Panel discusses race, identity

Graduate student Fileve Palmer said though her parents always talked about their diverse backgrounds with her, she still struggled to find a way to relay her identity to others.

She struggled throughout her life to retain her African-American identity, while society viewed her as Puerto Rican.

“I have always been dealing with this,” Palmer said. “I always was familiar with what I was.“

She was part of a group of panelists who spoke Thursday on “Race and Ethnic Classification: Can Identity be Negotiated?” the final installment of the Choices of Color Series. The panel began with questions about how each of the participants acquired their own sense of identity while growing up in a multi-racial household.
Joseph Stahlman, interim director of the First Nations Educational and Cultural Center, served as moderator. He said his life has been a struggle preserving his Native
American heritage because people would often simply see him as white.

“For a long time in my life, I assumed that I was who I wanted to be,” he said. “I didn’t take into account how others saw me.”

Lillian Casillas, director of La Casa Latino Cultural Center, had issues with class identity and racial identity.

“I was born and grew up in Mexico. The issue there is more classism,” Casillas said.
“For me, it was a very conscious issue of being poor, but then I came to the United
States and it was the race issue that was important.”

She said this issue of dealing with classism as a child has carried into her life, even now.

“I thought I left it behind somewhere, but it came back,” Casillas said. “Identity is very fluid; it evolves.”

Kevin Brown, the director emeritus of Hudson & Holland Scholars Program, spoke to the group about changes in the census and application forms for schools.

These changes will involve choosing between Hispanic or non-Hispanic and then between being classified as white, black, Asian, Pacific-Hawaiian Islander or Native American.

“For the first time in history, people were allowed to check more than one box on the 2000 census,” Brown said.

He said now people can be in more than one group.

“This will generate information we have never had before,” Brown said. “The effect of this is pretty clear, substantial and significant. We will see Hispanic and multiracial numbers grow exponentially.”

This new system of classifying U.S. citizens will change the way students receive aid and how statistics are done.

“Every college will be dealing with these issues,” Brown said. “This is effectively redefining racial categories.”

The panel discussed the issues of this new system and how these changes will effect individual’s perception of race in the U.S.

“I don’t believe in race,” Stahlman said. “But, because people believe in it, it is real, and we have to deal with the way it affects us all.”