Charmaine L Wijeyesinghe:
I think we’re renaming identity and experiences from not being confused to being empowered and, and multiracial people are not the problem as Jessica has been emphasizing. It’s the systems, the borders of what oppression has created and our experiences will dismantle those with other people.

Raechele Pope:
Hello and welcome Student Affairs Now the online learning community for student affairs educators. I’m your host Raechele Pope. Today we’re discussing the experiences of multi-racial people on college campuses and the need to provide better resources and services for them with Jessica Harris, Marc Johnston-Guerrero, Charmaine Wijeyesinghe. Student Affairs Now is the premier podcast and learning community for thousands of us who work in alongside or adjacent to the field of student affairs and higher education. We hope that you’ll find these conversations, make a contribution to the field and are restorative for the profession.

Raechele Pope:
We release new episodes every week on Wednesdays. Find us@studentaffairsnow.com on YouTube or anywhere that you listen to podcasts. Now, this episode today is brought to you by Stylus, visit styluspub.com and use promo code SANow for 30% off and free shipping today’s episode is also sponsored by EverFi. The trusted partner for 1500 colleges and universities. EverFi Is the standard of care for students, safety and wellbeing with the results to prove it. As I mentioned, I’m your host, Raechele Pope. My pronouns are she her and hers and I’m broadcasting from Williamsville New York near the campus of the University of Buffalo, where I serve as the Senior Associate Dean of Faculty and Student Affairs and the unit diversity officer for the graduate school of education. I’m also an associate professor in the higher education student affairs program. UB is situated on the unseated ancestral Homeland of the Haudenosaunee people. Charmaine, Marc, Jessica, thank you for joining me today for this episode of Student Affairs Now and welcome to the podcast.

Raechele Pope:
I was wondering if you could begin by telling us a bit about you, your current role and a bit about your pathway through student affairs and counseling and into the work that you do now. And as you think about your current position, what you do now, how did you come to know that this was the work you wanted to do? And what would you like to share about your work and your scholarship and your research interests in higher education? How about if you start us off Charmaine.

Charmaine L Wijeyesinghe:
Thank you. Thank you Raechele for bringing us together and for highlighting this topic for folks in higher ed. I’m Charmaine Wijeyesinghe. I use the pronouns, she, her and hers, I live in Del Mar, New York, which is right outside of Albany and on the ancestral homelands of the Haudenosaunee people Mohegan and Mohawk people. I worked in several positions in student affairs at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. And I was the Dean of students at Mount Holyoke college. Since about 1985, I’ve been a consultant working with colleges, universities, not-for-profit organizations and for-profit organizations on issues of diversity, social justice, and identity. And since about 1992, when I finished my dissertation I included attention to multiracial topics in that consulting practice. I will say on a side, Raechele Pope was my, actually my pilot participant for my dissertation as she and I shared a residence when we were in grad school back in the day, applied writing and my writing and teaches focuses on social identity development, which includes multi-racial identity intersectionality.

Charmaine L Wijeyesinghe:
And most recently I’ve been exploring for myself kind of the macro topics we relied on and the processes we use when we explore identity. And my most recent writing on multiracial identity topics or areas was with the, with in the co-edited book I did with Marc Johnston-Guerrero, which I’m sure we will mention later or throughout the broadcast multi-racial experiences, some higher ed. Lastly, the other thing I will share about myself is I identify as multi-racial, but I didn’t always, and that may or may not come up during the presentation. Thank you.

Raechele Pope:
Jessica, can you go ahead and go next?

Jessica Harris:
Sure. I will actually start off where Charmaine left off and I will also say that I also identify as multiracial, but I did not always identify as multiracial. And I should say too, that there are some days that I don’t identify as multiracial or strongly identify as multiracial. So maybe we can get into that. But to back up a little bit, my name is Jessica Harris and I use she, her, hers pronouns. I’m an assistant professor in higher education at UCLA, which occupies the unseated territory of the Gabrielino and Tongva peoples. I am originally from the very white and homogenous city of Portland, Oregon, which I do think is relevant to my racial identity as well as the work that I currently do at UCLA. So I went to Penn State for my master’s degree in college student affairs, and I worked in a black cultural center while I was there.

Jessica Harris:
And while I was pursuing my master’s degree, I really wanted to be a president of an institution of a university, but also more, more short on the timeline is I’m a director of a cultural center, but while I was pursuing my master’s, I was able to do some research with a professor Dr. Kim Griffin and I fell in love with research and the possibilities of change that it could make in education, but also society. So and I should say I fell in love with qualitative research. So fast forward about three institutions, many states, another degree. And I landed at UCLA and I’ve been teaching and researching here for about six years. I broadly research race and racism on the college campus, and that has, and does include the racialized experiences of multiracial students, faculty, and staff. I will say that I don’t, I kind of stress this and I’m not quite sure why, but I stress that I don’t do multiracial identity development work. Rather. I really focus on racism and monoracism and racialization of multiracial individuals and sure how that might influence their identity development and identity development processes but also other outcomes and experiences. And the final thing I’ll say is that I came to this research because it was me search I, your unknowingly at that time was trying to answer my own questions about my identity, but also I was trying to write myself and my community into existence.

Raechele Pope:
Thanks, Jessica. Marc. I can already tell just with two of the introductions, this is going to be a great conversation. I have so many ideas flying through my head.

