Mixed Race Studies

Mixed-race teens talk about identity

The Mash: For teens, by teens
2012-11-15

Kaylah Sosa
Homewood-Flossmoor High School, Flossmoor, Illinois

Chris Pieper
Whitney Young Magnet High School, Chicago, Illinois

Megan Fu
Buffalo Grove, Buffalo Grove, Illinois

Rosemary Anguiano
Whitney Young Magnet High School, Chicago, Illinois

The Mash is a weekly newspaper and Web site that is here to serve you, the Chicago-area teenager.

The paper is distributed for free each Thursday at Chicago-area high schools and is written largely by high school students. Our student contributors influence most of the paper’s coverage, so it’s a publication and Web site created for you, about you and, most important, by you.

Mixed-race teens share their personal perspectives on how they view themselves—and how others view their mixed-race heritage. These essays were part of the cover story, “Outside the box,” about how mixed-race teens identify themselves on college applications in the Nov. 15, 2012 issue of The Mash.

I get two common questions in my life. One: “Are you related to Sammy Sosa?” And two: “You’re mixed, right?” The former is annoying, and I would like to make a public plea for people to stop asking.  The latter is a bit more complicated. Yes, I’m –mixed. I know I don’t look it. You don’t need to point it out.

My dad’s Mexican and my mom is black. The color of my skin could fool you, but the defined curls of my shiny, long hair might give it away. My dad calls me a chameleon. I went to a mostly Hispanic elementary school, and when I was around his side of the family, I looked Mexican. But when I was over with my mom’s family, or in a mostly black school like I am now, I look black. It’s kind of fun being able to play both fields.

When someone asks the oddly worded question, “What are you?” I reply with “Black and Mexican.” That ruffles a few people’s feathers. “You look black,” people sometimes tell me. “If you look black, you are. None of that mixed garbage.”

But by embracing my Latina heritage, I’m not shirking my African American heritage. I grew up with a Mexican father in a Mexican neighborhood. As far as I know, that qualifies me to be on the Latina team. Apart from the ignorance of everyday encounters, I’ve found my ethnicities coming heavily into play while filling out college apps. Race? Black/African American. Hispanic or not? Hispanic. I could put “mixed” and go through the whole song and dance, but I’d rather not. If they ask about Hispanic heritage, I just say I have it…

Read the entire article here.

College applications force mixed-race teens to color outside the lines

The Mash: For teens, by teens
2012-11-15

Steffie Drucker
Niles North High School, Skokie, Illinois

Josh Kalamotousakis
John F. Kennedy High School, Chicago, Illinois

The Mash is a weekly newspaper and Web site that is here to serve you, the Chicago-area teenager.

The paper is distributed for free each Thursday at Chicago-area high schools and is written largely by high school students. Our student contributors influence most of the paper’s coverage, so it’s a publication and Web site created for you, about you and, most important, by you.

The college process is filled with questions. First, students must ask themselves what type of school they want to attend and narrow down schools to only a short list of places to apply. The process can be confusing enough since schools ask for different essays, transcripts or letters of recommendation.
Unfortunately, there’s one question students are asked that should be simple to answer but isn’t always: to identify their race and ethnicity.

For some students, identifying themselves is hard because they don’t fit into a single box. And they’re not alone—according to 2010 census data, more than 9 million people in the U.S. identify themselves as being two or more races, up from about 6.8 million in 2000.

Matthew Ibrahim, a senior at Niles North who considers himself Assyrian because his family’s roots are in the Middle East, falls into this category.

“I don’t feel like I fit into a box,” he says. Ibrahim usually checks white since that’s his skin color or Asian since the Middle East is technically in Asia. But, he says, “It makes me feel dishonest.”…

…Sally Rubenstone, a former college admissions officer, author of “Panicked Parents Guide to College Admissions” and a senior advisor at the college process advice site collegeconfidential.com, sympathizes with multiracial students who say they’re torn between checking different boxes. “Kids are becoming more and more mixed,” she says. “Not everyone identifies with one race or another.”

Kennedy senior John Gonzalez, who identifies himself as Mexican and white, feels that being multiracial is to his advantage since each race has its perks. “I know that if I put down Mexican, I’ll have a better chance getting into some schools than if I would say I’m (only) white.”

Rubenstone does believe that being multiracial has its advantages—though not for the same reason as Gonzalez. “Colleges like (the diversity brought by mixed race and ethnicity students) because they can get a Puerto Rican kid and a Greek kid in one student,” she says. “It makes the student (body) a bit more interesting.”…

Read the entire article here.