Book Review: Mixed Race Students in College: The Ecology of Race, Identity and Community on Campus

Mixed Race Students in College: The Ecology of Race, Identity, and Community on Campus
Kristen A. Renn
State University of New York Press, Albany (2004)
ISBN: 9780791461648

Reviewed by Laura Klunder

What if multiracial and biracial identities and experiences were centered, affirmed, and uplifted by and for mixed race college students? Kristen A. Renn shares insight and analysis to engaging this pressing question in Mixed Race Students in College: The Ecology of Race, Identity and Community on Campus (2004). For student affairs professionals committed to serving and supporting multiracial and biracial college students who are creating spaces for themselves within traditional structures that articulate diversity and inclusion in terms of monoracial identities and experiences, Mixed Race Students in College is an invaluable resource.

Renn explores the multiple theoretical foundations, and tensions with linear monoracial identity development processes, in understanding mixed race identity as both a deeply personal journey, in addition to a multifaceted and expansive experience. Student voices go on to complicate monoracial identity development models, and traditional multicultural student affairs practice, with their stories of living with multiple monoracial identities, multiracial identities, extraracial identities, and situational identities. The student narratives provide a glimpse into the ongoing and simultaneous intimate and public negotiation process that mixed race students must navigate, and resist, in order to develop healthy relationships with themselves, their peers, and the campus at large. Renn’s analysis of the interviews further articulates the expertise that mixed race college students have on their own identities and experiences, and facilitates deeper questions of how to create authentic inclusion of biracial and multiracial students.

“How might we make space in student development theory for students who will not ever end up in a unitary identity?” Renn invites us to explore in the chapter From Patterns to Practice—What Mixed Race Identity Patterns Mean for Educational Practice. Moreover, Renn highlights the importance of horizontal peer relationships in creating safe spaces to belong for biracial and multiracial college students who identify with extraracial identities that do not fit within the monoracial boxes available to them. As a student affairs professional, who identifies monoracially, I am reminded of my role in partnering with students to create safe spaces for their multiple identities and experiences, particularly in assessing and evaluating inclusion of mixed race college students in policies and practices that are currently being offered.

Within the current racialized campus climate of American Higher Education, where mixed race students in college are asserting their individual experiences within a context where monoracial identities and experiences have historically defined the boundaries as a Black and White issue, Kristen A. Renn’s Mixed Race Students in College: The Ecology of Race, Identity, and Community on Campus is a timely read for student affairs professionals committed to serving and supporting all students, especially mixed race students in college.