Rutgers Group Brings Students Together to Explore the Complexities of Being MultiracialPosted in Articles, Campus Life, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, United States on 2012-09-22 15:48Z by Steven |
Rutgers Group Brings Students Together to Explore the Complexities of Being Multiracial
Focus
Rutgers University News
September 2012
Carrie Stetler
By 2050, one in five Americans is likely to be multiracial
Itâs a question Joan Gan hears a lot: âWhat are you?â She instantly knows what it means.
Her father is Chinese and her mother is Greek, so when people meet her for the first time, they often have trouble identifying her ethnicity.
Gan, a Rutgers junior who grew up in Parsippany, understands their curiosity, and the questions donât really bother her. But other aspects of growing up biracial were harder to negotiate.
âIn high school I saw lots of ethnic clubs, and at colleges, too, and I didnât really know which one to join,â says Gan, an environmental science major. âEven though Iâm technically Asian, people donât consider me one of them and technically Iâm white, but people donât always consider me that, either.â
During her first year at Rutgers, Gan discovered Fusion: Rutgers Union of Mixed People, which gives her and other students an opportunity to come together and explore the challenges and complexities of being multiracial…
…Fusion began seven years ago when Rutgers psychology professor Diana Sanchez, who is now the clubâs adviser, started researching biracial and multiracial identity.
âAs a way of connection multiracial students and getting participants for my research, I asked a student I knew to start an organization and he did,ââ says Sanchez, an an associate professor in the Department of Psychology, in the School of Arts and Sciences.. âMultiracial people hold a unique view of race; theyâve questioned it in a very different way. If you feel âin betweenâ communities, there is another identity you form that has to do with the merging of both those identities.â
Phillip Handy, who graduated in 2009, was one of the co-founders of Fusion. He is half European and half African American. âRacial conversations at Rutgers … often viewed race in a very categorical way,â says Handy, who grew up in Howell and now lives in California.âI thought the discussions would be enhanced by a multiracial student group.â…
Read the entire article here.