Racial lines no longer just black and white

Based on her appearance, you wouldn’t easily be able to guess University of Minnesota sophomore Mary Taylor‘s racial or ethnic heritage. But if you ask the communications studies major what her ethnicity is, she’d tell you she is three-quarters white, 12.5 percent black and 12.5 percent Native American — a heritage she makes sure to represent when filling out surveys.

The current generation of college students encompasses the largest group of mixed-race people to come of age in the U.S., according to a recent New York Times series on multiracial identity.

Although young Americans increasingly identify themselves as multiracial, they often feel that their fluid identities are restricted when asked to self-identify on paper.

Under new requirements set by the U.S. Department of Education, which will take effect this year, multiracial non-Hispanic students who choose multiple races on surveys will be placed in a "two or more races" category. The justification for this is to offer students of mixed heritage more options to self-identify, and some say it demonstrates the U.S.’s greater appreciation of the fluidity of racial identity.

However, many sociologists fear it will lump all multiracial groups into one category, ignoring the different life experiences and the varying levels of discrimination that members of various multiracial subgroups face.

"It’s like the ‘other’ category or the ‘multiracial’ category because everyone get’s glommed together and you can’t even interpret it," said sociology faculty member Carolyn Liebler. "It’s a battle whenever you’re trying to compile information about people’s race. On the one hand, institutions want to know who you are, they want you to self-identify … but on the other hand, the entities that want to create statistics would really prefer if you could give a simple answer."

Often, surveys and census forms don’t accurately reflect the reality of racial differences and identities to begin with, she said. This is partly because people of multiracial backgrounds may select a category based on a political decision or because their identities are constantly changing.

"There were a lot more pressures in the past to pick a race and there were legal pressures," Liebler said, referring to the "one drop rule," which classified Americans with minuscule amounts of African ancestry as black — and thereby of lower status.

"Being able to self-identify was definitely a civil rights issue … and young people grew up with a sense that it’s a personal right to be able to identify."

Although Americans were allowed to self-identify by 1960, they were expected to identify only one race. It wasn’t until 2000 that the census finally recognized more than race, which dance sophomore Mette Towley appreciates.

Towley usually selects both African-American and white, but wishes she had the opportunity to specifically identify her Norwegian ancestry, she said. She sometimes checks the "other" box when forced to pick one race.

"I’ve always been proud and comfortable with the fact that I’m a mixed person. I’ve never felt like I can’t identify," she said. Sometimes Towley feels like she has to choose, "but I should never have to choose, even though it’s my right to. … People just don’t accept that. They don’t want you to choose, they just want something that’s easy to identify. If you don’t fit a category you’re a nuisance."

Desiree Abu-Odeh feels the same way. She’s a first-year graduate student who self-identifies as half-Palestinian and half-Caucasian American. She said she selected the "other" category when applying to the University as a prospective undergraduate and identified herself as Palestinian.

Abu-Odeh later discovered the University didn’t send her information about campus opportunities for first-year students of color. She suspects it’s because Arab-Americans are considered Caucasian by the federal government.

"Lumping us as Caucasian is not true to our experiences because of the prejudice we face depending on our last names and how we look," she said. "To say that we’re white is to belittle our experiences as minorities and as people of color in the U.S."

In The Mix is a student group founded in 2008 for students of multiracial and multiethnic heritage. The group’s president, Anthony Shields, said he hopes to leverage pressure on the University to offer more options on application forms so that situations like Abu-Odeh’s don’t come up. Because of In The Mix’s small membership, the journalism sophomore said the group is focusing on events like "Shades," tonight’s open discussion at Coffman Union about racism and skin color. The event is being organized in honor of Black History Month.

Shields, Towley and Taylor joined the group because other cultural groups didn’t address the unique experiences students of multiracial backgrounds face.

"Cultural groups try to create a community among ethnic groups, but that’s the issue with a person who’s multiethnic: we don’t identify with just one," Shields said. "Sometimes you can feel rejected and sometimes you feel like you don’t click with some people."

Shields said he discovered his mixed-race pride since attending the University’s predominantly white campus and identifies himself as a German, Hungarian and African-American — not just black and white — which he feels gives him an edge.

"Nobody can really put me in a category," he said. "It’s almost easier for me to connect with other cultures [because] I’m not in one major group. It makes it easy for me to step out of my comfort zone."

Lolla Mohammed Nur welcomes comments at lmohammed@mndaily.com.