Both, Either, or Neither: The Classification of Multiracial Undergraduates and the Specter of Institutional Interests

• In Event: Moscone Center West Roundtable Session 8
  In Roundtable Session: Enhancing Campus Climates for Inclusion

Abstract

The categorization of multiracial students on college campuses is an ambiguous process that often diminishes the multiracial identity as it prioritizes organizational interests. This qualitative study draws on interviews with multiracial students at an elite university in order to understand how mixed-race students perceive, experience, and react to institutional categorization processes. In response to miscategorization and misrepresentation, students either actively resist and subvert categorization attempts, or acquiesce and consider organizational premises and interests in their self-identification. This study demonstrates not only the socially constructed nature of racial identity, but how also racial categories and identities are organizationally constructed.

Author

• Sonia Giebel, Stanford University