Marc Johnston-Guerrero:
Yeah. Thank you. It’s hard to go after those two. Excellent introductions. So hi everyone. My name is Marc Johnston-Guerrero. I use he him his and sha pronouns. I’m currently an associate chair of the department of educational studies and also an associate professor in the higher ed and student affairs program at the Ohio state university which occupies the traditional Homeland of the Shawnee, the Miami, and Delaware and other indigenous nations. Before I became a faculty member, I worked in several different areas of student affairs, including residential life, multicultural affairs and academic advising. And so my focus multi-racial reality has often been in alignment with the professional aspects of the work, but also personal as Jessica said, me search definitely. That’s where I got my start as a student leader and an undergrad at Michigan State or I’ve founded a Hoppa or mixed Asian student group. And later when I was a master’s student, I advised a more broader multi-racial student group. So a lot, a lot of my work and research has been around figuring out where I fit in a world that was and continues to be very modern racialized and how my identity and my presence influenced the work I was trying to do with and for students.

Raechele Pope:
Yeah. You know when I was listening to Charmaine and Jessica, and I’m wondering if this was your experience to arc, I didn’t hear you say that I, that I identify, they both said I identify as multiracial or biracial, whichever the term they were using at the time, but I didn’t always, now I know in my experience, I grew up biracial, I identified as, as biracial. And but I was very, I saw myself the way I would describe myself as very black identified, but I knew that wasn’t the whole story, you know, and I have these stories of how that came and this is very young. I’m still talking about in elementary and middle school. And I was wondering, you know, like you raise that issue a little. And so I’d like to talk about that. Why didn’t you always identify as multi-racial if you didn’t and why did you, I mean, how, how did you know, you know, to talk about, you know, if you’re, if your experience was different Marc I want you to speak to your own experience, but for Charmaine and Jessica, you both said that. So tell us a little bit more about that.

Marc Johnston-Guerrero:
Cool. I’ll start just because I forgot to mention that, but I think I’ve, I don’t know when I first heard the term multi-racial, but ever since I heard it, I have identified with it and live my life as a multi-racial person. I think that that can speak to some of how I show up in the world and my physical ambiguity. But also there’s some interesting stuff in the research around Asian and white people. I’m Filipino and white maybe identifying more as multi-racial and more consistently as multi-racial than other people with other racial backgrounds. And so that’s kind of where I’ll lead and yeah, it’s been fairly consistent that I will identify as multiracial since college.

Jessica Harris:
Yeah, I can jump in. I love this conversation. I also will say that I’ve kind of stepped not stepped back, but I’ve moved on to another research topic in career, but it’s just so lovely to come back and talk about multi-raciality because it was, it was that identity was more salient for me when I was doing that research. And so it’s beautiful that in the beginning it was coming from a lot of pain. And now when I come back and talk about it, it’s like just so much joy and love that I have for that identity in this community. But I will say that growing up, like I said, I grew up in a very homogenous white environment. So similar to you, Raechele, I identified as like other, because everybody was right white around me, including my white mother.

Jessica Harris:
And I knew I wasn’t white, but like no one was talking about race. So then I go to college and people are talking about race and I start to think through like, okay, I identify as biracial. And I think I strongly identified as that, but it was still trying to figure that out. And then once I started to research around that, it was people like Marc and others who also were using the term multiracial and people were saying, you know, I, I started to adopt multiracial because while someone might see me and see my father as a black man, and my mother’s a white woman and say, you’re biracial. I think it’s such, it that’s just so re inscribing biological norms of race. And so spoiler alert, every person is multiracial, right? Like there’s no pure racial identity that the individuals hold. And so I identify as a multiracial woman now strongly. And I will finally say that I identify usually depending on context as a black identified multiracial woman, cisgender woman, and that is really important for me because I am in some ways claiming that title, because I think people say like, well, if you’re multiracial, then you can’t be mono-racial. And I think it’s really important to play with those labels and kind of disrupt this idea of, of categories and, and biological race or ideas of around biological race.

Charmaine L Wijeyesinghe:
Thank you. I think what I will tell part of my personal story, but I think what Jessica shared and even Marc it’s, it’s the whole idea of trying to do this work, using the categories that themselves are oppressive. It’s kind of, and I know we’re sharing some of her colleagues talk about that Susan Jones, and I talk about it even Patricia Hill Collins talks about it’s not either, or it’s both. And, but in order to, for us to have this conversation, we’re using racial categories and concepts that themselves limit us and limit everybody. So that’s the tension, but I’ve gone to light tension a lot, but anyway I think some of this is generational. I grew up in the 1960s in the seventies and I was the first American born citizen in my family. And so my experience, as I claim, it is very much tied to the immigrant experience and growing up in an all white community in the Northeast.

Charmaine L Wijeyesinghe:
And because my siblings, we all look different. My brother and I are tall and darker on of here, like my hair and my sisters were shorter and they had long hair that just cascaded down their backs. And so everyone thought we were different things, but for me, I’m pretty much sure everyone thought I was black. And when I went to college, even the black students thought I was black. And I think part of it was, it was so much coached in the sixties, black and white in terms of racism, in terms of social justice, in terms of racial justice and movements, there was so much focus there. So everyone thought I was, and it’s not that I really claimed a black identity. I just didn’t correct people. And what I did, I got some not so great feedback from fellow grad students when I said my mother’s white.

Charmaine L Wijeyesinghe:
And I, little people would literally say to me, are you telling us you’re better than us? So I just sorta like, well, I won’t talk about it. And my father’s father was Asian, so my I’m actually Asian and white. But because I was at one time, six feet tall and had this complexion and hair out to here in college, most people thought it was black. I started identifying as multi-racial after I did my dissertation, because I felt like the people who were brave enough to tell me their stories and these folks identified in all different ways. I interviewed people who were black and white who chose a range of identities and they were, they were a range of ages and I felt, they told me a lot and they shared a lot and they took risks. So in honor of them, I checked the form, the paper form, and Marc, and I joked about this.

