{"id":20057,"date":"2012-01-22T19:53:55","date_gmt":"2012-01-22T19:53:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=20057"},"modified":"2012-01-22T23:59:49","modified_gmt":"2012-01-22T23:59:49","slug":"conversation-of-the-week-xxii-mixed-race-students-and-the-college-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=20057","title":{"rendered":"Conversation Of The Week XXII: Mixed-Race Students and The College Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"

Conversation Of The Week XXII: Mixed-Race Students and The College Experience<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

USARiseUp<\/a>
\n2011-04-18<\/p>\n

Amy O’Loughlin<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

In January, The New York Times<\/em> published \u201cBlack? White? Asian? More Young Americans Choose All of the Above<\/a>,\u201d<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cone of the country\u2019s fastest-growing demographic groups.\u201d<\/p>\n

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,<\/em> 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. \u201cThe crop of students moving through college right now,\u201d The New York Times article affirms, \u201cincludes the largest group of mixed-race people ever to come of age in the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

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?<\/p>\n

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\u2019s \u201cPeople of Mixed Racial Descent\u201d <\/em>class began in 1980, it was the first of its kind in the nation, and is still offered as part of the school\u2019s Ethnic Studies program with between 150 to 250 students attending. The University of Washington in Seattle offers the course \u201cMixed Identities and Racialized Bodies,\u201d<\/em> Chicago\u2019s DePaul University lists \u201cMixed Race America\u201d<\/em> in its course catalog, and \u201cMixed Race in the New Millennium<\/a>\u201d<\/em> is part of Stanford University\u2019s curriculum.<\/p>\n

But even if multiracialism is addressed academically, how do students of mixed race \u201cnegotiate the racialized landscape of higher education?\u201d 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).<\/em> What does being multiracial mean to today\u2019s mixed-race student?…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Conversation Of The Week XXII: Mixed-Race Students and The College Experience USARiseUp 2011-04-18 Amy O’Loughlin In January, The New York Times published \u201cBlack? White? Asian? More Young Americans Choose All of the Above,\u201d a provocative and widely circulated article about college students of mixed racial and ethnic backgrounds, as well as the rise in population […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,2895,125,8,20],"tags":[9332,2870],"class_list":["post-20057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-campus-life","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-amy-oloughlin","tag-usariseup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20057\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}