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Surviving MSU as a Multiracial Student
When the clock struck midnight March 1, African American and Chicano History months concluded, but many argue that racial issues have not improved since that 28-day celebration of racial harmony. Students of Michigan State University have recently been alarmed by several hate-crime incidents and the perceived intensification of racial tensions. Five states, including California, New York, New Jersey, Michigan and Massachusetts, make up 50 percent of the nations reported hate crimes. According to the 2003 hate crime statistics of the FBI, MSU students attend a university in the nation’s fourth most (hate) crime-ridden state, with more than 400 incidents reported annually. African American students living in the dormitories of the Red Cedar Zone, according to the Multi Racial Unity Living Experience (MRULE) organization, were subjected to racial intimidation around the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. These incidents were the beginning of a possible string of unconfirmed incidents to occur in less than a two-month period. Racial tensions were evident at the emergency informational meeting on February 27 about the Hubbard assaults that occurred earlier that day. (Visitors who have since been arrested allegedly held a gun to a man's head in a dorm room at Hubbard Hall and sprayed him with gasoline which they then threatened to ignite.) The negative sentiment of non-black students towards African Americans at the meeting, organized by Paul Goldblatt, director of Residence Life and Angela Brown, director of University Housing, was the inspiration for the subsequent Blackout event.
Both minorities and the majority have been the targets of racism but there is a smaller sector of the population – a group that confounds the color line. These are students who are bi- or multiracial. The person that confounds the color line is typically perceived as an individual who has the blood of whites and one or more minority ethnic groups, yet some say they are subjected to the same racism as any other minority group. The Web sites of Genelex and DNA Print, two competing DNA testing agencies, report that a majority of their African American, Native American and Hispanic customers average significant percentages of European ancestry. Such results might fail to thwart the concept of the “one-drop rule,” which was historically implemented by Caucasian slaveholders and supremacists. “The white man once said that if you have one ounce of black blood, you’re black, and I agree with that, because if you don’t have white skin, you shouldn’t consider yourself white,” said East Asian Languages and Culture senior Eric C. Miller, Jr. Similarly, Andrea M. Humanic, a Journalism sophomore and member of MRULE, genetically an African-American and Caucasian individual who identifies herself as black, said, “I’m offended by biracial people that claim both sides.” Nevertheless, Miller, an African-American, later expressed that if he were biracial, he might choose to identify with both races. “You need both [races] to know your true identity. I would not just pick one race. I’d choose both, because ultimately it’s my decision upon who I want to call myself.” Some individuals believe that no matter the amount of white blood, if there is one drop of ethnic minority blood, there is room for one to hate. “If you’re not 100 percent white,” said Student Affairs Program second-year grad student Laura De’Armond, “society forces you to identify with a person of color.” De’Armond, a Caucasian student, believes that society sends a message to multiracial individuals who may embrace their whiteness: “If you look white it’s fine, but if you don’t, how dare you?!” In his article “A Most Secret Identity: Native American Assimilation and Identity Resistance in America,” Ron Welburn, an English professor and director of the Native studies program at the University of Massachusetts wrote, “In vigorously upholding the one-drop-of-African-American-blood rule, [African Americans] maintain that such persons (multiracial individuals with black blood) should be ‘Black First.’” Welburn suggests that multiracial students are caught on the racial battlefield between competing ethnic groups that can tug at an individual in the middle. Sometimes they experience racism from both groups. An unidentified poet at the recent Xicano Poetry Night sponsored by Culturales de las Razas Unidas (CRU) shared her emotional story of being challenged by both whites and blacks to assimilate into their racial groups. She chose to remain neutral and instead embraced the inclusive Hispanic culture. Humanic also struggles with acceptance within the race she has chosen to embrace. “In the black community, they think I’m better because I’m biracial. And I don’t relate to a lot of white people.” She attributes her assimilation into the African American culture to her environment. “I was conditioned to [embrace] the black side,” she said. “If I lived in a white area, I would be a lot more white.” Caucasians that agree with the “one-drop rule” might not be white. According to DNA Print, their whitest customers were only 97 percent white, possessing an average of one percent black and two percent East Asian ancestries. As the university continues to try to improve race relations, on-campus cultural organizations would agree with the opinion of white and Chicano, political science-pre law freshman Andrew Bernal. “Everyone who’s here deserves to be here.” ------------------------------- Click here to read Ron Bowman's Guest Edgitorial where you can post your comments and thoughts on this issue |