Charmaine L Wijeyesinghe:
When I registered my dissertation on a paper form, I checked your boxes for the first time. And it wasn’t a huge even now I sometimes think, you know what I mean, theory, I read about theory. I don’t know, apply it a lot to myself, but so I don’t, I don’t think it was a huge you know, earth shattering moment for me. But since then I have identified as multi-racial and I still think most people think I’m African-American, but things are more sophisticated now. So people recognize my last name as being Sri Lankan. Think context has shifted. So people in different parts of the country will say, well, this is such a different issue in my sense of the world. So I think as we talk that the shifting contexts, I think plays a huge role in identity development or the experiences of any racial group, but in particular for multi-racial people, people can claim to be multiracial now because you can check them with a one box it’s part of our culture. It’s part of our, are the nuances that we see every day. It wasn’t always, so

Raechele Pope:
Yeah, we live in a pretty di-unital world that says it has to be this or this, you know, I mean, we can live in a, I’m sorry, I’m a very dualistic world. It has to be A or B. And there’s this struggle for di-unital, you know, like the pulling together of, of what might seem like opposites. I could sit here with you. I feel like I say this in too many places, I’m just such a nerd. I could just have this conversation, you know, like the entire time and to explore this, I think we have some other things, but I want to also get to, but maybe we can come back to this and I love this me-search, you know, like, and so it’s almost like this me conversation as opposed to this some of the other things, but I thought it might help our viewers if we back up a little and take a little broader view and start at the most macro question, and that is what is it that we, that you most want our audience to know about the experience experiences of multiracial students, staff, and faculty on our campuses?

Raechele Pope:
What is it that you most want them to know? I’m going to start with you Jessica, on this one.

Jessica Harris:
Yeah. I think what I want people to know, or rather remind people to think of when they’re thinking of multiracial individuals on the college campus and their experience is that it’s about larger systems and structures. So I I’m very, very vividly remember reading for my dissertation. Let me say a few years ago, multiple years ago, many years ago. And one, one article in Maria PP Roots edited volume and multiracial experience really stands out to me. And I can’t recall who it was, but it basically was like, we need to be able to position these experiences in larger systems and structures so that people who are kind of against multiracial reality are adding multiracial reality to the conversation. Aren’t just kind of saying like, oh, poor them. They don’t fit in. Right. And I think that that’s true. And so how are these experiences of not fitting in of exclusion actually products of, and reproducing and supporting white supremacy and monoracism and racism. And so I think that that’s what I would like to remind people or let people know that these experiences are designed. They’re designed through history, they’re designed through policies and procedures and they’re designed to uphold whiteness and white supremacy. And I think that that’s just goes for, that goes for a lot of the work that we do in general in the academy is that we need to be looking at the structures and the systems that are reproducing a question rather than these micro interactions that are happening.

Raechele Pope:
Yeah. Thank you. How about you, Marc? Do you have anything to add to that?

Marc Johnston-Guerrero:
Yeah, no, I really love this conversation. And yeah, I, I think that it’s like yeah, always a both and this focus on identity and, and the context, right. It’s not really an either or I think Jessica is coming from, there was a period of time where there was a lot of focus on identity and identity development. So what is it about the social structures, but just as we all just kind of introduced ourselves and talked about our own identities, identity development is crucial. Like is the mediator to the experiences, right. So we’re in the structures, but if somebody who might be multi-racial and ancestry doesn’t identify as such, they probably will not be affected by the experience or have the same experience as somebody who does identify. And so I think that’s important to kind of think about the both, and that is important to kind of still understand what’s going on in terms of identity for multiracial people who might be mixed, who might be or not.

Marc Johnston-Guerrero:
So, and then that sort of terminology, I think, is really important to kind of key in and as well is that multi-racial biracial, mixed race multicultural, multiethnic, all of these terms and then maybe more individualized terms. They are yes, they are not all the same especially when we think about our data and the way that institutions might classify anybody who checks two or more races as a multi-racial, they may not actually identify as multiracial efforts we’ve already heard. So I think those are important for us to think about as we think about the group of people we are talking about. There’s still a lot of debate. To what extent we, they actually constitute a group, you know, how much newness is there in mixedness or being multiracial.

Raechele Pope:
That’s a deep question I want to get. I want to make sure I ask Charmaine, you know, what she wants people to know, what are some really important things

Charmaine L Wijeyesinghe:
So much, but I think this often happens, resonates with what Marc and Jessica shared too. And I, to wrestle with the idea of it Susan Jones gave me this line from Ohio State. Is there an I and identity, to what extent is there an individual experience given how many contexts and how many systems actually create how we even think about ourselves? So that’s I wrestled with that, but I even having said that I believe that multi-racial people choose a range of identities for a range of reasons. And it’s been my experience that so many times when people try to understand experiences or what can we do, what should we do? They focus on tell us about them. I have sometimes work with interracial couples in groups about multiracial kids, they’re raising, and they always want to focus on them, tell us about them so we can understand them.

Charmaine L Wijeyesinghe:
And I think it’s so interesting to, to turn historical and even current literature and learnings and insights onto ourselves. So that, how do I perpetuate what we’ll be talking about today? What do I believe about multiracial? Because for what I believe about multi-racial people, regardless of my racial ancestry. So I’m using an example is going to affect how I work with them. And so I think we’re so focused on tell us about them and not reflect on how do I, how do I show up in this whole thing? And how does that affect the experiences of the students, faculty, or staff who are multi-racial my campus.

