For the Movement: Community Education Supporting Multiracial Organizing

Abstract

The multiracial people's movement in the United States has expanded significantly in the last 10 years (Douglass, 2003). Historically, community-based education programs have supported social movements in the United States (Collins & Yeskel, 2000; Sarachild, 1974/1978), yet little has been written about how educational programs might serve the social and political movements of mixed-race people. This case study describes two community-based multiracial education programs by and for mixed-race people and suggests ways that each supports multiracial community organizing. The conclusion offers recommendations for shaping future multiracial education programs for multiracial people.

Notes

For this article, I define a “multiracial person” as someone who is of and claims two or more racialized heritages. Throughout, I use “multiracial” interchangeably with “mixed-race.” Thus, “mixed-race or multiracial organization,” means an organization comprised of and serving the interests of multiracial people. In this way, I distinguish an organization that simply has a few multiracial members from a “multiracial organization,” in the same way that an organization that has a few women as members is not necessarily a “women's organization.” Similarly, when I refer to “multiracial education programs,” I mean programs that teach people, multiracial or monoracial, about multiraciality.

I, as a multiracial person, have grown through my involvement with multiracial people's political movements. As an activist for and educator on multiracial people's issues, I have helped organize student groups and conferences, taught classes and workshops about multiraciality, and participated in statewide advocacy campaigns. Within multiracial political movements, I am an active witness to the empowerment of multiracial people as we organize and educate ourselves.

I acknowledge that choosing two cases linked to the same community organization reduces the breadth and generalizability of my study somewhat. As noted, I chose these cases based in part on convenience and my self-perceived ability to have a positive impact on the organization's efforts, based on my relationship to it. However, in the future, I hope to research the efforts of other multiracial community organizations in order to provide a broader sense of the multiracial education programs being offered and their benefits to community organizing.

All names of people, cities, organizations, and films have been replaced with pseudonyms.

In addition to meeting with my research advisor, Dr. Linda Griffin, at the University of Massachusetts Amherst's School of Education, I met several times with two other doctoral students to discuss our research ideas, ethics, methodology, and other aspects of the research process.

APAMix is a pseudonym for a nonprofit community organization that serves Asian Pacific Americans (APAs) of mixed heritage.