This September it will be thirteen years since I saw a blurb in the Los Angeles Times announcing a meeting for mixed race individuals. After recovering from the shock (after all this might very well have been the first public, organized meeting of its kind in the area! in the state! in the country!?) I called in my RSVP ASAP. When the big day finally arrived, I went rushing over filled with anticipation and trying to imagine what this unheard of event would be like. While looking for a seat and exchanging tentative smiles with similar hopeful faces, my antennae went up and my inner alarm went off. What was wrong with this picture?

There we sat, nearly every type of mixie from the four corners of "the greater megalopolis", gathered together for an unparalleled opportunity, namely to experience fellowship, support, and however briefly, belonging. Instead we found ourselves surrounded by parents in White/Black marriages. There they sat, leaning forward, pens poised, faces as avid as vampires ready to batten on our collective neck. (Does the phrase pinned like an insect sound familiar?) And just why were they there? Well you may ask. They came, they said, to get our perspective as mixed race adults because they thought it would be helpful to them in rearing their children. Excuse me?

At this point several mixies informed the moderator of their expectations and reasons for attending the meeting, and asked that it be limited to mixed race adults only. She refused, citing such lofty goals as the achievement of a "colorblind society", the end of racism as we know it, blah-de-blah-blah. That was when she effectively lost control of the meeting. There she sat, a self-identified W/B mixie (with a degree in counseling no less) unwilling to face and deal with some crucial issues: 1) there were mixies in attendance who were other than W/B and to ignore them was offensive and further marginalized their experience; 2) we had come to network with each other not to have our brains picked by outsiders; 3) in what other case would trauma survivors be required to admit perpetrators into their support group? Ironically, we were accused of being racist because we wanted to experience only one another's company for a change. A welcome change and an even more welcome first.

There are two conclusions to this scenario. A reconstruction of what I verbalized at the time, and the other written after the decennial census and from the perspective of a new century.

1987: These parents needed an education. It was time to clue them to some tough, home truths (move over "hapa rage"). While some of these couples were younger, many were my peers. I told them in no uncertain terms that people like them had at times made my life miserable from childhood all the way through school. People like them had demanded that I choose a side, had tried to force an identity onto me, had denied/denigrated my experience, and even my very existence, as a multiracial person. So, if they thought for a minute that I would let them rip-off that identity just because they now felt that they could use it for their own benefit then they'd better have another think coming. It didn't make any difference that these were not the same individuals who had bullied me in my childhood, teens, and twenties. They were around. They were witnesses, colluders guilty by association, and convicted by their silence as they obliviously went about their unambiguous, complacent little monoracial lives. I wished them to feel the hot breath of The Furies bearing down on them at last. Ultimately, however, their agenda won this particular day and we were pushed to the background by the monoracials again. Prevented again from being a discrete group, and by the same people who've been trying to do away with us in one way or another for centuries.

Their children might have been welcome, but they most definitely were not. Especially unwelcome were those perpetrating "one drop" on their very own kids. They wanted to know about the mixed race/multiracial experience? Then they could darn well learn by living it out for several generations like my family did. I guaranteed them that they would never learn anything if they insisted on clinging to a dichotomous mindset in which their children were both mixed and "black" and in which other types of mixture were deliberately ignored. So long as they refused to recognize mixedness in its own right; so long as they continued to refuse to acknowledge that the mixed race experience was different from theirs; and so long as they tried to prevent anyone from freely self-identifying as mixed then so long would they continue to perpetuate racism.

2000: My only piece of advice for anyone raising children of any mixture is to keep working toward the establishment of a governmentally acknowledged designation for them. A designation that can't be co-opted by anyone else's agenda. I don't believe that abolishing racial categories at this point in time will herald the end of racialism and racism in the U.S. It has even been argued by some that ending affirmative action and abolishing "race" will just put society right back where it was before the Civil Rights movement. That is debatable. But I do firmly believe that, given the history of "race" and racial politics in the U.S., this society from the national level on down must be made to acknowledge the fact of mixed race by restoring our stand-alone category. The fact that "mulatto" was removed from the census after 1920 was extremely significant in the history of U.S. racism. It was done by "whites" as a tool for ethnic cleansing. It was done to perpetuate white privilege. It was a deliberate attempt to wipe out the existence of a group of people, i.e. genocide. When the existence of both historical triracials and other contemporary multiracial and biracial blends is formally recognized without breaking mixtures down into component parts, then the myth of "white racial purity" will finally die. As a result, attitudes and behaviors predicated on assumptions made on the basis of physical appearance will have to change.

The eradication of racism must begin with the deconstruction of "whiteness" and its support structure of lies/myths. The first step toward that deconstruction is a national admission and recognition of close to four hundred years of racial blending (see Tan Americans of Natirah Ancestry, or John Clifford Crain). After monoracist America has been made to formally acknowledge blended identity then I'll be ready and happy to abolish all racial categories. Before blending further into the raceless mainstream of an ideal future, I want to enjoy the "luxury" of my own "race" for at least a decade. Or two.

Thoughts on Lonnae O'Neal Parker's article "White Girl?"

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