Artful Approaches for the Study of Multiracial Student Experiences: Not Artifact,But Aperture

Critical Orientations to Arts-Based Educational Research

Critical Arts-Based Educational Research (CABER) encapsulates a nascent conversation around critical inquiry and arts-based inquiry (e.g., Bagley & Castro-Salazar, 2012, 2019; Bhattacharya & Keating, 2018; Bhattacharya & Payne, 2016; Kraehe et al., 2018; Norris et al., 2020). Bagley and Castro-Salazar (2012) defined CABER as arts-based research “with an explicit political purpose” (p. 241). CABER aims “to uncover unequal power relations and the disproportionate impact these relations have on certain groups marginalised because of their ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, gender and class” (Bagley & Castro-Salazar, 2012, p. 241). Beyond this, CABER is able “to politically move subjects, performers, audience and researchers into new cultural spaces of understanding, resistance and hope” (p. 257).

Some of the work that has been published in this arena includes the Palgrave Handbook of Race and the Arts in Education (Kraehe et al., 2018), which posited that “the arts” should be understood as white property, steeped in the project of white supremacy and of “European cultural superiority” (p. 16). Other authors have called for “an ongoing, critical, and confrontational movement in the arts in education scholarship that calls into question the influence of white supremacy in relation to cultural production” (Kraehe et al., 2018, p. 27). A special issue of Cultural Studies, Critical Methodologies (Norris et al., 2020) explored the use of arts-based methodologies to explore “concepts of power and privilege as exerted by and on self” (p. 3). Prichard (2019) considered the role of colorblindness in dance and explicated four tactics for disruption. And Bagley and Castro-Salazar (2019) considered the impact that a performance had on both subject, audience, and performers through a CRT-informed lens. In other words, CABER can dislodge assumptions about power and open up space for new reflection. The work in this area is “clearly incipient” (Kraehe et al., 2018, p. 25) and scholars have identified the need for further development of critical approaches to ABER.

Elizabeth’s Eco Map

Elizabeth was an undergraduate student attending a Historically White Institution (HWI) of higher education in the northeastern United States. However, she grew up on the West Coast, in a diverse community in Huntington Beach, California. Elizabeth came from a Vietnamese and white family, and self-identified as Asian. Victoria interviewed Elizabeth and asked her to complete an eco map.

Figure 1 illustrates that Elizabeth wrote her name in the center of the eco map and listed 12 other family members or close friends on the map, including her mother, father, two siblings, specific members of both of her paternal and maternal extended family, her college roommates, and close friends, both from high school and college. She drew strong, weak, and stressed lines between these individuals and herself, specifically meant to be a visual representation of the tenor of emotional and psychological support she received from these individuals.

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Figure 1.

Elizabeth’s eco map.

Elizabeth used dotted lines to connect her Mom, Dad, Grandmother, maternal aunts, and maternal uncle with herself, indicating weak support in terms of her racial/ethnic/cultural background in college. In other words, there was some support from parents and material family members, though not strong support. Elizabeth used zigzagged lines to connect herself with her paternal uncles and aunts, indicating stressed support. Elizabeth explained:

So for my parents, and generally every member of my maternal side except for my cousin, I put a dotted line, as in, I get support from them, but generally, like both sides of my family are very Republican, and I don’t identify that way. So, it’s a little hard to talk about things like race and like problems that arise in society today. So, for my maternal side [and] my parents, I put dotted lines. They support me, but they are not necessarily like people I can go to talk [to] all the time.

On the other hand, Elizabeth drew straight lines between herself and her close friends, her two sisters, her maternal cousins, and her roommates. Elizabeth described that she and her sisters “spend all of our time together.” Elizabeth used a straight line to represent strong support from her sisters “because they are like a strong support system that I have, and I can talk to them about anything, especially like race-related things.”

Elizabeth contrasted her relationship with her parents to other extended family members, sharing that her family relationships formed different levels of stress and engagement for her depending on how her conversations regarding race evolved. Elizabeth discussed that politics influenced her thinking about race within her family as her white father and Vietnamese mother both support the Republican party, while Elizabeth aligned with the Democratic party since attending college.