Raechele Pope:
Sure. You know, what that makes it, makes me think about that. We and we do this beyond multiracial people, is this, this desire to problematize others, right? So we focus on how do we help them fit in? And there are multi-racial people who haven’t struggled with fit. There are some multiracial folks who do feel, you know, the struggle with fit. They, we problematize, how do we learn about them rather than how do we learn about ourselves and our own reactions? We want to focus on the problem of the individuals. And yet we don’t want to focus on the structures and the systems. And that’s pretty much a thread. I think that has run through all of this. You know, so many parts of this conversation an interesting thing that someone mentioned earlier and I want to get back to, and that is this, this whole concept of monoracism and how it how it connects to this conversation of multiracial people. And you know, I find it a fascinating word prior to reading your book Marc, the book that Marc and Charmaine edited and that Jessica has a chapter. I don’t know that I had heard that word before, and I love what I find a phrase or a word that I want to dig into. So Marc and Jessica, you don’t, you want to talk about monoracial? What is it, what is it and how does it operate on campus for us?

Marc Johnston-Guerrero:
Yeah, I can start and then Jessica can jump in because that’s fascinating that you hadn’t heard it before because yeah, I’m sort of credited with with my mentor, Kevin Nadal for coining this term in the academic literature and the chapter that came out in 2010. So just to think like, oh, it’s been 11 years now and had not heard it. It’s just, we felt it was sort of picking up, but

Raechele Pope:
I’m sure it has. It’s this administrative job. It just keeps me too busy.

Marc Johnston-Guerrero:
No, it’s okay. It’s totally okay. Because, you know, I’ve received a good amount of pushback about whether this actually is a thing, whether monoracism exists. And so I really appreciated being able to partner and collaborate with Jessica and one of her doc students Max Pariah on this chapter really examining what is monoracism, right. And trying to get at that structural oppression. But when Kevin and I were doing this chapter, it’s in a larger book Derald Wing Sue’s 2010 edited volume on microaggression. So it was very much like this feels like the microaggressions that multi-racial people are experiencing are part of something bigger. What is that bigger thing? And so we, you know, named it, monoracism other people, my name is something else like monoracial racism or mono racists, somethin. But so that’s what the term we went with and kind of stuck with it. And the ways that it’s debated and questioned feels as though that fit the, the sort of the definition of microaggressions and the conceptualization of microaggressions that Sue was putting forward. So well that we were like, okay, this is it. Like the people, you know, thinking it’s not even a thing is a microaggression in and of itself. So and then Jessica has been building on that with her work especially with critical multi-racial theory. So I’ll turn it over to her.

Jessica Harris:
Thanks, Marc. And thanks for queen and theorizing the term. Yeah, I, I don’t know what to say about this because in our book, we did offer the definition that Marc and his colleague offered originally, which I still very much adopt and put in a lot of my work, but within the chapter that we all wrote together, we also said, you know, maybe we also want to expand this thinking around monoracism a little bit so that, you know, multiracial people have been policed their, their racial identity and, and they’re ambiguous than being racially ambiguous oftentimes has been policed and there’ve been terms put on them. And so do we really want to do that with the racism, the monoracism that they might, they might encounter. And so we decided, no, we’re just going to add some tenants, perhaps some guiding, guiding thoughts that we have for monoracism.

Jessica Harris:
And some of those were around, you know, everyone is affected by monoracism. Some of those people are targets, and those are people who may or may not identify as multiracial. Some of those people are the perpetrators of, of that monoracism, multiracial people might internalize monoracism. It’s very much being enacted on a horizontal level structural level, multiple levels. And so I don’t know if that necessarily clarifies what it is, but I think that that’s a good point is to actually make it a little bit more muddy. The one other thing I would say is, you know, speaking of being able to talk to someone for days about something I could talk to Marc and others about, like is monoracism, a thing, and the pushback that people may or may not receive around their scholarship around these identities that are in borderlands, where I think it’s really important for me to end this, this answer on I do believe that monoracism is a thing.

Jessica Harris:
Not only because I experienced it and know others who do, or I see it on a daily basis, it’s because there are, I think we need to expand the definition of racism, right? I think a narrow, critical race theory will say a narrow definition of racism is only upholding white supremacy, right? It’s perhaps, you know, the dominant understanding is that it affects black individuals, that it is overt, that we can see the harm that is done, where if we start to think about racism, as anti-blackness, as racist nativism, as monoracism, as xynophobia, and it’s all these intricate intersecting strands that are making the rope of racism we are going to have a whole lot of easier, never will be easy time dismantling racism and white supremacy. And so that’s why I want to say like monoracism is a thing. And it, we have to acknowledge it side other racism’s if we, if we want to do anything, if we want to make some change.

Raechele Pope:
Sure know, yeah, yeah, go ahead.

Charmaine L Wijeyesinghe:
I was going to jump in. I did know about the concept and, and I, although I think Raechele’s experience is not unique. I did know about it. And to be honest with you, I wasn’t sure what to do with it for years. I kept seeing it pop up and I didn’t really pay attention to it. And I thought, no, I don’t know. And through working with Marc a lot and working with the chapter in the book, you know, I I’m coming around to it. I understand it much more through the examples that people gave us. So that would be the, the advice I would give to folks is there is a certain, I’m not going to say that that word is a jargon word, but we do use certain terms within any discipline as if everyone understands what we’re talking about.

