MIXED: Multicultural Students Tell their Life Stories: My Thoughts

While I have read a narrative here and there in each section of Mixed, “Who Am I” is the section that I have read in its entirety and the one that speaks most to me and what I do professionally. The overarching theme that I noticed from these narratives was a need for community. I want to be clear that I don’t believe these individuals were seeking to be “labeled”, but seeking other individuals like them who share in their experiences and can relate to them. This theme really made me reflect on the students I work with and what I can do to meet their needs and on a personal level, these narratives illustrate an inner crisis regarding who they are which is something I can relate to.

Some quick background about who I am, I was born in and raised in the inner city of St. Louis, MO. I do not know too much about my ancestry past my grandparents, but to my knowledge I am 100% African American. Growing up, race was never really an issue for me.  Yeah, I was told I was a minority because I was black, but that only confused me because the vast majority of the people around me were also black. Race was never something I really had to think about… until I got to college. I attended a predominantly white Liberal Arts institution in Illinois and immediately experienced culture shocked the moment I stepped on campus for the first time to register for classes. No life experience I had to that point could prepare me for the environment I had just entered. Some might ask, why would you choose to go to a school where you instantly did not feel comfortable when you got to campus? Being a first-generation college student, these weren’t things that I considered when looking into schools and I didn’t understand the importance of visiting colleges to find institutional fit. I was just ecstatic to be going away to college like so many people I saw on television and in movies.

Even though I felt like I stood out like a sore thumb, I do not regret my experience. On the contrary, I feel those four years contributed greatly to the man I am today and sparked my interest in working with college students. I would not trade that for the world (maybe for slightly lower student loans).

Those years however, created some sort of identity crisis for me that I am still sorting through four years later. I feel like there are two of me. The person my colleagues see and the person my family and friends see with only my wife having a true understanding of who the whole me is. Though this has frustrated me a great deal, I cannot begin to imagine the sense of multiplicity the individuals in this book have felt their whole lives. While I might feel like I have to choose between two worlds a good portion of the time, at the end of the day I have a home in the African-American community. The point of view that was expressed by multiple narrators was the fact that they did not feel their parents could relate or help them with finding their identity because their parents had no experience with being multiracial. That was something that I never took the time to stop and think about in respect to the disadvantages I face as an African-American and the work I do with my students of color.

This book really opened my eyes to the plight of multiracial students and how difficult it is for them to go through life like they do not truly belong, feeling like they sometimes have to pick and choose their identity often at the sacrifice of another part of their racial identity.  Yuki Kondo-Shah stated,

People always have labels for others, neat little imaginary stickers that they attach to other people’s foreheads to make it easier to understand where they fit in the world. Black, White, Asian, Hispanic, Old, Young, Rich, Poor, Immigrant, American, Foreigner. It’s an easy task when individuals appear to fit into those neat categories, like items scanned at a supermarket, but it doesn’t work with multiracial people, who are hard to place in the usual categories. You can scan and then rescan, but it’s hard to come up with an appropriate label. Maybe the curious few will ask “Where are you from?” or “What are you?” But what happens when the labels people stick on you don’t fit your self-identity?   (Garrod, Gomez, & Kilkenny, 2014, p. 43-44)

The disadvantages and discrimination I and others face because of skin color are still extremely significant, but the fact that I have a community of other African-Americans that I can look to has never been as clear as it is now.  

As for my profession, many of the multiracial students I work with and those I am friends with find their home with their minority, particularly those I work with who have African-American ancestry. What I find even more interesting is that a good number of these individuals come from a single parent household where the parent is Caucasian, very similar to Allison Bates’ narrative. I often find the conversations we have or on the subject of oppression of African-Americans, but I have rarely had a conversation about the daily the struggles they have being multiracial. It saddens me a little that this is the first time I am realizing this, but excites me for the creating closer relationships in the future.

This book has helped me sort through a lot of the internal struggles I face by helping place them into perspective of others while also showing me the flaw in my interaction with multiracial students and friends. I appreciate having the opportunity to read this book and be challenged to expand my knowledge of multiculturalism and I hope the environment I create will help address the oppression our multiracial students face.          

Garrod, A., Gomez, C., & Kilkenny, R. (Eds.). (2014). Mixed multiracial college students tell their life stories (pp. 44-45). Ithaca: Cornell University Press.