Using MultiCrit as a contextual lens highlights the experiential knowledge of multiracial college students, particularly in terms of their familial relationships. Here, eco maps illustrate tensions in support and/or stress and challenge dominant ideologies concerning race and racism in student lives (Harris, 2016).

Centering Elizabeth’s eco map as an aperture for understanding allows researchers to ask themselves productive questions. For example, it is clear that multiracial students are tied to family members, and the tenor of those ties can either bring comfort and support or stress and tension. These ties can change in tone over time. When studying multiracial college students and relationships with family, researchers can consider whether it is possible that a source of tension could become a future source of support.

Elizabeth’s eco map illustrates that college students make sense of their experiences during postsecondary education not in absolute isolation and independence, but that they are always already tied to their families of origin. This is particularly important for multiracial students as they already have experience in making sense of diverse backgrounds and realities, and though they move into an arena of greater independence during the postsecondary years, familial ties still influence and shape their experiences and sense making. The eco map allows researchers to ask themselves: What else are students tied to? What strings bind multiracial students and hold them back? What strings lead to new pathways and exploration? Is there a way to add slack to a string without breaking the bond entirely? How can the curriculum, faculty, peers, and other elements of postsecondary settings support this? Engaging with eco maps as part of this research helped students process their relationships with family members in a different way. Students were enabled to deeply reflect on how family members have influenced their understandings of race and racism.

Al-Shabazz’s Race Graph

Al-Shabazz was a 22 year old, cismale graduate student completing his master’s degree at an HWI in the northeast. He was active in social justice issues on campus and in the larger region. Al-Shabazz was born in New York City. He identified his mother as a “Brooklyn Italian New Yorker” and his father as a Guyanese immigrant. Al-Shabazz had one older sister. At an early age, his family moved to a small, rural town in a neighboring state. They moved to a “big house” with “a horseshoe driveway in the front.” Both Al-Shabazz and his sister had positive schooling experiences in this “better school district” and both became involved in theater and arts through school programming.

Over the course of the interview conversation, Al-Shabazz listed the mix of his ethno-racial backgrounds as including Black, Jewish, Italian, Middle Eastern, Hispanic, ³ Indian, and Chinese. “I always looked like an Italian kid,” he stated, whereas his sister “looked mixed Hispanic or possibly light skin Black.” Al-Shabazz further described the phenotypic variation among his immediate family members and the ways in which his own race was ascribed by others in his new rural setting:

People thought a lot of time, like, “Oh, [he’s] white!” And then they’d see [my sister]. They’re like, “Oh yeah, she’s white [also]; she’s just tan.” And then like they would see my dad, and my dad wasn’t always at all the shows or at all the events [in high school]. When my dad, uh, when he comes up, they’d be like, “Oh, they’re mixed! Like [El Shabazz] is possibly half-Black, he’s possibly Hispanic.” So nobody knew what to call me.

Figure 2 below constitutes Al-Shabazz’s timeline of how he learned race over the course of his life. He created a unique timeline wherein he mapped his various understandings of race onto a graph, with the x-axis listing his age over time, and the y-axis capturing social impact. Al-Shabazz explained that the variable social impact meant “the level of impact [race] has on you from a social context.”

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Figure 2.

Al-Shabazz’s timeline.

Al-Shabazz grew up knowing all of his diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds and was able to list them off at a young age. He described this as an early childhood “competency” or “awareness” of the wealth of his multiple backgrounds. In his early teen years however, “like 14 or 15 here . . . I, like, started to realize I don’t necessarily feel white.” Al-Shabazz noted that it was his friends that would point out to him that “you’re, you’re half-brown, like you’re mixed” and not just some “Mediterranean Greek Italian guy.” His peers pointed out to him that “you’re not necessarily just white.”