Charmaine L Wijeyesinghe:
So I think with, particularly with monoracism or other emerging concepts that are coming out of the study of multiracial people’s lives it’s helpful to ground them for folks. It’s not like we bear the responsibility for explaining it, but it’s with through examples and different ways of saying things will help people understand. And I think less than resistance to concepts, because through through the book and through more reading and interactions, it’s like, okay, I’m getting this now. And I’m seeing this as a valid form of run a valid form or oppression, but it’s more legitimate in my mind as opposed to something I just want to fluff off because it’s like, yeah, I don’t think I get this. It helps people by grounding and I think, and repeating it and giving people’s examples through people’s lived experience, but also systemic examples really helped people come around to understanding the nature of evolving nature of systems of oppression.

Raechele Pope:
Well, what I found is I resonated with the word immediately. I just, I don’t know how I missed it. I even read Sue’s book that you on the microaggressions. I somehow I must have just read it as something else, but I immediately resonated with it and thought it made sense. And it was a way of understanding, you know, these I love Jessica’s image of the rope, the different strands in this rope of, of racism and this rope of oppression. And I think that that’s really important now. So we defined monoracism. And then what I wanted to move this into is, and we also talked about microaggressions a little in that, helping us to see some of the monoracism. And I’m wondering if we could share with our viewers some of the examples of, or microaggressions and harms that are faced by multi racial individuals. Now we don’t have to necessarily I’m not saying give the examples, I’m saying, explain to us what are some of the specific microaggressions that might be experienced by multi-racial individuals. Yeah.

Charmaine L Wijeyesinghe:
Well, I, I’m not on a campus, so my colleagues will definitely jump in and out, but I think misrecognized mixed recognition or assumptions of who people are based on phenotype or so visually for folks who are not interested in picking so many triggers around race are based on just assumptions of how people were so being misrepresented or misidentified or overlooked or invisible because people just assume, well, this who you are, and I don’t have to pay attention to you. I don’t have to ask you, I just assume who you are, and that can play out in so many different ways. You know, who you assume was in your classroom and how do you respond to them? Who do you assume is in a student organization and what their needs might be? So that’s one thing I will throw out.

Jessica Harris:
I will throw out one other and then I’ll let Marc take it cause I just build on Marc’s work. So, but one of the things that I found more recently that I think was more of a like maybe aha moment or something that I hadn’t seen a lot in the literature before is that I was working with multi-racial faculty and they experienced a micro aggression that I termed as multiracial tokenization. So there’s kind of some backstory here where some multiracial faculty members in this study, I think there’s like 26 faculty members. Many of them felt that they were racially ambiguous or racially palatable so that the institution could claim them as a person of color, but they weren’t fully a person of color. Right. So they might inform room and they weren’t read, they were read as racially ambiguous. Right. and non-threatening, and that’s just a lot about what it means to be a person, a monoracial person of color, so on and so forth.

Jessica Harris:
You can read some of these articles if you want to know more. But I also want to stress that being racially ambiguous or palatable did not necessarily mean that they had white heritage. So there’s some complexity here. But with these individuals, they said, Hey, the institution knows, they know that I’m mixed race or multiracial or any of the above. And they know that I’m racially ambiguous and racially racially palatable. So they’re going to claim me as a token for diversity, and they’re going to put me on these diversity committees, they’re going to put me on these other committees. And they’re going to say, Hey, look, we have a, we have a person of color there. We’ve done our work. And that is really being used by the institution. The other component of that, the microaggression really comes from not only this, a mass amount of service work that they have to do, perhaps more than people that are all other faculty in the academy. But that they also are not being taken seriously by the institution. So there’s not really a multiracial support group or outlets to think through or process their multiracial identity. They’re having other microaggressions happen to them, multiracial microaggressions happen to them or with them at the same. So that’s what I would say is multiracial tokenization.

Marc Johnston-Guerrero:
Yeah. No, these are excellent examples. I think that yeah, and they all kind of connect. But some additional ones would just be, you know, the questioning of racial authenticity, or not necessarily being made to feel enough or not enough of any particular group. The, the question about, you know, the, what are you types of questions these show up throughout the literature, but in people’s experiences, even if it’s not the, what are you question, but what’s your background, what’s your ethnicity. There’s something about multiracial people that people feel they can ask questions. And then the response is like, oh, how did that happen? Or how do your parents meet that you wouldn’t ask somebody who is, mono-racial not to say you wouldn’t, but sometimes it doesn’t happen. And then just this denial of multi-racial reality.

Marc Johnston-Guerrero:
And so, you know, sometimes talking about these experiences and people saying it’s not a big deal or the whole question about monoracism. And then something that I’ve been working on with a colleague Carly forward at Penn state building on some of Jessica’s work too, is this like a ratio multi-racial eraser. And we’re seeing that a lot with data representation how institutions represent their multi-racial students are two or more students. And so that can be sort of institutionalized more macro level aggression against multiracial people who are, you know, fit in different ways to different categories to meet the institution’s needs. Kind of like what Jessica was saying. So those are just some additional examples,

Raechele Pope:
But we’re seeing that more and more as people are trying to count, right. You know, like and I’ve now started seeing campuses. I dental five, they’re talking about their BiPOC folks or their folks, their faculty of color, let’s say. And then they have, they provide a number for the faculty of color, provide a huge number for the white faculty. And then they say, and then we have two or more races and they don’t know what to do with this accounting that they’ve created. Cause they’re not going to do anything with the data, but they’re just show it. And so I’m thinking that really is some high level eraser for me, because they’re saying you just don’t count, even though we’re counting you, we don’t know what to do with you, and we’re not gonna do anything with those numbers and we’re not going to explore it, but we’re putting it out there. And I, and I’ve been trying to figure out what the thinking behind that is. And I guess I should just stop thinking about it and tell them to stop doing it, like, or make, or do something with it.

