Growing up, Britney Achin ’08 struggled with her identity as a biracial teenager. She, along with fellow CAMD scholars Simone Hill ’08 and Thomas Smyth ’08, gave presentations on personal topics inspired by ethnicity, family and hometown as part of last Monday’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day workshops. In a presentation called, “I Am: A Study of Self Identification Among Biracial Teenagers,” Achin discussed how biracial teenagers identify and perceive themselves. Being of mixed race herself, Achin admitted to “feeling very alone.” She said, “You are two races; your parents both look different. You can feel isolated and alienated. When someone says ‘half black,’ it’s almost as if they’re not a whole person.” “What if you are more than one race? When other people define your identity, there is a whole mess of problems and issues,” said Achin. She continued, “You can’t just pick one box [on standardized tests]. That’s not who you are. People are constantly expecting you to pick one thing, one word, but that is very detrimental to who you are.” In her research, Achin contacted around 500 teenagers, friends and strangers through Facebook, Myspace and college websites. Her questionnaire asked what they thought their identity was, which race and culture they identified themselves with and what they thought about biracialism in general. After her research, she formulated five different groups in which biracial teenagers identify: “monoracial,” biracial, “slider,” “raceless” and “partial people.” Two years ago, Achin started a new multi-racial club called Mosaic because she wanted to build a foundation and a support system for biracial kids. Achin said, “There isn’t a whole lot of support for mixed race people, and that’s a problem.” “Race relations are changing. It’s not just black and white any longer – they are all shades of gray. As the group of biracial people is growing, the way biracial people see themselves can change the way this country is run,” she said. Hill, from Atlanta, Georgia, studied African-American history in the South from Reconstruction to the present day. Hill presented her research in a presentation called, “Adversity to Diversity: Understanding the Southern Experience.” “I was interested in the community dynamics that were going on down there [in the South] and wanted to look into it,” said Hill. She traveled to the South and focused her studies on the rural area of Ridgeland, a small town in the low country of South Carolina. Hill interviewed family members and other sources, read many books and dug through old archives. Hill became interested in finding more information about her ancestor, Francis Wright, who was a poor farmer in a very rural area of South Carolina in the late 19th century. “My family had always known [Francis’] name and the names of his wives and kids, but we really didn’t know much else. For my project, I wanted to find a family member [to study],” said Hill. Mixing what little information she had about Wright with facts she knew of the time period from her research, Hill created a story about Wright in the form of an autobiography. Hill said, “It was conjecture because I only knew about five or six facts about [Wright].” In her presentation, Hill read Wright’s story to the audience. Hill concluded, “Through this historical narrative, we can look back and tell stories of the past while looking into the future to embrace multiculturalism and diversity in the PA community.” In “Resegregation in Augusta, GA and Boston,” Smyth examined the history of public school desegregation in his hometown of Augusta, Georgia. [Thomas Smyth is an editor at The Phillipian.] Smyth returned to Augusta and talked to people involved with the local school programs, local community leaders and civil rights scholars. His presentation focused on “the continuing fault lines of race that unfortunately defines Augusta and much of the South,” said Smyth. He concluded that there is a trend of resegregation in the public school system in Augusta and across the South. “These schools are undoing the gains that were made during desegregation,” Smyth said. However, from 1985 to 2005, there has been a reversal. Schools are reverting to having all black students again with a huge withdrawal of white students from the public school systems. “Augusta is an example of a type of diversity, of a polarized black and white split. Andover students don’t often see this here or in their hometowns,” Smyth said.
