You Said It
Reader's Digest
Box 200
Pleasantville, NY 10572-0200

Also via e-mail: letters@readersdigest.com and fax: 914-244-7599

Dear Editors:

I remember when she screamed. I was trying to untangle the braids from my biracial daughter's hair. I, her white mother, was clueless. In "Talking Heads" (December, 2000), you published an article by Susan Straight about how she lovingly takes care of her biracial daughters' hair. She tells of girls being "rescued" by "other" people when their mothers can't do their hair. My daughter was, thankfully, "rescued" at an early age by someone who professionally cares for hair of all different types and textures.

Straight concludes that white women are somehow rejecting our biracial daughters if we don't spend hours caring for their hair. Reader's Digest actually printed her racist comments! Would you print an article that concluded that a Hispanic mother who couldn't make tortillas was a bad mother? Do white mothers (with curly hair) of adopted Chinese daughters (with straight hair) somehow love them less if they don't cut their daughters' hair?

Straight writes about how she has talked with her daughters while braiding their hair; how this is quality time that the rest of us don't have. If I was too busy to braid my daughter's hair, it may have been because the two of us were in Washington, DC, working for something important-the rights of multiracial children to be able to check more than one box on forms. Trust me, we were bonding.

Sincerely,

Susan Graham
President
Project RACE (Reclassify All Children Equally)
2910 Kerry Forest Pkwy, D4, #129
Tallahassee, FL 32308
E-mail: ProjRACE@aol.com
Web site: www.projectrace.com

Project RACE encourages readers to send letters to Reader's Digest on this issue.