Charmaine L Wijeyesinghe:
So Raechele, can I also add that the early literature on multi-racial identity came out of the counseling field? So the assumption was if you’re multiracial, you’re confused. And I think, although there is some that echoes less now, I think it’s still an assumption that multi-racial people are confused about who they are. And as Marc kind of alluded to that they always want to talk about their identity, or I want to talk about their identity because it must be an issue for them. That’s also an assumption. And then one of the thing I had recently, I was talking to a faculty colleague and I said, I’m hearing all this hesitancy from multi-racial graduate students about their work. I said, I do not understand it. I don’t understand why they aren’t confident. Why are they embracing their work? Why aren’t they going forward with the foundations they have? And she said, Charmaine, they’re getting beat up all the time that their work on a multi-racial topic, isn’t still not seen as legitimate and relevant. And that was an eyeopening moment. I see Marc nodding quite a bit. I’m sure Marc and Jessica advise graduate students, but she said what you’re not seeing as they are still being questioned on whether or not this is a legitimate topic to be pursuing.

Raechele Pope:
Not only is it legitimate, is it important enough? You know, there are these other issues that we should be exploring around race, and this is not an important issue. So yeah, finding that fascinating.

Marc Johnston-Guerrero:
Yeah. Can I jump in, I mean, it’s often framed as a distraction, right? Raechele, when you were talking about the, it’s not as important, but that, that, and so that does build up for graduate students, both masters and doctoral level, as they’re thinking about they’re engaging in classroom conversations, you know, where do they do their research or where do they focus their attention? And they’re constantly questioned by their peers, by faculty, themselves, especially faculty of color can, can perpetuate this and be questioning. So I think that that’s really important Charmaine, thanks for bringing it up, that we just kind of think about how we do support maybe push, we can push and further our graduate students thinking, but not to their detriment, right. Not til they’re exhausted and they move on to other topics. There’s also this sense that they don’t want to be pigeonholed to only being able to study multi-racial things, especially if it’s their own identity. I’d love to hear Jessica’s point on this. As she moved, she said in the beginning, she moved on to other topics. And so I don’t know why I, you know, I, I’m not putting you on the spot Jessica, just love to hear any thoughts you have, especially as you’ve done research on multiracial faculty.

Jessica Harris:
Yeah. Thank you for that Marc and also Sherman for bringing that up. I agree. I was that grad student and I try and create an environment now where students don’t don’t necessarily have to question with any topic, like, is this valid enough? Right. Is this important enough? I, I will just, I just moved on because I felt like I was getting stale in my research this, I mean, I just need to go back to grad school. Like, that’s the other message. That’s the other message of grad students are listening. Like, yes, your topic is valid and also just love this time because at no point again, will you have dedicated years to read and learn? So I think it was just that I was getting a little bit stale. I would love, love, love to return to the topic at another time.

Jessica Harris:
The other thing I will say too, is I’m working with a student right now. Who’s thinking through doing their dissertation on multiraciality. And I think it kind of goes back to why I stopped doing it or moved on rather is that I think it’s important for people who want to pursue this research as grad students or beyond or before that they also do think about it in innovative ways. And that’s not to say the topic, it’s more so of the like, okay, we are a little bit we’re removed from the identity development strictly era. Right. And so how are we, how are we researching this in ways that are looking at structures and systems, but also like really, really has implications for coalition building across identities and experiences. Right? So rather than perhaps like absolutely focusing on multiracial experiences, but then also like how are these policies and procedures upholding biological notions of race, which is like hearkens back to eugenics and just a very outdated understanding of race. Right. So I’m just saying that I validate and would love all, all students to think through this topic, but how might we do it in a way that like really disrupts these larger systems? And I D these dominant ideologies that once again are upholding white supremacy.

Raechele Pope:
Well, that is the question of the day. Isn’t it, how do we disrupt white supremacy in general? And how do we change systems, you know, like, which has which is at the root at, but being someone who tries to think the only, I still think that there’s a lot of work to do around racial identity, you know, to actually get to these models that explore it more completely less dualistically both within models and outside of models, because I think for so many of us that’s helped us understand ourselves or others, but just a little piece, it wasn’t supposed to be the entire answer. Right. and we need to look at systems and we need to deal with race and racism in some very different ways. Then have only that have been posed, you know, and this is all we have.

Raechele Pope:
It’s not all we have, it’s all we have right now. Right. And then we have these people, you know, like you three, doing some pretty amazing work in some very different ways, you know, around these issues. So I want to go to racial identity theories I want to talk about, and it, and it might go back to something that you said Charmaine earlier when you were talking about this first dealing with multi-racial theories and concepts we’re dealing in counseling and counseling was saying that they’re confused. Well, I would back that up a little bit in saying maybe some of the people, because of how they were harmed, we’re going in and saying, I’m confused, I’m hurt. I’m all of these things. And so counseling did what it was doing, their understanding of it, but it was these often monoracial people who are interpreting the hurt and the confusion, and then putting it out in a pretty narrow way. And which might, you know, in some ways talk about, you know, racial identity theory. So they’ve historically ignored the uniqueness of multi-racial individuals. And how has development processes both similar and different from multiracial individuals? Now Charmaine, I’m going to throw this one to you first, because I know this is where you sort of began your work and how it just has changed so much in the time that that you’ve explored it. Yeah.

