The Biracial and Multiracial Student Experience

A Journey to Racial Literacy

Bonnie M. Davis

• Publisher: Corwin
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781452273211
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Multicultural Education

What does it mean to be “in between”?

As more biracial and multiracial students enter the classroom, educators have begun to critically examine the concept of race. Through compelling narratives, best-selling author Bonnie M. Davis gives voice to a frequently mislabeled and misunderstood segment of the population. Filled with research-based instructional strategies and reflective questions, this book supports readers in examining:

• The meaning of race, difference, and ethnicity
• How mixed-identity students develop racial identities
• How to adjust instruction to demonstrate cultural proficiency
• Complex questions on bi- and multiracial experiences, white privilege, and the history of race in the U.S.

1

Beginning the Journey

Welcome to our journey to understand better the multiracial students who walk through our classroom doors. By choosing to read this book, you’re expressing your interest in learning more about them.

What interests you about multiracial students?

---

---

---

---

Your response above sets a goal for your learning, and your interest takes you on a journey to learn what you don’t know you don’t know, opening your mind to learning about the experiences of those who are not like you. This is necessary for educators in a diverse classroom where oftentimes relationships fail to develop due to a lack of understanding between teachers and students. Terrell and Lindsey, in Culturally Proficient Leadership (2009), state “educators and students treat one another differently because of the lack of shared experiences” (p. 9). If there is a lack of shared experiences, how do we learn about each other? How do we share our experiences? One way is through our stories, and in this book you will read the stories of students, educators, and others whose stories differ from your own. By reading and sharing lived experiences, hopefully we can bridge differences and create powerful relationships that sustain learning.

I am aware that students who identify as belonging to more than one race share experiences that differ from my experiences. As an educator, I am interested in learning what those experiences might be and how I can better understand and support these students. I am on a journey to learn what I don’t know I don’t know about race. As you take this journey with me, I will make explicit my thinking and ask you to reflect upon your own.

I must offer a disclaimer here since my experience has been limited in the following ways: I was born and raised in the Midwest and taught 30 years in public schools there. Even though I was an active member of the International Education Consortium and traveled abroad to study African literature, it wasn’t until the past several years that I actively worked with educators and students outside the Midwest region. Therefore, my journey involves more interaction with African Americans than with any other ethnic group except my own white culture. It also means my knowledge base is limited about many of the diverse cultures that compose our country. With that being said, I do believe that my journey offers you an opportunity to examine racial issues that plague our educational system and society. I offer what I know I know and suggest the means for you to learn and do the same.

HOW DO WE BEGIN THE JOURNEY TO UNDERSTAND RACE?

Our journey to understand race begins by thinking, writing, and looking at our own racial histories and by sharing them with others. Ideally, we will share our stories with colleagues and build a trusting community of educators with whom to travel this road. If you are in a school district not quite ready to do that, you can continue your own journey with the help of this book and others. But we have to do our own work. In Courageous Conversations About Race, Glenn Singleton and Curtis Linton (2006) state that we “cannot talk about race collectively as a nation, family, or school until we have individually talked about race in our own lives—personally, locally, and immediately” (p. 76). The following is an attempt to be personal, local, and immediate about my racial history, and I invite you to do the same with yours. My children, Leah and Reeve, share their stories and so does Brenda, the mother of my grandbaby.

RACIAL HISTORY

Think back over your life. Can you think of the first time you were aware of racial identity?

---

---

---

---

My first awareness of racial identity occurred when I entered the school bus on the first day of kindergarten. The first person I saw was Lloyd, the man who drove the bus to kindergarten. Lloyd did not look like me. My parents called Lloyd a “Negro.” This is my first memory of people being identified by others based on physical features such as skin color.

My first memory was positive, and I saw Lloyd as a trusted adult who took care of me. However, just having the children call him “Lloyd” rather than Mr. Williams may have bestowed on us a liberty we would not have taken if he were white. I seriously doubt that black children of the 1950s in this small Southeast Missouri town would have been allowed to have called a white bus driver by his first name.

When I think about my racial history, I, as this white person, begin to think of the presence of people of color in my life; for I don’t think of my “whiteness” as having a “racial history” without the presence of color. You may or may not do the same.

I outline my history in contrast to those who don’t look like me rather than in comparison to those who do. I do this because—to me—my racial history is about my presence within the environment of whiteness until a person of color enters that environment.

Lloyd is the only nonwhite person with whom I recall interacting until I entered eighth grade. That winter in 1958, Cecil, a black male, joined our class during basketball season. One night after a victory, the coach took the team and the class supporters to the Southern Café. When they would not serve our star player, the coach stood up and marched us out the door. This experience was my first encounter with discrimination. I remember standing in the kitchen and telling my mom about the event, but I can’t remember her reaction.

One black male attended my high school, and that was the extent of my experience, until college, with others I identify as belonging to a different racial group. In college I had a black girlfriend, but we were not close friends, and my entire social network was white and Christian. My life was extremely insular throughout my childhood and adolescence.

