Beyond Black and White

By Kathleen Holder

Adriel Mun-Jun Luis grew up in a mostly Asian American neighborhood in Union City but said he never experienced pride in his Chinese heritage until he discovered the hip-hop world of spoken-word poetry.

Inspired in high school by a San Francisco Bay area Filipino American poetry collective, Luis co-founded iLL-Literacy, a performance art and activist group, when he came to UC Davis.

The group is street-hip and multicultural, mostly Asian Americans but also African Americans. High-achieving students, they can talk and write fluently in urban slang, with stage aliases like xLe, Piliqueena, d.phayce, Lyrical Word Docta and Luis’ subSCRYBE. They win awards: Two members, including Luis, have won Bay Area poetry slam contests, and a third is a past winner of an Austrian beatbox, or voice percussion, championship.

The group’s mix of cultures isn’t unusual at UC Davis.

Students are more racially diverse—far less white and more Asian and Mexican American—than a generation ago. But more than that, they seem more multicultural, adopting music, clothing styles, dance and ideas from a wide array of cultures, ethnicities and eras—from hip-hop and “gangsta” rap to India’s Bhangra pop-folk fusion and ’70s rock music and fashion.

Millennial students, many of them multiracial themselves, grew up hearing messages from parents and teachers about embracing diversity. And because of that, they view race in a different way than previous generations have, say faculty, staff and the students themselves.

“As far as they’re concerned, the Boomers and Xers are obsessed with race in a way they’re not,” said American studies professor Jay Mechling. “The Boomers are sort of locked in a black-white template for talking about race in the United States. That just doesn’t feel real to these kids.”

“They’re so comfortable with diversity,” said sociology assistant professor Patrick Carroll. “This really is the multicultural generation.”

Students do tend to self-segregate, said Alberto Garcia, a senior in communications and history. But overall, “people are able to get along regardless of race and ethnicity,” he said.

“We’ve come a long way from how it used to be,” Garcia said. “I think there are still a lot of problems when it comes to discrimination and prejudice, but it’s not as blatant as it used to be so people can de-prioritize it.”

Making a difference

Paying the way

Plays well with others

Helicopter parents

Stressed and depressed

A shift to the left

In the spirit

Born to be wired

Where’s my job?

Return to introduction

Kathleen Holder is associate editor of UC Davis Magazine. David Owen and Joanna
Robinson contributed to these stories. Photos by Debbie Aldridge and Rachel Van Blankenship.