Mixed Race Students in College: The Ecology of Race, Identity, and Community on Campus (review)

In a study of 56 mixed-race students, Renn examines the intersectionality of race, identity, and community. The book reveals how racial identity and racial classification are perceived and experienced by students whose biological parents represent two or more racial heritages. The participants attended six predominately White institutions (PWIs), each representing a different institutional type. Noting that much of the work on mixed-race students has focused on the western part of the United States, Renn selected institutions from three different regions of the country in an effort to expand the geographic reach of the literature on mixed race students.

Renn's work seeks to understand and examine the needs, experiences, and interests of mixed-race students to see how they are similar to or different from monoracial White students and students of color. She observes:

Little is known about how they [mixed-race students] negotiate the racialized landscape of higher education and how that landscape will be altered by the imminent influx of students who do not identify in only one racial category. If indeed a growing portion of the student population in the next two decades will have more than one racial heritage, then postsecondary educators, administrators, and policy makers must begin now to learn about mixed-race students' experiences in order to plan effectively for this demographic—and cultural—shift.

(p. 2)

Renn's findings indicate that mixed-race students experience five patterns of multiracial identity: (a) monoracial identity, (b) multiple monoracial identities, (c) multiracial identity, (d) extraracial identity, and (e) situational racial identity.

The preface and Chapter 1 set the context of the book. Renn raises the vexing questions that accompany the study of race and acknowledges the lack of consensus in the field on the use of racial terminology and how to study race. Notwithstanding these tensions, she offers a rationale for her own perspectives and choices which adds significantly to understanding the circumstances of her work and how her own racial identity challenges her scholarship.

In Chapter 1 she provides an overview and chronology of racial categorization, racial theory, and the study of mixed-race people in the United States. In Chapter 2, Renn outlines and explains her use of an ecological model as the analytic framework for her study. Essentially she argues that this framework captures more of the richness of the student experience. She maps the contribution and limitations of traditional student affairs theories such as racial identity theory and other developmental stage modes in examining race. She skillfully makes a case for why the ecological model is a better framework for examining these issues and in so doing, I think, makes an important contribution to the field and challenges the repetition in higher education of relying primarily on established frameworks.

Chapter 3 briefly introduces the five patterns of multiracial identity. The remaining chapters 4–8 are each devoted to one of the patterns of racial identity. Each chapter offers rich, descriptive evidence from the students about their experiences and feeling about racial identity and classification. Toward the end of each chapter, Renn offers a summary and application of the patterns to the various micro and meso systems (i.e. peers, academics, family, social interactions) outlined in the ecology model.

The student narratives are experiences resulting from a mixed-race heritage. Their stories reveal how their family background and activities in the home shaped their understanding of culture and race, how they navigate the academic and social milieu on the campus, and their need for access to public and private space to discuss their racial experiences. This study suggests that mixed-race students have different experiences from their monoracial White peers and students of color; yet they are determined to define their own existence. Like many students who attend college, they have very complex and multifaceted identities.

The primary critique I would offer is that the analysis...