A Project RACE member gave me a newspaper article to read. It is from a newspaper with a good reputation, and a large circulation area. The two-part article is about interracial marriages and multiracial children. These are the terms used interchangeably throughout the article:

• Mixed
• Mixed-race
• Mulatto
• Biracial
• People who check more than one box
• Interracial
• Interethnic
• Intergroup
• Multicultural

Never once did the writer use the term "multiracial," even though he interviewed many people who I know, for a fact, use only that term. In the early years of Project RACE, we polled the membership of the organization, and spoke with other organizations in the interracial community and asked what the preferred terminology would be for a child of parents of two or more races. Hands down, "multiracial" won. It is the term we used for legislation. It is the term you'll see all over our Web site, and it's the term we use-period.

I especially dislike the term "mixed." First, it lends itself to references in Spike Lee movies, where he calls "mixed" people "mixed up" and "mixed nuts." It also makes for not so cute newspaper and magazine headlines. One day I really thought about why "mixed" annoys me so much. I realized that if a person isn't "mixed," what is he or she -- pure? Wow. It sounds pretty neo-Nazi-Hitler-like to me. Do we really want to separate Americans into those who are pure and those who are mixed? Personally, I don't want to even go there. When my young son testified in Washington, he told the lawmakers, "Puppies are mixed, people are multiracial." Another good reason not to use it.

It's true that the US Census Bureau and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) did not accept a stand-alone or umbrella category of multiracial, but so what? Is that a reason for journalists to refer to our children as "mixed"? No. Some government forms still carry the term "Negro," but would it be appropriate for today's journalists to use it? Racial terminology changes, just ask the group that was once "colored" then "Negro" then "black" and now "African-American." The same journalists who are so careful to use the term "African-American," still refer to multiracial people as "mixed."

In the popular book The Multiracial Experience, editor Maria Root gives an extensive glossary of terms, and notes the following, "Multiracial refers to people who are of two or more racial heritages." The glossary doesn't even list "mixed."

Tiger Woods refers to himself as "Cablinasian," which is a word he made up for the combination of all of his heritage. I think it's creative and meaningful for him. For the rest of us, let's stick with the term preferred by our community -- "multiracial."