The Box Doesn’t Fit by becky martinezPosted in Articles, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, United States on 2014-05-26 07:01Z by Steven |
The Box Doesn’t Fit by becky Martinez
Commission for Social Justice Educators Blog
2014-03-04
Becky Martinez
To give you context, I am coming off of an intense few weeks of facilitating workshops on Biracial Identity and, as typically happens, after each session there is a small contingent of people wanting to connect. Some share their excitement about finally having space dedicated to Mixed Identity. For others, well we simply sit together as they work through their tears of deep pain. After this happened for the third time in less than two weeks, I was quickly reminded that most of our communities, including those on campus, are failing people of Mixed Race Heritage. At best, we are not effectively supporting students (staff and faculty) that identify as Multiracial and at worse, we are causing further trauma.
As someone that identifies as Biracial/Multiethnic, I get it. This particular racial identity can be complex and has its own set of unknowns. Of course, the same goes for most any racial identity development model. A critical difference is Multiracial Identity interrupts our systemic monoracial socialization. Consequently, it is a challenge for many people to:
- Remember there are indeed people that come from two or more racial or ethnic backgrounds
- Add Multiracial/ethnic Identity to the race conversation when most of the time we struggle just talking about and dealing with race at the monoracial level…
Read the entire article here.