Born this Way?: U.S. College Students Make Sense of the Biosocial Underpinnings of Race and Other Identities

Abstract

With advances in biotechnology come potential changes in how college students may understand the nature of identity. This study explores sensemaking around the biological underpinnings of proclaimed "social" identities (e.g., race, class, and gender). Based on interviews with 34 undergraduate students recruited from two large public research universities in the United States, a conceptual model is offered to outline the general process of how students make sense of biological and/or social explanations of identity, including the role of controllability and essentialism. We discuss implications for multicultural education and teaching the "social construction" of identity in changing contexts.

Contested Whiteness: Useful Heuristic or Reinscribing Dominance?

“…On college campuses, incongruent racial classifications also play a role for postsecondary students, both the at the undergraduate and graduate levels (e.g., Johnston et al, 2014;Mohajeri, 2021). Many mixed young adults come to college with little to no racial literacy (Johnston-Guerrero & Pecero, 2016;Johnston-Guerrero & Tran, 2016), and thus the way they are racially classified and ascribed matters in terms of scaffolding understandings of their own racial identity as well as their emerging critical understanding of how race is created and used to achieve outcomes in larger society. More specifically, incongruent racial classifications impact students' sense of belonging on campus (Guillermo-Wann & Johnston, 2012;Hurtado et al, 2012;Wong & Buckner, 2008), access to scholarships and programs specifically aimed to support students of colors' scholarly development (Tehranian, 2009), retention and timely graduation (Hurtado et al, 2012), and identity development (Renn 2004).…”