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True Colors
by Kelly Milner Halls (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
Date: 1997-1998
Roswell student whose parents are of different races is working to win Project RACE.
When 14-year-old Roswell resident Ryan Graham first talked to a committee of Congress members in Washington six years ago, he was one of the youngest
Americans ever to testify.
He was a fourth-grader with a vision -- a little kid with a big idea.
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Ryan Graham wants kids to have a
say about how they're classified. |
"My mom is white, my dad is black," Ryan explained to News for Kids. That makes him multiracial -- a person with two distinct racial identities.
"Most federal forms force me to choose between those two races," Ryan said. "But that bothers me because I am BOTH." The forms Ryan is talking about are for things such as taxes, employment and school registration.
To add to the confusion, the Census Bureau -- the federal agency that keeps track of just who lives in America -- asks multiracial children to choose, or claim, the race of their mothers as their own race. The Census Bureau takes a big survey every 10 years. Its next survey won't be conducted until 2000.
The 1990 survey revealed that two-thirds of people surveyed who had one black parent and one white parent called themselves black -- regardless of their mother's racial heritage.
But what other people decide isn't the point, Ryan said.
"It should be up to the individual," he says. And so, for the past six years, he has worked hard (alongside his mother, Susan) to change the way our government sees and defines skin color. Susan Graham is founder of an organization called Project RACE, which stands for "Reclassify All Children Equally."
Ryan's big plan is to convince Congress that adding a "multiracial" box to government forms is not only smart, but fair.
"Can you imagine how you would feel if you were a kid and you had to walk up and ask the teacher, in front of the whole class, 'Where do I put my X?' " Ryan says. "It makes a lot of kids feel alienated and alone, when they should feel proud of who they are."
How many American kids
are multiracial? |
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"It's hard to say for sure [how many kids or people are multiracial]," said a spokesman at the U.S. Department of Education, "since that option isn't listed on the census forms."
But in Fulton County, for example, where the term "multiracial" is now on official school enrollment forms, 835 kids, or 1.39 percent of the county's 59,953 students, identified themselves as multiracial on the 1996-97 forms. |
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In addition to his work in Washington, Ryan has been on TV news shows on networks including CNN, ABC and Nickelodeon. He's testified before some state governments, including Georgia and Michigan. He helped convince lawmakers in both those states that adding a "multiracial" choice to their forms was a good thing to do. At this time, eight states have added the multiracial choice to some forms. Those states are Georgia, Florida, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland and North Carolina. But for Ryan, that just means there are 42 states to go. His work continues. |
In 1990, 3 million citizens told the Census Bureau they were living with someone of a different race, and had given birth to 2 million children. According to the New York Times, a 1995 telephone survey sponsored by the federal government found that 1.6 percent of the people questioned considered themselves to be "multiracial."
With less than 2 percent of the American public affected, you might think the multiracial issue isn't a big deal.
"But it is to us," says Ryan. "One day a kid asked me if I was 'mixed.' I said, no, I'm multiracial. He said, 'What's the difference?' and I said, puppies are mixed. People are multiracial."
House Speaker Newt Gingrich seems to agree. In a speech he gave in June 1997, Gingrich supported Ryan's cause.
Ryan says it's really not just a matter of a box on a test or on a federal form.
"It's a way to stand up and say it doesn't matter what color your skin might be," he says. "What matters is who you are inside."
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