Antonio Yip Wlassowsky (Berkeley, '10) is the president of UC Berkeley's Mixed Student Union" -- the only student organization on the UC Berkeley campus devoted to the mixed race, multiethnic/multicultural, and transracial adoptee community." Wlassowsky, 21, answered questions over the weekend about the union's recent fall conference.

What does it mean to be "unified in our diversity," as it says on the mixed.berkeley.edu site, and how has that meaning changed in magnitude or significance in the last year or so for you and people you know and love? 

In the context of cultivating a mixed community, to be "unified in our diversity" for us means a group of people for identify as mixed (whatever it may mean to the person as an individual) coming together from completely different backgrounds: every part of the spectrum of race, ethnicity, culture, class, gender, sexuality, geography, and anything else you can think of. Coming together because of the way we identify and/or are seen by other people, usually by treading lines that are generally expected to be clear in terms of race and ethnicity. So in short, its to come together and stay together because of our similar experiences, that are in a way also inherently different.

For me and the people I love, I don't think that the meaning of that has really changed a whole lot. Our aims are still clear, and if anything, I'm just encouraged to dialogue with more people are race to get people thinking. My views on the meaning have changed a little over the last year, realizing that the ideas and experiences that people who identify as mixed go through ARE common to mixed people, they're not necessarily exclusive to people who identify as mixed. So opening that dialogue with people who don't think they're included has been important to me in the last year.

What changes still remain in creating a warm, safe and comfortable environment for mixed students on UC campuses system-wide?

Changes that would create a comfortable environment for people who identify as mixed are no different than those needed for other identities that have been marginalized, appropriated, oppressed, or otherwise generalized and mispercieved. An understanding of the vast diversity within those who identify as mixed, and that generalizations don't go very far at all given the diversity of experience in the mixed community. 

Another thing is that given that people who are mixed (who may also not identify with this word and just 'pass' for a particular identity or feel more akin to multiple ethnoracial identities rather than as mixed or for any number of other reasons) have very different feelings about what could be seen as issues that particularly affect mixed people. An example would be the question "what are you?" Some may enjoy the question and see it as an opportunity to tell the person about their family history and personal culture, whereas some may see it as a subconsious attack, trying to trap the person questioned into a box of preconceived monoracial expectations.

So in short: mixed people are generalized in many ways, and may not have a single common comfortable environment with relation to issues concerning a mixed identity.

On your Facebook page, one of your networks is "The City of Oakland." What message would you deliver, given a chance, to the city's ~400,000 residents? :)

Being an Oakland resident all my life (and now a UC Berkeley student), I would say that we are culturally privileged. Though many of us may face harsh economic, physically violent, and impoverished conditions that come to mind to many when they hear the word "Oakland," we must also see the good things: Not only are we the birthplace of some good-ass music, art, and social movements, but we have people from all around the world here. We experience a lot of things that much of the country can only imagine through the TV, whether that's a good or a bad thing. We got life, we got soul.

Photo illustration by f_mafra, via Flickr, Creative Commons license.