Multiracial children are often presumed to have similar school and racial experiences as their “mono-racial” peers. Considering this, the author set out to explore multiracial adolescent students’ self-conception and experiences in a secondary educational context. Relying on the students’ experiential stories, this paper explores their ways of mediating the school environment. The multiracial student participants had significant self-awareness and cultural literacy due to their continued navigation of disparate cultures. At the same time, they reported facing external demands, from various socio-cultural and racial groups to define who they were in social situations in an educational settings. Students were sensitive to others’ expectations and they molded their behavior to conform to these expectations through making overt behavioral and language choices.

In this paper, I explore how the student participants positioned themselves and reacted in situations with adults. As such I delve into the unique ways that students react and insulate themselves from overtly and covertly biased experiences. In certain ways, the school expected conformity through assimilation, while the students struggled with acculturation in order to not give up their multicultural frames. The shifts that I observed with the students were much more complex than simple change of language. Students used different language, postures, gestures and physical stances based on how they assessed their social environment. Students’ awareness of the shifts has implications for how they interact with peers and adults, as well as the stressors students encounter as a result of these actions. Based on the study’s findings I proposed a new lens through which to view multiracial student behavior.

Through appeasement (conforming to social speech and behavior expectations) and objection (refusing to conform) the students actively chose how to react to others’ perceptions of them. The students were aware of the juxtaposition of their lived racial identity and what the school and the white teachers expected of them. When Camille told me she needed to ‘act more white,’ I realized that the students saw it as manifestly their failure to succeed and conform. The students were aware of the teachers’ expectations for them speak proper English and conform. When students assumed guises that were expected and welcomed by the group, they were engaging in appeasement. In some ways, appeasement required them to sublimate their mixed race personalities. The student acquiesced to the group’s expectations either explicitly or implicitly by straightening up, maintaining a more deferential stance, looking down or away, letting intended or unintended slip-ups or slurs pass. This was like holding up a mirror to others so they saw their own reflection or the image they expected to see.  Students assumed a cooperative stance and spoke standard English, when they felt it was in their interest to do so. Yet, many of the student participants felt that this compliance was a betrayal of who they were. “I’d be ignoring who I am all the parts” (Jayden). Thus the term objection carried with it an awareness of action that was deliberate and engaged in regardless of consequences. Examples of objection stood out more starkly in the classrooms as the student acted with forethought in the opposite fashion than was expected. Students had varying reasons for doing this: in defense of others or the student did this to be contrary and have a little fun. Objection was not only an overt refusal to conform, but it was sometimes as a subtle disconnect, where students chose to zone out or sit in silence rather than sublimate their personalities, language and social behavior. In all, both appeasement and objection are explorations of students’ projection of self in their school interactions.

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