular can experience an intense desire to discover their heritages and create their racial identities, but they also can feel pressure to define themselves. For the first time, students are searching for identities outside the environment in which they were raised, without the constant support of family…

…College is another step away from his culture, Isaacs says. “Because I’m not around my father as much, I don’t assert my Hawaiian identity as much.” Here, he hasn’t found a place he really fits in, and when he returns to Hawaii, it is hard to feel he still belongs there, either. “You’re just stuck in limbo,” Isaacs says. “You have to be kind of like a cultural chameleon in a sense.” Isaacs says he adapts his identity to those around him, and it is easy for him to blend in because he looks white.

For some biracial students, however, being a chameleon is hard. “The problem that they face saying, ‘I am biracial,’ is other people saying, ‘No, you’ve got to choose,’ ” says Angela Neal-Barnett, associate professor and research psychologist. “With biracial adolescents, you get two things happening: They choose to identify with one race or they choose to develop a biracial identity.”

For more than five years, Neal-Barnett has been studying the phenomenon of “white acting” in minority adolescents. Through her research, she has talked with biracial youth, most of whom are primarily black and white. “One’s skin color can run the gamut, and one’s hair color and texture can run the gamut. You have students who look white, but their racial identity is black or biracial,” she says. In fact, the biracial adolescents Neal-Barnett has spoken with almost always choose to identify as black or biracial. Very few identify as white…

Read the entire article here.

Race Classification at the University of KwaZulu-Natal: Purposes, Sites and Practices

IOLS‐Research, Dr. Shaun Ruggunan and ccrri
For: Centre for Critical Research on Race and Identity (ccrri)
University of Kwazulu-Natal
2010-11-08
59 pages

Race classification has long been a feature of South African life, in daily life and its cognitive processes, and also in formal state-driven bureaucratic forms. In the post-apartheid period, classification of individuals on the basis of race has continued despite a stated commitment to principles of non-racialism. Primarily, this is justified in its formal manifestation because of the acknowledged need for redress of apartheid generated inequalities both in the labour market and in access to opportunities and resources (such as higher education).

Investigating the purposes and practices of race classification in an institution of higher learning in South Africa—in this case, the University of KwaZulu-Natal as one of the largest employers in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, as well as one of the largest national universities—offers a particularly interesting insight into these issues and provides an example of sites where this occurs. The research project has three key aims. Firstly it seeks broadly to identify the purpose of race classification, secondly the project investigates the processes followed in classifying people according to race, thirdly the study is interested in the effects, if any, of both classifying and being classified (from the perspective of the classifier) and the challenges involved in race classification. The project concludes by suggesting alternatives to race based classification.

…7. Challenges of classification

The challenges of classification on the basis of race at UKZN identified by interviewees mainly relate to ‘misclassifications’ (a term that holds true only if there is a notion of true/accurate classification of race). These cases of misclassification result from a myriad of problems including:

1. Problems with inaccurate data capturing. For example the data capturer could accidentally misclassify someone, or even make a subjective judgement call and change the person’s self classification to match a racial category deemed more appropriate by the data capturer.
2. The difficulties in making judgements of race classification in a society that is increasingly integrated and becoming increasing racially mixed. This problem extends beyond the mixed race category of ‘coloured’ (Erasmus, 2007).
3. The problem presented by the current four categories in use (African, Indian, Coloured and White). The use of these four categories has meant that Chinese South Africans, for example, have seen their identity collapsed under the generic category of Black. Racial classification in this sense assumes an economic currency and imperative (see Erasmus and Park, 2008) when related to Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE) for example.
4. The challenges related to race classification where it is perceived to relate to access to jobs, funding or placement at University were noted…

…7.2. The ‘Coloured’ question

Classifying people of ‘mixed race’ heritage is becoming more and more difficult and this challenge was noted by a number of respondents. ‘Coloured’ in South Africa may be understood to refer to people of ‘mixed race’ heritage but it is also sometimes seen as tied to a particular cultural identity, that of ‘Cape Coloured’; or of specific races in the mix. As a result, people of mixed race heritage that do not belong to this cultural formation that is tied to a ‘black-white’ racial heritage may feel uncomfortable adopting this category for classification. Interviewees observed:

The one might be when it comes to this classification of coloured which is a bit of a, you know, what does it mean (Interview Fihlela, 2009).

If they want to keep the mixed box or the bi-racial box they can maybe have subsections under that because I think that is really going to grow in the future. There’s more interracial families […] coming forward (Interview Van Soelen et al, 2009).

Read the entire report here.

Cross ’12, Castagno ’12 Participate in Mixed Race Conference

The Wesleyan Connecton
Welyean University’s Newsletter
2010-12-02

Olivia Drake

Rachel Cross ’12 and Alicia Castagno ’12 participated as panel members in a session of the Critical Mixed Race Conference sponsored by dePaul University in Chicago Nov. 5-6 [2010].

The conference was attended by academicians and students (primarily graduate students) from across the country. Cross and Castagno co-taught a Wesleyan student forum on mixed race last year and were on a panel discussing the development and teaching of this topic as students. In the question and answer period someone asked how many student-taught classes on mixed race there were in the country. A member of the University of Washington group said that as far as they could find out, only the UW and Wesleyan had student-taught classes…

Read the entire article here.

