“Everyone is Just Mixed to Me”: Exploring the Role of Multiraciality in College Students' Racial Claims

Abstract

ABSTRACTExamining discourses of multiraciality through college students' claims about race offers helpful insights for educators striving to create equitable campuses for mixed race students. One area of discourse is the positioning of multiracial individuals as evidence for the social construction of race. Another critiques the multiracial movement, with its large college student base, for reinforcing the biological concept of race. This study investigates how a diverse sample of 40 undergraduate students from two U.S. West Coast institutions used multiraciality in varied ways to assert their claims about race and whether it mattered. Six patterns of multiracial discourse emerged in their racial claims. These findings suggest that the novelty of multiraciality allows it to be invoked to support various claims about the nature of race, namely whether race is biological, and the current and future relationship between mixedness and “post-racial” progress. Implications for research and practice also are discussed.