Charmaine L Wijeyesinghe:
And I think it’s, it’s, it’s evolving and it continues to evolve and it always will. And that’s what makes it so exciting. And so I think it is that both, and I think it’s also important to understand historic any theory in a historical context. So that counseling piece was one of the first things that was there. When I went into research multi-racial identity in the ninth, late 1980s, my lit review, I had to go to the counseling literature and I went to black and white theories because there just really wasn’t a whole lot there. And I think the counseling theories provided a certain framework, but what I found with people were extrapolating from that framework all over the place. So the larger message became not the folks who were in those studies, they sought counseling services for a reason, but that the larger image of people being confused became the narrative for a long time.

Charmaine L Wijeyesinghe:
I feel for multiracial people. I think the the evolution of multi-racial theory, it’s just a natural outgrowth of any disciplines. So as opposed to being an exception to the rule of identity development, I think by looking at multi-racial the experiences of diverse, multiracial people, and not just folks who are black and white folks with white ancestry, but a real range of multiracial people, really advances the study of racial identity development. That said, I think there are certain things that may be of heightened salience to multi-racial folks. For example, having a parents who, of two different racial groups, again, that those groups were sustained by centuries of oppression, but we still use them still check the boxes. These my parents did, and I still check the boxes. So it’s that dilemma of working within systems of oppression, even as we try to dismantle them, but perhaps being exposed to different cultures in their own home very varying levels of acceptance that ambiguity that I think we’ve all spoken to about appearance.

Charmaine L Wijeyesinghe:
Those aren’t necessarily unique to multiracial folks, but they highlight those areas that we can look at and then say, okay, how does this relate to other populations? I know plenty of black folks who are racially ambiguous in terms of appearance and folks from other racial groups. So racial ambiguity is not just relate in relation to multiracial people, but for everybody. But by looking at their experiences, we might know more about the experiences of being misread. I also think there are very, there are fewer populations who are it’s been put on them to be the bridge over the racial divide or that the new face of America. So that is somewhat of a unique aspect, I think for multi-racial folks. I think by looking at multi-racial identity, it introduces or highlights other concepts that I think are true for other groups like malleability illuminosity and situational identities.

Charmaine L Wijeyesinghe:
So we know from the involving scholarship on multiracial people, that these are new concepts or concepts that have perhaps not been fully investigated for other populations. So I think it’s a both and that there are unique aspects and those unique aspects can then push our study of identity theory, racial identity theory across multiple groups. The last thing I’ll say is I really like a lot of what Jessica has been saying, and it kind of also falls my arc of thinking. I think it looking at any kind of identity development, it encourages us to think less about identity occurring in context, but through context and those contexts are not just what I experienced my family or not just how I process things, but all the systems that I encounter on campus and beyond in my community in the, in the nation that inform how I understand my own experience.

Charmaine L Wijeyesinghe:
And those will always change. Like what about immigration and naturalization now? And what does that say for folks who are experiencing identity development in this era? So I think does will always be changing and that’s why we always have to study it. And that’s what makes it exciting. I don’t think we’ll ever get there of totally understanding identity development in any group because that our understanding of the groups and the experience of those groups are always changing. And that’s why there’s always room for new theories. So that’s what I will say. Well, I hope I answered your question or so

Raechele Pope:
I think you shared some stuff that, you know, of course, let me go off on some little thing in my head saying, oh, I want to explore that more and we’re getting close to time. Believe it, or not feel like we’ve just scratched the surface. I wanna give you an opportunity to do something. I love the work that Gloria Anzaldua has done, you know, around well, let me put the period in another place. I love the work that Gloria Anzaldua has done, period. But one of the things that stands out to me as she, so famously discussed the challenges and the joys of living in the borderlands. And so I want to give you an opportunity to, because so often when we’re talking about marginalized people or oppressed people that we, we focus on the challenges and the issues, and I think it’s just as important that we talk about the joys and the those experiences that move us from this tragic narrative that people like to explore.

Raechele Pope:
So we’ll talk about that, but I want to give you an option of what to respond to so that you can also talk about how that’s true for multiracial people, this, these challenges and joys of living in the, in the borderlands. But I also want to give you a chance to just say your final thoughts. And so it can either be about that or something that you wish that we were able to get to in this conversation. Marc, I want to know if you’d like to start us off there.

Marc Johnston-Guerrero:
Sure. Thank you. There’s a lot to try to think about, well, how do I close all this and bring the things together? Cause what Charmaine ended with, or all of what Charmaine said was, I mean, that’s yeah, a lot, please check out her chapter in the book, if you haven’t already which left off with identity. Not in context, but through context. And it just made me think I was earlier in the conversation I was saying context is through identity. Right. and so their identity really is the mediator. So there’s something there. And I think that’s important for us to think about when we do research, especially qualitative research and accessed experience through people’s narratives. I think that that can be difficult to understand what’s the context versus what’s identity because we’re, it’s through the lens. But also check out Jessica’s walking interview protocol if you haven’t done so as well.

Marc Johnston-Guerrero:
Cause that’s yeah, very innovative. So I’ll talk a little bit about the joys. I think it’s a tricky, it’s very tricky because when you asked about how unique multi-racial identity might be compared to other racial identity theories, I want there to be an understanding there are some unique sort of aspects, but unique does not mean special. Cause that’s often a critique is that for somehow somebody claiming being multi-racial that they’re trying to be special or be unique in some way different from some other group. So that that’s often a trigger for people. And I don’t know what to do with that. So I often stick with the marginalization and I stick with the negative experiences because when we go into the positive, we’re often critiqued for that saying we’re better than others or that, you know what you’re yeah.

