A Call for the End of The One Drop Rule
The Multiracial Community At War
by Patrice Farmer
March/April 2000
THE CENSUS 2000- The Government has publicly accepted the One Drop Rule as the system in the United States for tabulating racial classifications. Despite the increasing number of mixed race people, the government has refused to acknowledged us as a separate racial group. The coin 'invisible race', is extremely appropriate when it addresses the issues of multi/biracial families within the U.S.
The Census 2000 is expecting millions of multiracial families to check off more than one race, while the government assigns them to a minority group based on the largest numbered group represented. Also, biracial individuals who are half white will be assigned with their minority groups, assuring that the white race will remain 'pure'. This decision by the OMB-Office of Management and Budget- has given into the pressures from monoracial groups such as the NAACP, Latino organizations and many others. These groups fear that their numbers will wane and that they will lose the funding they recieve based upon larger numbers of people claiming heritages.
The problem is that as multiracial persons and families, we do not have the choice to choose which heritage we want to identify with or the choice to be considered Multiracial as a separate racial category, just as White, Hispanic, Asian and African American are. The government is trying to take that choice away from us with the Census 2000! The government is still subscribing to the old slave owners' purity laws, the One Drop Rule, which prevented biracials or anyone with a degree of white blood from diluting their 'pure' white bloodlines.
The U..S. government is also taking away our freedom of choice by allowing teachers and others to continue to choose the race of our children based on THEIR definition of race. If a mixed child speaks Spanish, has a Puerto Rican identity and is also half white, a teacher can assign that child as being African American based on physical characteristics that are non-existent in reality. Physcial characteristics are not definitives of racial classifications and culture. Arab and Hispanic Americans are a combination of races, proof that physical attributes do not constitue race. But, the U.S. government wants our children to be sujected to the false science of eyeballing and guessing based on their own prejudices. NOT ACCEPTABLE!!!
I CONTEND THAT THE MULTIRACIAL COMMUNITY SHOULD TAKE ON THE OMB AND DECLARE THAT THEIR ONE DROP POLICY IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL AND VIOLATES OUR CIVIL RIGHTS FOR SELF-IDENTITY! THIS IS A CALL TO ALL MULTI/BIRACIAL FAMILIES TO DECLARE WAR! WE MUST FIGHT FOR OUR RIGHTS TO SELF-DETERMINE, CATEGORIZE, DEFINE AND CLASSIFY OURSELVES!
Patrice Farmer is moderator of Mixed Families at Onelist.com
Also by Patrice Farmer
Copyright © 2000 Patrice Farmer and The Multiracial Activist. All rights reserved.