Dear Project RACE Members:

It seems that everyone watched the Academy Awards Sunday night. We gawked at the dresses and jewelry, laughed with Whoopi, and cheered Randy Newman when he finally won an award. Most people probably remarked about what a fine person Sidney Portier is and how much he's done for black actors. Many cried along with Halle Berry, as she acknowledged herself as the first black actress to get the best actress award. It's all so wonderful for blacks, but what about multiracial people and interracial families? Judging from the letters members sent to us following the awards, there is much concern.

In the early 1990s, not long after the formation of Project RACE, I met Sidney Portier's daughter Pamela. She came to my home. We "clicked" as friends. She was very excited about Project RACE and told me she was certain her father would help us, after all he was married to a white woman and they had two biracial daughters-Pam's half-sisters. She called her father and asked him to speak out and help the multiracial movement. He turned her down cold. He said he would not get involved; it wasn't his problem and it certainly wasn't her problem. Pam sighed, said she was sorry, and then told me she would be going to Africa for a while. That was the last time I heard from her.

I remember wondering at the time how a father could not view the misclassification of his daughters as not his problem. How does a parent do that? Yes, I was naïve. I forgot that if your last name is "Portier," you don't have the same problems as the rest of us. I didn't realize then that if your father had fought race-based discrimination, he would not necessarily be understanding of the discrimination placed upon his children.

Then came Halle Berry, who considers herself to be black, not biracial. She told Barbara Walters that this is because her mother insisted she identify as black, since she would be "looked at" as black. Wow. Maybe her mother would have liked the "skin gradation chart" the U.S. Census Bureau was considering in the 1990s (yes, the 1990s), that would have really classified us all by skin color. I bet Halle has done everything her mother told her to do. Of course she has every right to classify herself as black. In fact, we stress that this is all about people having a choice of how they want to racially identify. What I have a problem with is her mother's reasoning that it matters more how other people view you than how you view yourself. That's the biggest buy-in to the "one-drop rule" (the belief that if you have one drop of black blood, you are black) that there can be. I'm starting to call it the "one-drip rule," because a drip is an annoying sound made by falling drops, and famous multiracial people one-by-one falling for the one-drop rule is certainly an annoying sound to my ears. It also annoyed me years ago when Lenny Kravitz said, "mixed people should realize we are all black and get over it." Again, he can choose what he wants, but he shouldn't place his choice on other people.

Famous multiracial people have been asked for years to become involved in the movement for a multiracial classification, and they have refused for years. Steve and Ruth White (whatever happened to them?) used to give some kind of award to multiracial celebrities, when they threw their own Hollywood party, but none of those celebrities agreed to become a spokesperson for our cause. They took the award and ran. This is just too volatile a cause for them. Too risky. They could alienate one of their races, and therefore risk losing some fans.

Even Tiger Woods declined involvement, and I really admire him in many other ways. I admire that he came out and told the media, fellow golfers, and fans that he's not only black, but he's "Cablinasian," (his term for "multiracial") and proud of it. Tiger was asked to testify about the importance of being allowed to claim more than one race on government forms, by the same congressional subcommittee my son and I testified before in 1997. He refused, but not because he was keeping his multiracial identity a secret. His name was bought up repeatedly in the hearings because he claims all of his heritage, which really did help the cause. Thank you, Tiger.

This isn't solely about racial classification. I think we all know that. The one-drop rule is not going to go away if we are "allowed" to check as many boxes as we want, or if we abolish all racial categories. Would that have stopped Denzel Washington or Halle Berry from calling themselves "African-Americans" at the Academy Awards? No.

Then what is this about? It's about getting the message through to parents, children, extended families, educators, politicians, the media, the medical community, other so-called advocates for multiracial children and adults, and many others that it's OK to classify yourself as multiracial. It's knowing that it's your right to reject basing your racial identity on what other people think you are. It's being aware that you can refuse to check the term "other," on forms. And it means that you are wise enough to know that when you use the "check all that apply" scheme, you will really be reallocated back to the minority box, and usually the black box.

It's also about knowing that Halle Berry doesn't determine the one-drop rule for my children no matter how many awards she wins.

Susan Graham
Executive Director