The Multiracial Activist Newsletter
Special Alert 26 – August 16, 2015
The Multiracial Activist Newsletter is an informational digest of news, events, new websites and other information of interest to the multiracial and interracial community. Published irregularly, with special alerts as news items warrant. The Multiracial Activist Newsletter is registered with the Library of Congress, Washington, DC – ISSN: 1522-6905. Past newsletters and alerts are archived at: https://multiracial.com/newsletter.html
Special Alert 26
August 16, 2015
Editor, James A. Landrith, Jr.
https://www.multiracial.com/
email: editor@multiracial.com
The Multiracial Activist
Statement on Life and Death of Julian Bond
I had a lot of respect for this man, even while disagreeing vehemently with the NAACP’s utterly repugnant, indefensible and outright hostile views on the right of multiracial individuals to self-identify as they see fit.
I did get the honor of serving with Bond on the In Defense of Freedom coalition starting in 2002 (http://www.indefenseoffreedom.org/). His advocacy encompassed a wide range of issues and interests. I was grateful to be granted the opportunity to work with him and so many others on vitally important civil liberties issues in the early to mid 2000s. We started with opposition to Congressional and Bush Administration attempts to ram opportunistic domestic surveillance schemes and illegal infringements on civil liberties through Congress and the regulatory process via scare tactics, parliamentary games and outright lies and kept talking together as a loosely affiliated group of civil liberties and policy advocates.
It was an honor to put my name and my publication’s name alongside that of Julian Bond on issues of mutual concern, putting aside those issues where we did not and could never agree.
RIP, Professor. Your work is done.
James Landrith
Founder and Publisher,
The Multiracial Activst
and The Abolitionist Examiner
Julian Bond was a member of the traditional “Mulatto Elite,” who presented themselves as the “Talented Tenth” of the “Negro Race” (as W.E. B. DuBois called them). They saw the multiracial movement as undermining their claim to leadership of the “black race” and the right to speak for it and gain political power by doing so.
I understand your feelings about Bond. As we were members of some of the same civil liberties coalitions, I knew him as more than the individual who represented the NAACP and their opposition to self-identification. My comments regarded the man as a whole, not only where I disagreed with him on multiracial self-identification. I was very clear about that when I mentioned “utterly repugnant, indefensible and outright hostile views” with regard to self-identification. Like all human beings, he was more than just one thing at one time.