Al-Shabazz described that once he arrived at college, he “really started scrutinizing ideas about race.” He spent time exploring both Chinese and Jewish cultures. He completed a study abroad program in China and regularly attended activities at Hillel House. He read widely, attended lectures, and took courses with a critical perspective on race. Al-Shabazz detailed:

I was reading a lot of Ta-Nehisi Coates. I was reading a lot of Cornell West, um, bell hooks, uh, Fred Moten . . . And it was interesting cuz that, uh, it was a little bit of an existential experience too, for me . . . So I was watching lectures on YouTube and kind of understanding the existentialism of race in general, and that was really eye-opening to me. So that was something where I think my understanding of identity really peaked there.

Overall, Al-Shabbaz surmised that “there is more to me than I think.” And although he had spent time “kind of evaluat[ing] or kind of div[ing] into” his mixedness, “that’s kind of stayed in a place of ambiguity.”

Al-Shabazz’s graph ends with a three-way split. One pathway is labeled “Connecting with more multicultural” and seems to trail off as if to represent a possible future. The second is entitled “Social justice movements” and “Activism,” and is positioned midway between the other two trajectories. The final pathway is lower in height and is labeled “Similar feeling.” It is uncertain whether these three pathways represent an inflection point for choices and decision-making, or if they are three dynamics that co-exist simultaneously. It is also not clear which pathway Al-Shabazz will pursue in the future, or if he’ll continue along all three.

Through his artful timeline, Al-Shabazz identified key moments and experiences in his racial identity development. He told stories about his childhood, teenage years, and young adulthood with considerable detail, and considered his development over time. The artful representation also allowed Orkideh, the interviewer, to ask specific questions and to prompt Al-Shabazz to reflect back and evaluate his life experiences thus far. Namely, Al-Shabazz was able to summarize and acknowledge that his mixedness remained ambiguous over time, even into the present day. Clearly, the artful visualization drew on Al-Shabazz’s experiential knowledge (Harris, 2016), gathered over time and context as a multiracial, multiethnic individual.

Stepping away from the content of the graph, if we consider this product from an artful perspective and allow this piece to act as a portal for understanding, many useful questions emerge. For example, what does it mean to put a timeline on a graph? What does it mean that variables are elucidated and that units of measurement have been used? Implications of objectivity and measurement are implicit in the artist’s choice to use a graphical representation. Intentional or not, a question emerges about the validity of constructivist understanding of race and racial identity development. Is Al-Shabazz playing with that notion? What does it mean that there are multiple pathways at the end of the graph? Is there an arrival point implied in the future? What if there are three simultaneous trajectories or three simultaneous arrival points? What happens if the graph falls over time instead of having a continual upward trajectory? How can we take these questions generated by the artful timeline and use these as a set of research questions, codes, or themes with which to analyze other timelines and other data across these two studies? This artful product can act as a catalyst for further analysis as it generates both a new set of research questions and a set of codes and understandings that can be applied to other data.

Lyra’s Box

Lyra was a 21 year old undergraduate student (see Mohajeri & Lou, 2021). She came from a multiethnic, multiracial family, and had grown up in a rural, predominantly white town, mostly populated by the descendants of Eastern European immigrants. Lyra lived all of her life in that small town until she came to college. Lyra had an older brother and three sisters, and there was quite a range of phenotypic presentation among her family members. For example, she had a younger sister with blond hair and blue eyes, and Lyra remarked that when they were together—hugging and being physically close as siblings are wont to be—strangers from her hometown were disconcerted, not being likely to identify them as siblings. When Lyra was by herself, people guessed that she was either Filipina, Mexican, Puerto Rican, or Native American. Lyra’s other commonly ascribed racial identities included Hawaiian and Middle Eastern.

