by George Winkel
April/May 2001

The 2000 census is out and it shows who is lying. See how the population of multiracial peoples is being split and minimized.

Here is the Overview of Race and Hispanic Origin, Census 2000 Brief (issued March 2001): www.census.gov/prod /2001pubs/cenbr01-1.pdf (149Kbytes.) (Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader – a free download)

Table 1, on page 3 shows, among other things:

Page 3 of the Overview also shows the government OMB (Office of Management & Budget) cheerfully reassuring everyone that “the overwhelming majority of the U.S. population reported only one race.” Only 2.4 percent responded with two or more “races.” However, as I will show, this clearly is the smallest minority of people actually responding outside of the classical five-“race” paradigm.

But first, the U.S. OMB and Census Bureau insist on treating each “race” as being “mutually exclusive and exhaustive,” including the new “Two or more races” people. (Cenbr01-1.pdf Overview, supra, p. 3.) Nonetheless, as OMB Bulletin 00-02 Guidance on Aggregation and Allocation of Data on Race for Use in Civil Rights Monitoring and Enforcement makes clear, the government refuses to recognize the new 2.4 percent as Multiracial people apart. OMB Bulletin 00-02 implies that mutually exclusive “race” still exists in those of “Two or more races” — they only need untangling — as if to safely part the “white” line from the “degenerate” “non-white” one. And sharper than great Alexander’s Gordian Knot picker is the OMB’s lately adopted “one drop rule.” It segregates all “impurity” apart from “white.” From the councils of “majority” power and privilege the “rule” excises all “other” — especially “black” (people who “One Drop” concentrates like tar residue) — driven away by “white” racism, allegedly. The same racial untangling rule raps the Hispanic/Latino, whose unique “ethnicity” was created in 1970 to semi-exempt them from “One Drop,” as the “people who can be of any [one] race.” In fact, Census 2000 required Hispanic, too, to state their “race.” Prior censuses had let them leave “race” blank, their Hispanic ethnicity enacting protection as a fourth victimized “brown” “minority.”

Thus by mutual exclusivity and “One Drop” the “minorities” are maintained, notwithstanding that the Supreme Court’s Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, 12 (1967) (right to marry interracially) decision made “race” indefinable fully a third of a century ago. (And let’s not forget, the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution [1865] totally abolished slavery down to its last “badges” of servitude.) Still no one is free to opt-out of the “race” struggle! (Ultimately, each “race” is to be “equalized” by means of the affirmative acts & political “empowerment” necessary. Government remains confused that our U.S. Constitution guarantees equality of people, not racial groups.)

Well, what’s wrong with “race” as mutually exclusive “categories”? “Race” is a word interchangeable with animal breed. Both words imply biological subdivision of our human species. Actually it is “species” which are mutually exclusive and exhaustive. This fundamental unit of taxonomy (species), is best defined as animals too different to cross-breed. What obscene slur is implied of interracially married people — of our multiracial children (and the Latino) — treating “race” as “mutually exclusive, exhaustive”? What divisive slander of all Mankind!

The released census data show far more than 2.4 percent of Americans racially “mixed.” Hispanic are racially blended people; OMB, “can be of any race” dogma to the contrary notwithstanding. (Make no mistake, the civil rights community — Hispanic, Black Caucus, etc. — “minority” identity political lobbying drives mutually exclusive OMB “collapsing” & “allocating,” “one-drop” “race”-policy.) Also, footnote 6 on page 3 of the Overview of Race and Hispanic Origin (cenbr01-1.pdf, supra), explains that 97 percent of those indicating “Some other race” are believed to be Hispanic, too. I think it a safe guess that even the remaining 3 percent of this “Some other race” group are people not regarding themselves monolithically racially pure. For instance, the so-called Tri-racial Isolates of the Virginia Appalachians (e.g., Melungeons) also check the “other” box for want of a better identifier. And like Hispanic, they resist “One Drop” forcing them to identify “just black.”

Counting together the obviously racially “mixed” census respondents:

Clearly, one-in-five Americans are multiracial today, not 50 years from now, as the OMB forecasts.

Moreover, it is known that virtually every African American today actually is multiracial, having some Indian and “white” ancestry. If only a conservative 70 percent of “blacks” came out multiracial (as NAACP leadership has warned — hence the organization’s staunch opposition to the “multiracial” identifier in 1997), the percentage of concededly “mixed” Americans would go up another 8.6 percent. That would raise the total to 29.0 percent.

But that is not all. See Slate staff writer Brent Staples’s article, “The Real American Love Story, Why America is a lot less white than it looks.” Staples described research done in the 1940’s by Ohio State University sociologist, Dr. Robert Stuckert, whose report was filed in the U.S. Supreme Court with the Loving v. Virginia, supra, 388 U.S. 1, briefs. Stuckert had found that by 1950 more than one in five (21%) of all “white” Americans had “black” African ancestry within four generations (approx. 100 yrs. back), due to more than 330 years’ intimate contacts, and “passing.” Clearly, Stuckert’s work showed that the “one-drop” “anti-miscegenation” laws, whose “white purity” preserving rationale underlay the former Jim Crow segregation laws and customs, had failed by 1950. Dr. Stuckert predicted the proportion of “white” people with “black blood” (1/5 in 1950) would increase in following generations. That was half a century ago. By population math, “pure whites’” chances of marrying/being a “passer” are almost doubled each generation (4/5 today?). If only half that projected 80 percent of “white” people know or should know they are actually “two or more races,” it would add another 84.5 million, or 30 percent.

Known, too, is the fact that the smaller Indian and Asian-American “minorities” are marrying out so free-spiritedly that their separate racial existence likely will melt in an emerging new “beige” America in the decades to come (joined there by Latino, too). But adding back in only the “mixed” “blacks” and “whites” makes my point, with the census Overview table looking now like this:

Clearly, at least three in five Americans today could self-identify multiracial. If — when — we break the blended “race” denial, which is the “emperor has no clothes” state of “mutually exclusive, exhaustive” American “pure race” politics, wholesale makeover of the look and feel of life in America could be at hand!

George Winkel practices appellate defense law in the California Fourth Appellate District, the State Supreme Court, and occasionally before the U.S. Ninth Circuit.