The burden of being multiracial in college
There is a growing number of multiracial individuals in the world which means there are more and more multiracial students who are attending college. However, there is a large discrepancy between the performance of multiracial students and their overall experiences in college. In a study conducted on biracial students at historically black colleges/universities (HBCU), biracial students in non-HBCU colleges were found to have “poorer quality of interactions with faculty, staff, and students,” compared to their monoracial peers. Despite the poor interactions with most individuals at their respective colleges/universities, these students still had better interactions than those at HBCUs. Biracial students also suffered from diminished engagement in 7 out of 11 areas of engagement tested in the study—things like their improvement in skills and development which likely is due to being viewed as an outsider in the community (NSSE). Oddly enough, the students at non-HBCUs had better interactions than those at HBCUs.
Being Multiracial in a world that's not ready for it
A long history of exclusion
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For centuries the “one-drop rule” has made it so that individuals with any trace of minority blood are forced to identify with their minority race rather than as multiracial. During the times of Jim Crow, it became vital to define who was black and who was not in order to ensure that discrimination could continue dehumanization and segregation. The general assembly of Virginia in the 1924 Racial Integrity Act made it so that the “one-drop rule” was law. Individuals were not allowed to identify with more than one race. If they were to do so, it would result in severe consequences (An Act to Preserve Racial Integrity). The literal title of the act implies that if a person is multiracial that they no longer have integrity, which has created a long-lasting belief that racial purity is essential. To preserve the white-American dominance, if people were able to claim they are partially white they could then have more access to resources and thus maintain their power.
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The option to choose more than one race was not even available on the 10-year census which began in the 1970s until the 2000s and the number of people who identify with more than one race has increased greatly
A lack of understanding of what it means to be multiracial
Dictionaries such as Cambridge and Merriam-Webster define multiracial in a way that seems to omit the fact that they are people and describes them more as objects
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. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines multiracial as “composed of, involving, or representing various races.”
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Cambridge's dictionary defines it as “involving people of several different races”
A Problem of Information
The United States has only just begun to acknowledge the existence of multiracial people, learning a large gap to fill on the research available on why multiracial individuals seem to struggle much more in academic settings. The government has had a long history of taking a purist stance by attempting to deny and discourage the presence of multiracial people. Now with the sudden surge of multiracial people, it is important now more than ever to find a way to support them.