"When you come to school, you're expected to conform to one group, and that's hard," she says. "It's like being pre-med and going to law school but not knowing anything about law."

Both Cajiri and Sameer Doshi '02 say they have tried out different student groups but without success. Cajiri says he didn't fit into the Harvard-Radcliffe Japan Society, the Harvard-Radcliffe Society of Arab Students (HRSAS) and RAZA, while Doshi says that HRSAS and SAA were not right for him.

"They didn't inform my choices, nor did I have a very good sense of the culture of either," Doshi says.

Twice as Good

Beyond the complicated and often confusing difficulties of multiracial identity, students say this background enriches their lives.

Maya S. Turre '00 says she is more accepting of different cultures, more open-minded, and is able to pick and choose positive traits of different cultures and incorporate them into her life as a result of her multiracial identity.

Her mother is part black and Native American, while her father is part Mexican, Swedish and Italian.

Dunwell says having a mixed-race identity has enabled her to learn about the different cultures of the world in a more in-depth way than people of a single race can.