Graduate Student Profile: Chelsea Guillermo-Wann (Education)

UCLA Graduate Quarterly
University of California, Los Angeles
Fall 2010
pages 6-7

Growing up in Santa Barbara, Chelsea Guillermo-Wann started “developing concepts of white and brown” while she was still in grade school, concepts that gave her a different understanding of her white mother and brown father—his heritage both Mexican and Filipino. The town was “very stratified in terms of race and socioeconomic status,” she says, and she saw that her father was treated differently than her mother—mistreated, that is—although both had college degrees. This “led me to question issues of social stratification and racism,” she says…

..Now beginning her third year as a Ph.D. student, Chelsea is drawing up a dissertation proposal likely to focus on something she knows a lot about: being multiracial in the academic world. Although a growing number of students represent more than one race or ethnicity, very little research has been done about their experience, beyond issues of identity formation. There’s even some question about whether they can be considered a group, she says…

Read the entire article here.

Counseling Today Online: Under the radar

Counseling Today Online
American Counseling Association
2010-11-19

Lynne Shallcross

Five ACA members discuss their efforts to reach out to and connect with client populations at risk of being overlooked and underserved

No ethical counselor enters the profession and anticipates skipping over or ignoring a group in need of help. But in reality, some client populations aren’t easily reached or don’t readily avail themselves of counseling services. And others are simply overlooked, for one reason or another.

To shed light on a few of these underserved groups, Counseling Today asked five American Counseling Association members to share their experiences of actively reaching out to, connecting with and advocating for client populations that too often fly under the radar.

Multiracial clients

At times, Derrick Paladino still gets choked up talking about the prayer he would say nightly while in elementary school. It was a prayer offered by a little boy who desperately wanted to fit in. “I wish I woke up White,” he would pray before going to sleep.

At that point, Paladino, whose mother was born in Puerto Rico and whose father was second-generation Italian American, was the only non-White student at his school in a small Connecticut town. Now an assistant professor and chair of the Department of Graduate Studies in Counseling at Rollins College, Paladino says he felt his “differentness” every day at school. The discriminatory remarks he heard from other kids didn’t help…

…Even when he entered college at the University of Florida, Paladino didn’t feel like he fit in anywhere. He received invitations to join Latino student groups but felt like a fraud because he didn’t speak Spanish fluently. “I wasn’t whole of anything,” he says.

But a few years later, sitting in a multicultural counseling class in his master’s program at Florida, he read about a biracial identity model developed by [Walker S.] Carlos Poston. It became Paladino’s “aha” moment. “It was me on paper,” says Paladino, who also runs a private practice in Winter Park, Fla. “It was making sense of how I pushed away from my mom, because being brown was bad where I lived, and how I figured out how to navigate through life and my environments. It was a moment of change when I figured out, ‘I need to focus on who I am and how this identity affects me, and I need to do more with it.’ I could then also celebrate my multiracial identity and see the strengths that come with it.”…

Read the entire article here.

APA recognizes record number of student research projects

gradPSYCH Magazine
Volume 8, Number 3 (September 2010)
Page 7

J. Clark
 
The APA Science Student Council doubled its research prizes this year, awarding six $1,000 Early Graduate Student Research Awards to psychology doctoral students for their outstanding research.

“By recognizing the work of these students, we get to encourage them to pursue careers in research and continue producing knowledge that benefits society,” says Gabriel Lázaro-Muñoz, the Science Student Council chair.

The council received a record 159 applicants from students conducting innovative psychology research. This year’s winners worked on a variety of research projects, but all had one thing in common: scientific rigor that even a senior researcher could be proud of, says Lázaro-Muñoz. The award recipients are:…

…Jacqueline Chen, a social psychology student at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who investigates the ways monoracial people perceive multiracial people. In one study, she asked monoracial participants to categorize people as black, white or multiracial as quickly as possible. She found that they correctly identified multiracial people at rates significantly above chance…

Read the entire article here.

Biracial Identity

The Lion’s Roar
Issue 27-2 (September 2010)
Student-Run Newspaper of Newton South High School
Newton, Massachusetts

Caroline Rosa, Managing Editor

Rachel Leshin, Managing Editor

Approaching the lunch table where her black friends were seated, sophomore Kayla Burton tried beginning to bridge the racial gap between her friend groups. But when she tried to introduce her white friend, one black girl at the table told her “we don’t want her over here.”

She asked Burton to either tell her friend to go away or to leave with her. Burton, a biracial student who identifies as half black and half white, said she was shocked. “It was the most immature thing I’ve ever heard,” she said. She then told her friends, who were laughing, that it was the most judgmental thing she had ever heard in her life.

Burton, along with many other biracial students at South, has a unique viewpoint concerning race relations.

Despite the racism she has witnessed first hand, Burton said she embraces her identity. “I love being biracial because you get to see both points of views,” she said.

Senior George Kurosawa also said he finds being biracial beneficial. Kurosawa said it allows him to have “more in common with more people.”

Senior Jenny Gerstner said she is glad that she is is grateful for her half Korean, half white background as well. “I think when you grow up with having two different races it does make you more aware of other people, just because you’re exposed to more,” she said.

Burton thinks her mixed identity allows her to understand both sides of race issues. “It’s definitely helpful to be biracial because if a black person got mad at me, and they say ‘you white people’ they can’t say that because I’m black too,” she said.

Though Gerstner is mixed racially, people often classify her as white at first glance while acknowledging that “there’s something a little off about it,” she said. Gerstner herself identifies more as white.

Like Gerstner, Kurosawa said he connects more to one half of his background. “We live in America, so more often I fit into the white role,” he said. Kurosawa said the extent of his connection to Japanese culture is visiting family in Japan and eating large amounts of rice at home.

Contrastingly, junior Sam Russell, who has a black father and a white mother, connects more with his black identity. Having grown up in Newton, Russell often stood out as the one of the only black students in his elementary and middle school classes, and peers often assume him to be fully black. Russell identifies this way because “growing up in a white society, anyone with a different color kind of gets separated.”…

Read the entire article here.