Updated Oct. 5, 11:32 p.m.

"For me, personally, thinking of myself as defined by race has never really worked, because I don't fit in with the Asians, [and] I don't fit in with white people," Zina Sockwell, a Columbia College senior, explains when asked about her identity as a mixed-heritage student.

Sockwell is half Korean on her mother's side and a quarter Native American on her father's side, and she identifies as mixed heritage. Her entire "nuclear family" is Asian, white, and Native American. Growing up, Sockwell did not feel different or perplexed by her mixed background. "I didn't realize for a long time that I was mixed race—I was just a person, in a family. I was a Sockwell; that's what was normal," she says matter-of-factly.

But when Sockwell got to college, things were different. When the Mixed Heritage Society (previously known as the Mixed-Race Students Society) debuted on campus in the spring of 2015, it filled what some saw as a glaring cavity by providing an identity-based discussion space for students like Sockwell. These students don't identify strictly with one race or ethnicity, and as a result must combat the pressure to define themselves as belonging to one specific culture. The club set out to meet a need for the students who wanted to share their often unique experiences with their fellow "mixed" classmates.

Growing up in Newark, New Jersey, in a predominantly black community, Sockwell's peers could only pin her and her family as Chinese. "I didn't even realize [my being mixed] really in elementary school because everyone was more preoccupied by the fact that they thought I was Chinese, so it wasn't like, 'Oh, she's Chinese plus other things.' It was just, 'She's Chinese,' so I hadn't really realized it still."

However, by the time she got to high school, Sockwell was aware that she looked physically different. "For the first time, everybody thought I was Filipina because there was a pretty large Filipino population in my high school," she explains. "I was like, 'Why does everybody think that?' and I realized it was because I look Filipina, and [I] started to think more about the fact that the different bloodlines came together to look like this thing that actually exists, which is kind of funny."

Upon starting at Columbia, Sockwell says she was excited to try engaging with the different parts of her heritage. She speaks of learning Korean and joining the Korean Students Association, as well as the Native American Council. Her quest to find herself within these categorical identities, though, did not play out as she had hoped.

"I just felt like I didn't belong totally, because I'm not totally Korean," she says. "And [I] went to the Native American club and felt really welcome but … it felt weird; it felt like I was intruding on a thing that everybody had had for a long time."

It wasn't until her sophomore year that Sockwell found out about the Mixed Heritage Society. Sockwell describes some of the interactions the club allows her to have as "incredible." "To talk about [being mixed] with other people who share that same experience is very cool," she remarks. "Even when none of the heritages that you identify with are the same, you still end up having similar experiences."

"Mixed" is an umbrella term that can mean almost anything when it comes to racial background—black and white, white and Chinese, black and Puerto Rican, the list goes on. But the term is more complicated than it seems. Here at Columbia, the tension over what it means to be a mixed-race student has manifested itself in the history of the Mixed Heritage Society, and it forces us to grapple with the terms through which we define race.

According to a Spectator article from 2015, Eliana Pipes, a junior in Columbia College and board member of the society at that time, believes that the group serves as common ground for students who come from different backgrounds and experiences. "The mixed-race experience is its own unique racial experience," she said. "If you are mixed with black, then you can never have the black experience on its own. If you are mixed with white, then you can never have the white experience on its own."

The aforementioned name change from the Mixed-Race Students Society to the Mixed Heritage Society is indicative of the confusion over terms that often accompanies discussions of "mixed race." Is "mixed race" a less apt descriptor than "mixed heritage"? Can "mixed race" and "mixed heritage" be used interchangeably?

The questions raised have a complicated background and context in racial studies. Karl Jacoby, a professor at Columbia and a historian specializing in environmentalist, borderland, and Native American history, has spent a large amount of his career dwelling on these and similar questions. He currently teaches a seminar in association with Columbia's Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race titled Troubling the Color Line.

Jacoby's class examines the phenomena of racial passing and intermarriage and how they challenge the racial hierarchy in America, among other related topics. He was inspired to teach the class after researching racial passing in preparation for writing a book involving the concept.

Explaining his idea for the class, Jacoby tells us that "race is not at all a self-obvious category, and that it's actually always been constructed and restructured over time." He adds that race is something that takes effort to maintain because of its constructed nature.