Marc Johnston-Guerrero:
This all complicated. But I think some of the joys that I’ve seen in my work and been even experienced is just being recognized. I think that sometimes that being recognized by a mono-racial or mono-ethnic group that we claim belonging in, or it’s being recognized by building community with other multi-racial or mixed folks that have some sort of sense of connectedness there. And then just seeing ourselves represented in the literature, like Jessica said, what drove hers to make sure that others are you know, see themselves being represented and validated. It’s definitely a source of joy that I’ve seen. And I hope as my work or I’ve become a more seasoned scholar in this area, I’ve transitioned to making sure other people have opportunities to be able to research and, and publish in this area as well. So thanks

Jessica Harris:
Yes. I can go quickly. I think there’s a class starting outside, so there might be a little noise, but I echo everything that Marc said and that everybody has everything. Everyone has said the last 55 minutes, but one of the, one of the joys is something that just happened is like the continual learning that I’m I have within a community with other multiracial people. So Marc saying like unique doesn’t mean special. That was just like an aha moment for me. And I have learned so much from Marc and others and I just really appreciate that. And I think I now hopefully create that space of support and understanding for graduate students or other individuals who identify as multiracial and are now whether or not they’re researching multiraciality, but are trying to think through their own identity. And so that has been a joy for me.

Jessica Harris:
And I think a joy just to be in community with other mixed race multi-racial individuals who live in the borderlands. The one other thing I will say is that I do believe that living in the borderlands creates a unique, perhaps not special, but a unique consciousness right. Of really having to, we’re getting to sense and feel and observe things in all sorts of levels and sides. And I think that that can be it can be heavy, but it also is such a joy to be able to sense and see in a way that brings beauty and understanding into your life. So that has been a joy for myself. And I know some other participants in studies that I’ve embarked on.

Raechele Pope:
You know, Jessica that was so powerful to me, what you just said in the sense that my being biracial, my understanding that helped me understand my being bisexual. It was like, oh, I got that. You know, I get this, I understand this in some ways that I don’t know that I would’ve got as easily as quickly as, as as deeply perhaps. And so what you said really resonated with me, so thank you for that Charmaine. I want to give you this opportunity too.

Charmaine L Wijeyesinghe:
I think just quickly on the borderlands. I think we’re renaming identity and experiences from not being confused to being empowered and, and multiracial people are not the problem as Jessica has been emphasizing. It’s the systems, the borders of what oppression has created and our experiences will dismantle those with other people. My final thought is I liked Jessica had moved away from multiracial topics and really was, I had been delving into intersectionality and having a blast doing that. I came back to the table as I like to think of it through the multi-racial experiences book. And I found that there’s a whole lot more people at that table. And what they’re saying is so interesting and so helpful to me. And so it was, it’s been lovely to be at a big and broad table that is still expanding. And even as we do that, I will leave you with the thought that we are living in working and researching and contested times using contested topics. So there will always be resistance, but with resistance, there is community and strength. So I wish anyone going into this field or continuing in this field or returning to this field, the community and strength that I have gotten from my work in this area.

Raechele Pope:
Thank you, chairman. I am so grateful for all of your time today. I mean, Charmaine, Marc, Jessica. I mean, I loved how you filled up by brain, you know, and I have lots to think about tonight and for the week and for the month and the year. So thank you for that. I am so grateful for your time for your contributions and for this conversation. I know that this episode is going to be turned around and aired rather quickly. So I want to send a heartfelt appreciation to the amazing and unflappable Nat Ambrosey who does our behind the scenes productions. Thanks Nat. If you’re listening today and not already receiving our weekly newsletter, please visit our website at studentaffairsnow.com and scroll to the bottom of the homepage to add your email to our MailChimp list. And while you’re there, check out our archives. You will also finding the newsletter that comes some other resources?

Raechele Pope:
You know, like we’ll talk about this book and we’ll talk about some videos and other resources that our panelists today had. if you found this conversation helpful, how could you not please share it on your social media platforms and share it with your colleagues and your students. Also, please subscribe to the podcast and invite others to subscribe, share it on social media or leave a five-star review. It really helps conversations like this, reach more folks and build a learning community. Finally, I want to give a heartfelt shout out to our sponsors. We really appreciate your support. Hey, Stylus publishing. Stylus proud to be a sponsor for Student Affairs Now podcast browse their student affairs, diversity and professional development titles at styluspub.com. Use the promo code SANow for 30% off all books plus free shipping hey free shipping. You can also find Stylus on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter @styluspub. EverFi is our other sponsor today.

Raechele Pope:
How will your institution rise to reach today’s socially conscious generation. These students rate commitments to safety, wellbeing, and inclusion, as important as academics and extracurriculars. It’s time to reimagine the work of student affairs as an investment and not an expense. For over 20 years EverFi has been the trusted partner for 1500 colleges and universities with nine efficacy studies behind our courses. You will have confidence that you’re using the standard of care for students, safety and wellbeing, with the results to prove it transform the future of your institution and the communities you serve. Learn more at everfi.com/studentaffairsnow. Again, I’m Raechele Pope, thanks to Jessica and Marc and Charmaine and to everyone who’s watching and listening. John Lewis has been on my mind for the last few months. And so I want to say in his honor, folks make good trouble.

Websites

Multiracial in America

Podcasts

CMRS April 2021 Book Talk: Multiracial Experiences in Higher Education – YouTube

Article/Book citations 

Johnston-Guerrero, Marc P., and Charmaine L. Wijeyesinghe, editors. Multiracial Experiences in Higher Education: Contesting Knowledge, Honoring Voice, and Innovating Practice. Sterling, Stylus, 2021.