During the interview, Orkideh asked Lyra to draw her social identities and handed out paper and markers. Lyra took a considerable amount of time to create what can be described as a three-dimensional box containing some of her social identities (see Figure 3 below). Orkideh and Lyra discussed the artful production in detail. Lyra said:

I was just writing down my identities, and then I had all these lines. I felt just like, “Oh my gosh, there’s something. . .” I decided to make a box, then put all of my identities in them. And then I also wrote the places in which I think I learned about my identities, and then I wrapped it up in a present with my favorite colors [laughs]. And this is a bunch of me’s dancing around it and on it [laughs]. Then I also intentionally wrote the words super lightly because I’m the most confused person [laughs]—as in, to be non-committal about the places where I learned them, but also—especially talking about my racial identity. (Mohajeri, 2018, p. 211)

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Figure 3.

Lyra’s drawing.

In other words, Lyra started the exercise by listing her various social identities. She then listed these identities in a box, along with some of the contextual factors related to these identities. From here, she experimented with things that brought her joy, like her favorite colors of pink and purple. She also illustrated actions that reflected a sense of joyfulness, such as dancing. Simultaneously, Lyra felt ambivalence and confusion surrounding her social identities.

Orkideh sought more clarification about the box that contained her various identities. Lyra stated that she had “been thinking about boxes a lot lately,” and how she did not easily fit various racial categories or “boxes” (Johnston et al., 2014). Lyra explained that growing up with her ambiguous racial presentation, many people wanted to put her in a box, to have her fit their preconceived notions. “I’m kind of an unfulfilling member” of various racial groups, she noted. Thus, it seemed that the box represented ascribed identities, or at least the expectations of others in terms of normalized racial groupings and categorizations.

Lyra clarified that her drawing also entailed a sense of both disruption of boxes and simultaneously, a sense of celebration and acknowledgement:

I was going to imagine some bursting of [the box] . . . The, the dancing is a way to navigate it, like, with my embodied knowledge. That’s how I process a lot. And also a way to jump on it and disrupt it. I thought about drawing it so I could throw it around but also dress it up [laughs]. (Mohajeri, 2018, p. 211)

Lyra’s drawing incorporated elements of celebration, processing, movement, and resistance. She explained that her identities were “a gift . . . to be shared” and also something to celebrate.

Lyra’s art incorporates her embodied and experiential knowledge (Harris, 2016) in ways that are surprising and valuable. Her embrace and even celebration of being “an unfulfilling member” in particular constitutes a meaningful contribution to explorations of multiraciality for college students. This drawing and its various elements challenge dominant ideologies which pressure individuals to fit in boxes (Johnston et al., 2014).

Once again, centering this artful production as a portal for understanding leads to a handful of generative questions. For example, what does it mean that Lyra’s identities were so closely tied to context? What does it mean that her identities were written lightly, as in a whisper? What does this imply about the permanence, impermanence, and materiality of social identities? What does it mean that her art conveyed both a sense of loss and entrapment simultaneous with joy, celebration, play, and comfort? How can we take these elements and use them as a set of codes or themes with which to analyze other data? It is evident that Lyra’s art unearths questions for researchers to ask themselves, to play with, to learn and grow from. These are questions about self-love, appreciation for complexity and ambiguity, and playfulness and joy in the midst of uncertainty and pain. Could researchers create new research questions based on some of these elements? Treating this art as aperture allows scholars to step back from past analyses and look for themes of boxing in, dancing and playing with, ambivalence, and resistance.

Postsecondary Students

Artful methodologies can be useful for understanding the experiences of postsecondary students. First, most young adults in college and graduate school—whether multiracial or not—are in a period of relative alienation from the ubiquitous art-making they engaged in as children. Having them re-engage with artful methods as part of systematic inquiry may help dislodge and reawaken creative capacities. Second, because these same learners are being exposed to the study of research through their methods and statistics training in undergraduate and graduate school, ABER may serve as a useful contrasting or accompanying paradigm, allowing them to consider alternative methods for data inquiry and analysis. Third, because postsecondary students are away from home, often for the first time, they are engaged in an ongoing process of self-inquiry, experimentation, and self-knowledge. Art can serve as a catalyst for some of the deep integration work they are engaged in, particularly through its elements of exploration, experimentation, meditation, and self-inquiry. Finally, artful methods bring to bear nonmaterial faculties such as intuition, spirit, and more. Postsecondary students can use these faculties as they continue to make sense of their upbringing, are exposed to new knowledge, and claim their own values for their futures.