"It is very fictional in the sense that it's something that's been used to divide people up from one another, and it's not something that human beings have forever used to think about identity," he explains. "Race arose in the 19th century, in the context of colonialism in the United States—taking land from the indigenous people and using race to justify it. And also enslavement of people from Africa, needing race as a way to justify that."

For reasons related to the ones Jacoby raises, the Mixed Heritage Society chose to eschew the term "race" when the club changed its name. Race is not easy to reconcile with, as Sockwell explains. "It's a social construct," she says. "There's no reason for us to believe that we're inherently different."

She understands, however, the undeniable role that race plays in every aspect of society. "We have so many different larger institutional and political structures at play where race does factor in," she says. "Which is why, obviously, you can't say 'I don't see color,' because it exists, and maybe there aren't any biological differences, but it exists, and it plays into things."

Race can both divide and unite. One can be categorized into a group intentionally or unintentionally, as exemplified by the confounding identities of Rachel Chin, a junior at Columbia College and a member of the Mixed Heritage Society's executive board. Chin is Chinese-Jamaican and identifies as black. For her, the term "heritage" can encapsulate her identity as a Chinese-Jamaican, whereas she believes race can only capture one or the other.

"Each of us exist in so many spaces at once, and so the way that you operate changes and so that can get tiring," Chin says. By "spaces," she is referring to the different cultures each of our individual identities are a part of and how it is often hard to reconcile these identities into a single one.

Chin speaks candidly about a previous newspaper interview that identified her as half-Chinese and half-Jamaican. "I am Chinese-Jamaican," she emphasizes. "Both my parents are Chinese-Jamaican, so I am not mixed with Chinese and Jamaican."

She expresses that defining oneself by race alone does not always allow for a complete integration of a sense of self. For example, although she was born and raised in Jamaica, she experiences a lack of comfort in Caribbean-only spaces. "I went to a couple of Caribbean [Students] Association meetings, and even that was difficult. My family is mixed, and that changes things in the Caribbean."

In the Mixed Heritage Society, similar experiences of not belonging come up in discussions. The members discuss issues such as colorism—which is prejudice against darker skin tones within the same racial or ethnic group—as well as other more intricate ethnic dynamics, and they encourage each other to contemplate the difficulties of being mixed heritage. Chin gives the example of lightness and darkness of skin color in a familial setting and how, unintentionally, these differences can affect the way one interacts with even their family members.

Chin says the Mixed Heritage Society engages with topics such as "religion and different cultural backgrounds—even ethnicity," but she adds that these discussions might not necessarily "transcend race."

She compares the club's name change to "the way that FemSex changed to AllSex." FemSex was created as a safe space for women to discuss issues revolving around sexuality, gender, and identity; it changed its name to AllSex to welcome individuals of all genders and identities into the discussion space—a change in wording to make a safe space more inclusive.

For Chin herself, the new inclusivity of the Mixed Heritage Society was helpful in allowing her a better opportunity to unite her identities. "It's not just a racial thing or an ethnic thing, but a nationality thing; I am not from the United States. I guess [it's] the way I have experienced race and ethnicity; I have to explain it continuously."

Chin's disconnect with racial activism in the United States, despite the fact that she identifies as part black, demonstrates that her heritage has deeper roots in culture and nationality than her race does. "It doesn't really feel justified in pushing for certain things because I should be within the discussion," she considers. "I don't feel comfortable doing things because I am an international student."

In general, Jacoby feels that people turn away from the mixed-race label in favor of mixed heritage because the former "suggests that there is a concrete thing called race." He feels that defining someone as being "multiple races mixed together" validates the idea of race and suggests that there's a "mono-race," that "if you're multiracial, you can also be mono-racial, and that there's an actual race you can measure."

Sockwell riffs on Jacoby's definition of racial and ethnic identities, with his understanding of heritage as something that "is especially salient being mixed, because it is so different and people come from so many different heritages."

When asked what advice she could provide for someone trying to classify their identity, Sockwell says: "Everyone handles their identity the way that suits them, and letting someone own it in the way that works for them, [the way that] is healthiest for them, is really what is key."

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A previous version of this article falsely attributed quotes from a 2015 Spectator article to Keenan Smith. It was in fact board member Eliana Pipes who was quoted in the original article. The Eye regrets the error.