Mixed up

Some say that eyes are the windows to the soul, but senior Raquel Johnson knows they can be deceiving. Hers are tawny green, set large and round in a face the color of eggshells.

Most people don't realize she's half black.

The daughter of a white father and a black mother, Johnson straddles America's "color line," a cultural relic from an era when race was sharply defined in the United States, quite literally a matter of black and white. In recent decades, however, growing recognition of interracial marriage and multiracial ancestry has led to a more inclusive and politically correct attitude toward racial identity. The 2000 census was the first in history to allow people to identify with more than one ethnic group — acknowledging that race has become a "check all that apply" definition.

Despite increased recognition of their multiple heritages, multiracial people still struggle against the human tendency to categorize and stereotype, which psychologists say is innate and often unconscious. As these students undertake the difficult task of forming their identities, they often feel pressure to identify with one racial group or another — at the cost of denying other parts of their heritage.

One or the other

Raised by her mother, who is black, Johnson says her racial identity was never a question for her. "The black side of my family is all I've ever known, so checking off 'black' comes naturally," she says.

But because Johnson is mixed, her cultural identity is as ambiguous as her appearance. She participates in the traditionally white Goth culture. She listens to metal music, wears dark makeup and dyes her naturally brown hair black because she likes the look.

At the same time, she says that most of her closest friends are black.
Johnson suspects her appearance might contribute to her cultural and social preferences — she's often mistaken for white. "I wonder sometimes if my skin were darker if I'd be the same person," she says.

Psychologists agree that racial stereotypes can profoundly inform human behavior. "To a large extent, other people do define you," says Belinda Tucker, a social psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. "How you look definitely affects how other people treat you, and therefore your identity."

Because appearance plays such an important role in contributing to how people are categorized by their peers, mixed-race individuals who are mistaken for white encounter issues all their own. In an interview with American Jewish Life Magazine, Rashida Jones, daughter of black music legend Quincy Jones and white "Charlie's Angel" Peggy Lipton, said that she felt pressured to behave a certain way or conform to racial stereotypes because of her skin color, or, as she put it, "the tacit understanding that the lighter you are, the harder you have to try to be more committed to being black."

There are also advantages to being racially ambiguous. Senior Vince Agard, who is half black and half white, says that he is able to identify with both races — though he never feels fully accepted by either because he refuses to embody completely the stereotypes of either race. He acknowledges both parts of his heritage, he says. "I think I can choose to act how I want to act," he says.

Struggling to be themselves

No matter how they act, individuals whose appearances defy categorization must fight their way through the thicket of stereotypes that surround them.

The tendency to try and classify someone at first glance as a certain race is automatic, according to Miami University psychologist Kurt Hugenburg who has studied how racially ambiguous people are perceived. "Categorizing people into social groups happens effortlessly," he says, "and once we've categorized an individual, stereotypes almost inevitably follow."

As Tucker puts it: "You almost need to have a box to fit in. People expect you to fit into a box because that defines how they interact with you."

Senior Erica Irving, who is half black and half white, rails against such snap judgments and stereotypes. "I hope people see my personality first and not my ethnicity, but that may be a naïve, idealistic wish," she says. "It's not that I'm ashamed of my races; I just don't think they should define me."

Irving says that even more difficult than the stereotypes she faces is that she sometimes feels she is forced to make a choice between her heritages. When discussion in one of her classes turned to affirmative action and the achievement gap, she felt torn. "The pressure of suddenly having to craft a racial identity in order to participate in the debate was overwhelming," she says.

Hugenburg says that placing people into categories allows us to "successfully navigate an interaction without really getting to know others around us." He uses the example of a car: "Categorizing a lump of metal, plastic and rubber as a 'car' lets you know how to interact with it. It lets you know what use it can be to you. It means you don't have to learn how to get in, to turn it on, and to drive it anew, for each new car. Instead, you can use a lifetime of accumulated knowledge with cars to successfully use a car you've never seen before to get where you want to go."

Similar instinctual judgments also warp how people perceive each other and can sometimes magnify the differences between them. Racially ambiguous people are not exempt, but Hugenburg's research suggests that they may be categorized by their actions rather than their appearance.

To Tucker, this highlights the divide between society and biology. "Aside from a handful of biological markers, race is almost entirely a social construction," she says. "People can look almost exactly the same, but because of historical biases, they can put in very different boxes."

A haunted history

For Americans, the most notorious and pervasive of such historical biases is the so-called one-drop rule. Formulated during Reconstruction and institutionalized in the early 1900s at the height of the Jim Crow era, this racial doctrine held that even "one drop" of African blood rendered someone black, denying mixed people the opportunity to embrace both sides of their heritage.

Agard encounters the legacy of the one-drop rule when the incongruity between his appearance and his heritage gives rise to uneasiness — he describes it as a sort of intangible vibe. "People expect me to act white, so they're not all the way comfortable when realize I'm not completely white," he says.
Irving also senses pressure from the black community to identify with one race or the other. "The term 'Uncle Tom' always hits me hard; I don't think of honoring both sides of my heritage as betraying anyone," she says. "I'm just trying to be myself."

But the idea of a multiracial identity is still difficult for some to accept. In ninth grade, when Johnson showed up to vote for the Student Member of the Board election, an election official pulled her aside to ask why the "race" section of her voting card was marked black. The official couldn't reconcile Johnson's pale skin with the race designated on her card. "We had a 10-minute argument over it," Johnson recalls. "I was like, 'Who are you to tell me what I am?'"

Since then, Johnson has requested absentee ballots. Sometimes, she says, it's just easier not to show her face.