Multiracial Students

Artful methodologies can be apt for understanding the experiences of multiracial students. Multiracial young adults are engaged in profound and consuming processes of identity development during their postsecondary years (Johnston, 2014; Johnston-Guerrero & Chaudhari, 2016; Renn, 2004). Artful methods offer formats beside survey data collection or interview conversations by which students can trouble, connect, and integrate the deep questions and themes they are grappling with. The studies described herein demonstrate the power of artful methods to allow for deeper, nuanced understandings of multiracial students’ lived experiences.

Artful approaches embrace a holistic perspective (Leavy, 2018). Multiracial students often describe living their lives in fractured parts; providing space for students to share voice and experiences through eco mapping, timelines, and drawing gives them agency to share their narratives in holistic, integrative ways. Furthermore, artful approaches can humanize “individuals who have been pushed to the societal margins throughout history and who are finding a means to bring their voices in to the world of research” (Mertens, 2009, p. 3). Mixed and multiracial students are marginalized by monoracism and white supremacy. They are often bound by singular research approaches that limit understanding of the complexity of their voices and identities. Higher education as a whole can benefit from pluralistic and open perspectives on multiracial students’ intersectional lives and artful methodologies enable this.

In these three studies, students stepped away from traditional procedures that center the interviewer-interviewee relationship as the main arena for data generation. Instead, individual participants centered themselves and their lived experiences through artful approaches that engaged faculties that lie beyond the merely cognitive (Okello et al., 2022), such as intuition, creativity, and inspiration. Such artful inquiry required study participants to slow down, recall, and assess their life experiences, and then to engage artfully with these experiences and accumulated wisdom. In fact, employing artful inquiry—whether it was visualizations or more traditional forms—enabled participants to be expressive in complex, rich, and unexpected ways.

Researchers and Research

As researchers, and particularly during the analysis phase, we were able to step back and consider the artful products as more than pieces of data to be coded and themed. We regarded these artful productions as apertures through which we could gaze, as generative portals for new insights, new analysis, new questions. Furthermore, through ABER, we “braided” (Atalay et al., 2019) in other knowledge(s), including scholarly literature, our own lived experiences, our emotive responses, insights from previous related research studies that we conducted, other art that inspires us, and our own intuition and creativity.

Readers

Those who serve as audience to these artful productions (including researchers and even readers of published scholarship) can engage the iconography that is generated by ABER. Campbell Galman explained that the end goal of using art includes “generating an iconography for interpreting, complicating, and transforming stories for liberation” (Atalay et al., 2019, p. 770). The three cases provide such an iconography around family bonds that lead to strength and bonds that restrict and distract, the intimation of objectivity when studying race and racial identity development through scholarship, and the gifts and constraints of multiraciality as perpetuated under a white supremacist system. Some images in the iconography generated here include the following: Webs (webs of support, webs that trap and entangle, networks of friendship), vibrations in relationships (supercharged connections, flat connections, linear relations, generative relations), pathways (paths that converge, paths that diverge, paths that run parallel, choices among pathways), boxes and strictures (categories, breaking open boxes, leaving boxes open, escape routes, race as a box, race as a box that we can pry open), play (movement, jumping, pushing, pulling, tossing, catching, dressing up, playing with race as it plays with us, tossing race around as it tosses us around, tossing monoracial conceptualizations of race around), and more. Many potent images and concepts arise when art generates iconography as part of research inquiry. We acknowledge that there is significant room to move from visualizations toward aesthetic artful productions, and we join other scholars (CohenMiller, 2016; Flint & Toledo, 2021) in encouraging this expansion. Nonetheless, these three cases demonstrate that centering art as a portal for understanding allows multiracial students to lead the way in creating an iconography for multiple forms of artful interpretation and ultimately liberation.