Carmen Ballard

Dr. Angela Mitchell

UWRIT 1104

31 October 2017

Research Essay Draft: Multiracial Identity

When I was about 10 years old, my younger sister, Sara, was just learning about the

history of slavery. We were sitting around the dinner table talking about how some white-passing

find another word slaves would escape to northern states and pretend to be white to avoid being

re-enslaved. My mother instructed us to be grateful for the safe, comfortable lives that we had.

My sister replied with a question:

Mommy, if we lived in slavery times, would Carmen be a slave?

Sara, you would both would. Youre sisters, youre the same race.

Her statement shocked both of us. Our mother is white, but our father was adopted. He

never addressed his race because his adoptive parents are black, and that is how he identifies. So

we never addressed the fact that we were of mixed race until that night. This began my interest in

discovering what it means to be multiracial.

The topic of race in America has always been controversial. Due to our nations history,

there are many dissenting opinions on how to address the topic. A change that isnt widely talked

growing population of multiracial people, or mixed people is a change that isnt widely talked

about. Re-arrange this sentence in a way that is more coherent. Try not to use isnt widely

talked about more than once in this sentence. What makes race so interesting is that it is a

significant component of human identity although it is a social construct.

 There are a number of people that are stuck in limbo between the races that they belong

to. Good transitions. One such individual, Audrey Jacobs, is a freshman student at UNC

Charlotte. Her mother is an immigrant from Liberia, and her father is Coharie Native American.

Although she identifies as Coharie Liberian, she knows the world will always see her as black.

NPR introduces a condition they call Racial Imposter Syndrome (RIS). People that experience

RIS feel disconnected from and unable to fit in with the racial groups that they belong to. Add

more illustration and evidence to this paragraph. Try to pull some statistics or quotes that add to

the credibility of your paragraphs.

 Works Cited

A Prescription for Racial Imposter Syndrome. Code Switch from NPR, 8 June 2017,

http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/06/08/462395722/racial-impostor-

syndrome-here-are-your-stories

Grinberg, Emanuella. Multiracial Identity: Study Looks at Role of Money, Gender and

Religion. CNN, Cable News Network, 28 Jan. 2016

Jacobs, Audrey.

Song, Miri. "Generational Change and How We Conceptualize and Measure Multiracial People

and Mixture." Ethnic & Racial Studies, vol. 40, no. 13, 15 Oct. 2017, pp. 2333-2339.

EBSCOhost

Swanson, Mahogany L. So What Are You Anyway? American Psychological Association,

American Psychological Association, Aug. 2013,