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From The Executive Director
Date: October 29, 1997
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) held a briefing this morning to announce its decision on racial categories.
As we predicted, the "Mark one or more" format has been adopted. It is a bittersweet VICTORY for us. Multiracial children and adults will have the ability , for the first time in the history of this country, to check as many of their races as apply. However, they can NOT officially be called multiracial. At the briefing, Sally Katzen of the OMB, who made the decision stated that they will not use the term multiracial, which she claims is different from a "multiple racial American." Franklin Raines, Director of OMB is the father of three multiracial children. At the briefing Raines denounced a "multiethnic" or "multiracial" category. OMB is trying to erase the term multiracial from the public's vocabulary. Why? Because some of the advocates for other racial groups do not like it, notably the black caucus. Without a multiracial identifier what will our children be called? Check all that apply kids? Half and halfs? John Hope Franklin, Chair of President Clinton's Commission on Civil Rights calls them "half-white Negroes" and "half-black whites." This is offensive to me, my children, and Project RACE families across the United States and in four countries.
OMB is allowing the NAACP and others to define our children. It's politics as usual in Washington. Some of the other so called multiracial activists have also aided OMB in their decision by acquiescing to their desires in order to claim total victory. I am proud of the members of Project RACE who forced the hand of the federal government by working hard in the states to implement passage of the multiracial classification in seven states. THAT is the reason OMB was forced to make a change, ANY change on the federal level.
Some problems remain. OMB will not address how a person who checks more than one box will be counted. Will they be retrofitted back in to ONE box? We are certain the NAACP will have a hand in this, as well. As one NAACP official said, "Let those mixed people check all the boxes they want—but COUNT them as black." Is this fair and accurate? No. Is this racist and discriminatory? Yes. OMB will issue guidelines next year.
Also, the OMB has NOT done away with the arbitrary and discriminatory practice of "observer identification." We call this eyeballing. A school administrator, federal agency employee, employer, etc., can LOOK AT YOU AND DETERMINE YOUR RACE. The OMB has been very clever about observer identification—THE METHOD OF CHECKING MORE THAN ONE RACE DOES NOT APPLY TO OBSERVER IDENTIFICATION. OMB makes it very, very clear: "When self-identification is used, a method for reporting more than one race should be adopted." We will begin to see more and more federal agencies adopting the observer method of identification over the self-identification, thereby putting multiracial people into one arbitrary single racial category. This is one of the most unfair and prejudiced of all racial injustices. OMB has decided NOT to cease this practice. Shame on them.
The complete summary will be published within the next few days.
Susan Graham
President
Project RACE
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