I married in college and lived for the next decade in the suburbs of St. Louis. My daughter, Leah, was born in 1969, and she entered her parents’ world where our church was White, our schools were White, our neighborhoods were White, and our lives were White. I assumed my husband was monoracial, but at some point, Leah’s grandparents informed us that her great-grandmother was Cherokee.

Leah shares her story:

Leah Ancona, White/Cherokee Indian, Born 1969
Bonnie Davis’ Daughter
Architect, St. Louis, Missouri
Written narrative

When my mom first asked me to write for her book on mixed-racial heritage, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to because I wasn’t sure I really fit with her topic. You see, when I was a child, my mom told me I was part Indian, feather-not-dot. I remember this from when I was about eight or nine, and the only experience I had with Indians at that time was Tonto from the Lone Ranger, which I watched faithfully each morning before school. Tonto was so cool. He had a pretty horse named Scout; he rode with the Lone Ranger; and he got kidnapped a lot, but he always got away. Having never actually met an Indian, I thought he was pretty neat, and if I was like him, I figured I was lucky. When I told my friends I was an Indian, they weren’t so sure, so I explained that I could prove it. You see, I have a birthmark on my arm that I had never seen on anyone else, so I told my friends it was my Indian mark. It proved that I wasn’t like them. I was special.

Part of me always wanted to be a real Indian. Because as I grew up, I knew I wasn’t really Indian. My mom kind of looked Indian, which helped fuel my fantasy, but she told me it wasn’t from her side. I didn’t really relate to my dad, so I wasn’t sure if he knew any Indians. I didn’t. And I desperately wanted to. Around this same time, my mom met and married a black man, and I became black. Of course I didn’t really, but my school was all white, and they wanted to stay that way, so when my new dad came to pick me up from school, it immediately got noticed. The only black person in my school was a girl my age who was adopted, and she had been at this school since first grade. I can only imagine how she was treated before I arrived in fourth grade, but I know she was the meanest person in the entire school to me. I think she felt she finally had someone to treat as she had been treated for being different. When my brother was born, I could not have been happier. I took him everywhere I could, and nothing would please me more than being able to tell people he was my brother. Let me tell you, we got some looks with this little boy, looking so much like his dad, hanging on to my hand and walking down the streets of white suburbia. He was special, and I loved it.

At school, being treated black sort of sucked. My classmates called me names and took every opportunity to tease me about things I could not control. I was completely outcast from the popular group, and the one other girl I mentioned made it her mission to make me miserable. I knew when it was time to go to high school, I was going to find some place with some Black people so I could fit in, and that’s just what I did. While all the other girls from my grade school went to the various all-white Catholic girls’ schools in town, I had a friend who found one in the city that had 50% black people. Fifty percent! I was going there so I could be with people like me; the problem was that they weren’t. They were all either black or white. What was I? I was white, Indian, or black, depending on the audience, and I had no idea what to check on the “race” box on the standardized tests. I only knew I wanted to be anything but “White” or “Caucasian” because I was special and those terms just didn’t fit.

I actively pursued relationships with the black girls in my school, and they just didn’t know what to think of me. They didn’t know who this crazy little white girl from the burbs, who wanted to listen to their music and be a part of their group, was. I was the only white girl in the OABC (Organization for the Appreciation of Black Culture) and had fun dancing to The Time during the annual talent show. I figured the white people didn’t want me because of the color in my family, so I didn’t want them either. I wanted to be with a group who would want me, and I figured the black girls were my best bet. I had a father who was black and a brother who was half black, and surely, they would want me in their group. But they didn’t. You see, I wasn’t black. I didn’t share a common history. I wasn’t special like them.

As I started looking at colleges, I was told I could get scholarships if I told people about my Indian background. I contacted my grandparents I hadn’t seen in years, and they wrote the history of their side of the family, as much as they knew, and told me about my family. A relative from the past married an Indian woman on the Trail of Tears, and they had children eventually leading to me. I really was part Indian. I really was special.

I threw myself into being Indian during college. I joined the Native American organizations on campus, becoming president of them both during some part of my college career. I went to conferences about Native Americans and met a ton of amazing people. I participated in PowWows and recruited for my school from the local Indian junior college. And then I started to learn the real American history. I learned what whites had done to the native people when they came to this country. I met Russell Means, and he told me about what it was like growing up “Indian” and fighting for his rights in American Indian Movement (AIM) in the 1970s. He explained how i...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Prologue
• 1. Beginning the Journey
• 2. What Is Race?
• 3. What Are You?
• 4. What Are the Challenges for Multiracial Students?
• 5. How Mixed-Identity Students Develop Racial Identities
• 6. Reaching Out to Other Professionals to Learn What I Don’t Know
• 7. The Impact of Skin Color
• 8. Parent Voices
• 9. A Call to Action: Culturally Proficient Suggestions and Strategies
• 10. Future Voices
• 11. The Journey’s End and Next Steps
• Selected Bibliography
• Index