New Research on Multiracial Sorority and Fraternity Members

My research has expanded and evolved over my academic career to explore the experiences of multiracial and mixed-heritage student leaders and undergraduate students in co-curricular spaces. Specifically, I explore the ways in which these students experience monoracism and resist other systems of oppression through a Multiracial Critical Theory (MultiCrit) lens across student organizations. My previous research in the Journal of Campus Activities Practice & Scholarship (JCAPS) identified the placemaking pathways of multiracial student leaders in student organizations. They attempted to find belonging through student involvement in organizations, but their experiences were fraught with different experiences of monoracism and other microaggressions. Eventually, they cultivated a small group of close friends after a process of educating them about their multiraciality. We found similar outcomes in a national study of multiracial sorority and fraternity members across different councils (NPHC, NPC, NIC, NMGC, NALFO).

In a new article published in the Journal of Sorority and Fraternity Life Research and Practice with my co-author Dr. Kim Bullington (Old Dominion University) entitled ”Either or, Not as a Whole:” Challenges of Multiracial Student Placemaking and Belonging in Sorority and Fraternity Chapters, we used the tenets of interest convergence and monoracism of Multiracial critical theory to interrogate these findings. We identify new processes of identity abstraction and fracturing which are forms of monoracism and colorism. Also, in this study, many relationships positioned multiracial members to serve as racial buffers and cultural translators for their monoracial chapter peers. In particular, multiracial highlighted that more racially and culturally diverse chapters were more welcoming and members eventually found belonging and space within their chapters after an extended process of placemaking.