I love New York. I was just there a few weeks ago. I also love my Sunday New York Times newspaper. I live in a city that has a terribly slim Sunday newspaper, so reading the entire Sunday New York Times, which can take a few hours, is something I look forward to each week. Then I get to the magazine section and I hold my breath. What will they say this week about multiracial kids?

It started a few months ago when a question appeared in the magazine for Randy Cohen, who publishes his answers to ethical questions in his "The Ethicist" column. Sometimes he's glib, sometimes funny, and often just plain wrong, as reader response points out. He received a letter from a 17-year-old who was "half Hispanic and half Caucasian" who wanted to know if it was unethical for him to list his race as Hispanic on college applications. I wrote to Cohen and explained that Hispanic is an ethnicity and not a race, and his answer advising the writer to just pick one was not exactly correct and how that affects a multiracial person. He did respond to my e-mail, although the editors chose not to print my letter. His response was...well...disappointing.

Then on December 9, Randall Kennedy (he wrote the controversial book titled Nigger), was interviewed for the question and answer section of the magazine. Kennedy recently deemed himself the guru of interracial families. Here are a few things Kennedy said in that interview:

"Oreo is a term that white people can use and they are not frowned upon, whereas the n-word used by a white person is never acceptable."

"I'm married to a black woman...in elite, primary white institutions, there are many blacks who have white wives. So much so that sometimes there is almost the assumption that I would be married to a white woman."

Again, I wrote to the magazine (I'm sure some of you did, as well) and advised them that the term "Oreo" is never acceptable, whether used by a black, white, or anyone else. And that white women don't marry black men because they are "elite," and being "elite" does not ensure a black man of attracting a wife of any particular race. I also clued them in to the fact that interracial couples marry for the same reasons other people do -- we fall in love.

The editors have not printed any letters pointing out the offensiveness of Kennedy's interview. They did print 13 letters to the editors on other stories that appeared in the same issue.

The very next week, in the February 16 issue, the cover story was about a woman who is disabled and about a Princeton professor who advocates that the parents of babies born with disabilities should have the option of terminating their lives at birth. It's a moving article that goes through the logical arguments of the advocates and protestors. But, in a section about adoption, the writer offers a hypothetical comparison: "What about mixed-race babies, especially when the combination is entirely nonwhite, who I believe are just about as unadoptable as babies with disabilities?" Huh? Multiracial babies are often twice as adoptable, not somehow "worse off" than monoracial babies. Had this same argument been directed to a black, Hispanic, Asian or American Indian baby, the editors would have certainly removed it. Someone needs to educate this person, but it won't be through the New York Times Magazine editors.

I don't know how many times we have written to the New York Times and asked them to use the term "multiracial" instead of "mixed race." Nevermind the preferred terminology by our group, they just can't seem to change it. Racism usually starts at the top of an organization, although this is the only magazine I've ever read that doesn't have a masthead, so we have no idea who is really at the top. Perhaps it's acknowledged privately (I doubt it), but not publicly in their letters from readers.

I won't be writing any more letters to this newspaper. I'll be canceling my subscription and I urge you to do the same.

Susan Graham
Executive Director
Project RACE, Inc.