{"id":22105,"date":"2013-04-02T02:51:11","date_gmt":"2013-04-02T02:51:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=22105"},"modified":"2013-04-02T02:52:23","modified_gmt":"2013-04-02T02:52:23","slug":"a-mixed-bag-examining-the-college-experience-of-multi-racial-students-by-andrea-williams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=22105","title":{"rendered":"A Mixed Bag: Examining the College Experience of Multi-Racial Students"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Mixed Bag: Examining the College Experience of Multi-Racial Students<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

INSIGHT Into Diversity<\/a>
\nApril\/May 2012 (2012-03-29)<\/p>\n

Andrea Williams<\/strong>, Contributing Writer<\/p>\n

To most American youth, college is the requisite rite of passage into adulthood, an experience marked as much by self-exploration and discovery as biology lectures and late night cram sessions.
\n\u00a0
\nFrom managing the excitement of living away from home for the first time, to coping with the stresses of time management, college can be simultaneously exhilarating and intimidating. And for biracial students who don\u2019t fit neatly into the predetermined ethnic categories of many colleges and universities, the journey can be especially challenging.<\/p>\n

For Theresa Lopez, the daughter of a white mother and a Latino father, the issues started with her application to the University of Illinois. \u201cI was not given the option to be both white and Hispanic because the boxes were marked \u2018White (Non-Hispanic)\u2019 and \u2018Hispanic (Non-White),\u2019 making me feel as though whoever created the application was under the impression that white people and Hispanics could not have babies together,\u201d says Lopez. \u201cI would prefer, however, to call myself both white and Hispanic without denying either ancestry.\u201d<\/p>\n

The problems didn\u2019t stop there for the college senior. In a society where people are confident in their own assumptions, even going to dinner becomes a lesson in cultural sensitivity. \u201cWhen we go to eat at the local Mexican restaurant here in town, my friend, who is Columbian but does not speak Spanish, is always waited on in Spanish while I am always greeted in English because of the way I look,\u201d says Lopez, whose blonde hair and blue eyes belie her Hispanic roots. \u201cIt makes me upset sometimes because even though I continue to speak Spanish to them, they seem to think I’m just some white girl who is trying to speak their language and be a part of their people. But I’m their people, too.\u201d…<\/p>\n

…Luckily for Matt Kelley, he discovered during the fall semester of his freshman year at Connecticut\u2019s Wesleyan University that the school sponsored a mixed heritage student organization. \u201cIt was the first time I was made aware of \u2018people like me\u2019 who shared the experience of not fitting neatly into generally accepted racial boxes and boundaries,\u201d he says. Kelley subsequently learned about similar clubs at other schools and in 1998 decided to launch a national magazine that would create a community among those organizations.<\/p>\n

The publication \u2013 given the Yiddish name MAVIN, which means \u201cone who understands\u201d \u2013 was immediately well received, leading Kelley to form the nonprofit MAVIN Foundation<\/a> in 2000 to further the work and reach of the magazine…<\/p>\n

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

A Mixed Bag: Examining the College Experience of Multi-Racial Students INSIGHT Into Diversity April\/May 2012 (2012-03-29) Andrea Williams, Contributing Writer To most American youth, college is the requisite rite of passage into adulthood, an experience marked as much by self-exploration and discovery as biology lectures and late night cram sessions. \u00a0 From managing the excitement […]<\/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":[10283,10282,10285,10286,1722,10284],"class_list":["post-22105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-campus-life","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-andrea-williams","tag-insight-into-diversity","tag-matt-kelley","tag-mavin","tag-mavin-foundation","tag-theresa-lopez"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22105","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=22105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22105\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}