Date: Tue, 22 Jun 1999 23:55:07 -0700 (PDT)
From: George A. Winkel
Subject: Letter to the Editor<\/p>\n
Open letter to Hapa Issues Forum (HIF)<\/p>\n
[I posted the following on the HIF mail server 4\/28\/99. Information about "The Multiracial Issue" [posted on HIF 4\/28\/99]<\/p>\n What is HIF's position currently on the "Multiracial" category issue?<\/p>\n The issue is not dead yet. The Presidential Office of Management and Budget I think some influence may be felt at the OMB by a civil disobedience campaign Will HIF support including a multiracial category, by some name, on the 2000 I think HIF should support "Multiracial," in some form, for several reasons.<\/p>\n First, common sense demands it sooner or later. The OMB, even opponents of Third, "Multiracial" has special meaning for some of us, which I think we Appropriately, some promoters of a multiracial category would vote Racial issues affect part-Black multiracials more than they do the rest of us. I will welcome arguments against any governmental recognition of a multiracial A year from now the 2000 census will be taken, and I believe it will be our Perhaps my HIF respondents would like to repost their objections here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Date: Tue, 22 Jun 1999 23:55:07 -0700 (PDT)From: George A. WinkelSubject: Letter to the Editor Open letter to Hapa Issues Forum (HIF) [I posted the following on the HIF mail server 4\/28\/99. Information aboutHIF...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":347,"featured_media":7987,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[223,61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-george-winkel","category-reader-forum"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/Letters-to-the-Editor.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p89tuq-oP","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/347"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1539"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2958,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1539\/revisions\/2958"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
HIF and its mailing list is available at HIF's website:
http:\/\/www.hapaissuesforum.org\/<\/font><\/u><\/a>
"Hapa" is a term HIF uses, meaning Eurasian. I have returned to the more
familiar, euphonic "Eurasian" here for readers' convenience.
A few replies to the following post were subsequently posted they were
familiar "one dropper" arguments! Ironically the HIF website has no
forum page. I have invited HIF correspondents to debate me here, too.]<\/p>\n
(OMB), last year, following hearings, ruled "Multiracial" and "Other"
would not be racial categories used on the upcoming Year 2000 census.
Nonetheless, the "Draft Provisional Guidance on the Implementation of the
1997 Standards for Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity"
(http:\/\/www.multiracial.com\/government\/RACE.PDF<\/font><\/u><\/a>), released in March included
categories for "Some other race," and for "Two or more races." If one or both
these choices are included on the final 2000 census, I think multiracials
likely will use them as multiracial categories. (See also a critique of
RACE.PDF at http:\/\/www.multiracial.com\/news\/bloodpressure.html<\/font><\/u><\/a>.)<\/p>\n
promoted on at least three large multiracial web sites, urging "Check American
Indian" as a protest demonstration. (See Interracial Voice:
http:\/\/www.interracialvoice.com\/protest.html<\/font><\/u><\/a>)<\/p>\n
census form? HIF's web site use to include a statement requesting more study
of the Multiracial issue, and implying opposition to the idea. I can't find
the posting anymore. Does this signal a change?<\/p>\n
the multiracial category, use the word "multiracial", describing people of
more-than-one race, which we are. Second, some of us do not feel adequately
served by checking all races that apply. A Hispanic-Asian is not simply
biracial, for example, because Hispanic are already multiracial peoples
(and a separate ethnicity, too). Multiple checking may not satisfy asymmetry
in the proportions of one's ancestry. My son, for instance is biracial,
Eurasian but his children in turn will likely have more complicated racial
ancestry. At Interracial Voice\\ http:\/\/www.interracialvoice.com\/<\/font><\/u><\/a>
Multiracial Activist http:\/\/www.multiracial.com\/<\/font><\/u><\/a>
Project Race\\ http:\/\/www.projectrace.com\/<\/font><\/u><\/a>
INTERracial\\ http:\/\/www.twsonline.com\/INTERracial\/<\/font><\/u><\/a>
find adults who already have that sort of complex heritage.<\/p>\n
should all respect. Those seeming most outspokenly desirous of identifying
multiracial have black ancestors. Establishing a sense of separate racial
identity from Black is important for them. I think we should help. I should
not have to remind Eurasians we are racially mixed too. The fact that some
other multiracial folks share different racial combinations poses no
"race" barrier to us.<\/p>\n
themselves out of "race" entirely. (E.g., Charles Byrd of IntVoice would
decline to multiple-check.) They knowingly, intelligently, wish to waive
their minority status protection in favor of bringing about a better world.
They anticipate a coming future. When everyone will be simply multiracial
the whole 224-year-old notion of "race" must slither back into the well of
history. I think we should respect their wish.<\/p>\n
Also, there is pressure on them, as well as division among themselves (mostly
along generational lines), whether a so-called "One-Drop Rule" renders them
simply African American, nothing else. Perhaps most African Americans are
racially mixed to some degree. I don't care if they all are multiracial.
The one-drop rule has a very ugly history. It came into being in its modern,
merciless form in Virginia's eugenic Racial Integrity Act of 1924. When the
U.S. Supreme Court overturned the racial integrity laws in the
"Loving v. Virginia"<\/font><\/u><\/em><\/a>; 388 U.S. 1, 18 L.Ed.2d 1010, 87 S.Ct. 1817 (1967)
decision — which overturned all the laws prosecuting racial intermarriage
— the Court's landmark decision overturned the one-drop rule, too.
One-Drop is no longer enforceable, and I believe multiracials should be
free to self-identify on the census and other questionaires.<\/p>\n
identity. I think such arguments con will all fail. "Multiracial" describes
a solid biological reality on Earth, and maybe (I hope) it is the beginning
of a demographic landslide of truly biblical proportions. Already "multiracial"
means infinitely more than a classificatory tabulating label. It identifies
millions of people who are not simply one old race. (See the Bill of Rights for
Persons of Racially Mixed Ancestry, posted on HIF's web site:
http:\/\/www.hapaissuesforum.org\/bill.html<\/font><\/u><\/a>.) The simple formulas of established
monorace and minority civil rights organizations do not necessarily address the
needs of Eurasians and the other multiracials. Moreover we should recognize
that some multiracials, especially those part-black (and compare
"The History Of Hapas"<\/em>, para. 5 <\/font><\/u><\/a>), may suffer as much racial discrimination
from a monorace which covets them for its minority (e.g., African American) as
from another monorace which does not (e.g., Asian, White, etc.). We should
support any members of our community establishing their independence
— especially their right to freedom from One-Drop tyranny and oppression.<\/p>\n
season to come together as Multiracial people and begin building a community.
Heretofore we have been invisible. One-drop has always been applied in prior
censuses against us all, so as to make us all disappear into the monorace
designations. We cannot go on forever being forced to vanish. Censuses since
1960 have revealed numbers of interracial marriages like mine growing at an
exponential rate, more than doubling each decade. The count of marriages alone
passed 1.5 million in 1990 and thanks to One-Drop counting no one is sure how
many multiracial children like mine are born since 1960. No one knows how many
black or Hispanic people may choose to self-identify multiracial. The OMB has
estimated no more than two percent of Americans will check more than one race.
I think that might turn out a surprising underestimate. So — can't we please
have a sense of solidarity for the coming 2000 census!
G. Winkel<\/p>\n