International student mobility to the United States (US) has increased over the past two decades. Despite the increase in numbers, international students may experience racism, nativism, and other forms of discrimination within the US context. Much of the existing literature focus on how international students can assimilate and cope with these issues rather than interrogating the systems of oppression that create negative student experiences. Thus, we utilized critical race theory (CRT) as a framework for interrogating how international student experiences are portrayed in current literature. Although CRT is grounded in US-based legal theory, we argue that CRT must move beyond the rigid confinement within US borders and expand to consider how transnationalism and global exchange contributes to the fluidity and applicability of this theory. We also provide recommendations for critical race praxis, with an emphasis on implications for practice, theory, and future research.

Multiracial college students’ enrollment has increased significantly over the past decade. This study examined the experiences of multiracial college students at a historically White institution (HWI) in the Northeast—particularly how student experiences within interracial family relationships—prior to college and while enrolled in college have assisted them in navigating instances of racism. In this exploratory qualitative study, students indicated that their family members can provide support in understanding racism. However, it does depend on the type of relationship and support (e.g., strong, weak, or stressed) they receive from specific family members during their pre-college and college experiences. Multiracial students confirmed experiencing multiracial microaggressions and found that they receive the most family support from their siblings. Implications are provided for students, practitioners, and interracial families to empower multiracial students to confront racism while attending a HWI.

When I was a little girl growing up in South Florida, I remember hearing these recurring questions from my peers in elementary school. “No, that can't be your real hair.” “Is that really your Dad?” “Where are you really from?” “Where is Trinidad?!” These interrogations eventually started to fragment my views of the world. Being asked these questions made me self-reflect about my own bicultural heritage growing up in a Trinidadian and American household. The poem with which I began this chapter, “Outside of the Box,” was written when I was a third-year doctoral student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. This poem, written through an assignment from my qualitative data analysis course, in some ways represents my own path to better understanding my racial identity while also strengthening my racial consciousness. My racial identities as a multiracial cisgender woman of Irish and Trinidadian American (Indo-Caribbean, Spanish, White) descent has always shaped the way that I view myself and the world around me. Before sharing more about my identity, I provide more context about my family. My mother immigrated to the United States from the Caribbean islands of Trinidad and Tobago when she was in her early 20s. She came to the United States to help out a cousin with the care of her young children. Although she did not initially imagine settling in the United States to live, it was in South Florida where she met my father, a boat captain and White Irish man hailing from Boston, Massachusetts. Their love and union “quietly revolutionized” (Root, 1996, p. 9) their families and their friends around them.