In Maureen T. Reddy's recent book, "Crossing the Color Line," she writes, "Insisting upon a biracial identity destabilizes racial categories and illuminates their essential arbitrariness. If one is neither black nor white, but both black and white, then the boundaries between racial categories appear fluid rather than rigid. Such fluidity challenges the racial status quo and undermines the basic assumptions of blacks and whites."

She describes her children as being all white and all black, all Irish-American and all African-American, having full membership in both groups, and she wants her children to insist on that right. She said, "What right do majority Irish-Americans have to define black Irish-Americans out of that ethnicity? If my children don't look Irish-American it is only because we have accepted a false image of what Irish-Americans look like."

This is a political act, aimed at undermining complacent racism in our society. Racial identity is neither simple nor fixed but complex and fluid -- always changing across time.

In the whole thrust of things, we are summoning our government to have a multiracial category in place on the 2000 Census and to abolish the perverse "One Check Mandate" which states a person may only check off one "appropriate" box. This unjust racial law is a code which the majority inflicts upon the minority in this country and which the minority had absolutely no part in creating or enacting. This hideous racial code is called the "one drop of black blood rule." The interracial community is making a frontal attack on the makers and guardians of the "one drop rule," and our voices are soaring and echoing across the nation. Being heard by millions, whether on television, magazine or newspaper articles and now on the Internet. This March on the Mall today is only the beginning. And we do mean business, not business as usual. Hopefully today, on this historical event, our chief executive officer, President Clinton, and his staff are in tune.

I'd like to share, briefly, a letter that was sent to me. It read in part:

"I respect interracial relationships, marriages, etc. What we of Haam don't respect is racially-mixed people classified as Black/Afrikan Americans: people like Phylicia Rashad -- formerly of The Cosby Show -- George Foreman, the late Huey P. Newton, etc. I believe we don't accept ourselves unless we respect ourselves as who we truly are. According to our eyesight, biology, genetics, we the Black/Afrikan American, Negroids/Afrikanoids don't come lighter in complexion than Arsenio Hall. He equals 3/4 black. I'm jet black or shadow black equaling 4/4 black. I'm particularly congoid."

Mr. A.A. Ahmad Sawaad is the head of The Society of Haam.

All I could do was sit in my chair feeling confused and shocked! My parents have always put down black or Negro on applications when asked. However, I know from stories and so forth that my family is very mixed on both sides. With American Native, European and West African. West African because of the sugar trading in that region of Africa. So, after some thought-process and enlightenment, I decided to be creative about this wonderful bouquet of mixes and call myself -- and I hope you will agree, those with this unique mixture -- AMEUROFIAN. Keep your eyes and ears out for this phraseology. Nevertheless, we are all multiracial. All of us have some mixing in our genes. 75% of blacks have European, and 25% of whites have African heritages.

We have to keep in mind that change for people who have become complacent with the "one drop rule" will not be fought without a lot of resistance. These racist codes have been reinforced by our very churches, schools and other institutions. Although told by our government that in the United States of America "all men are created equal...with certain inalienable rights," at the same time we were subtly indoctrinated that it was necessary to identify with one certain color or race. This was so that we could be treated in particular ways according to that color or race. Make no mistake, this was not by mistake. So, now a time has come for change.

Frederick Douglass once said:

"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters."

In the beginnings of the great Civil Rights Movement, black people went through a metamorphosis, from being called Colored to Negro to black (I can still hear James Brown, Godfather of Soul, sirening "Say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud!) to now identifying as the politically correct term of African-American. No one objected. We are asking for the same R-E-S-P-E-C-T!

I was reading one of Malcolm X's speeches, and even he concluded change was imminent. He stated:

"The young generation of whites, blacks, browns -- you're living at a time of revolution, a time when there's got to be a change. People in power have misused it, and now there has to be a change, and a better world has to be built." Oxford, England, December 1964.

All of America's citizens need to accept what is to come and not resist. This change is indeed here!

Our media, publications, our schools and government institutions that are the makers and guardians of this racist one drop ideology, who promulgate this message of White Racial Purity, need to be aware we will not turn back now. The time has come for change. Own up to the racist/bigoted views you have on both sides of the proverbial coin. Both blacks and whites.

The concept of White Racial Purity is the most evil and the most vicious lie ever told to America's people. It is used by racists and bigots alike, whose very nature is all too often sadist, people who are morally bankrupt and mentally deranged. The only way to uproot this entrenched lie of pathological liars -- so that this ugliness will be exposed to good people worldwide and dry up -- is to perform painful, radical spiritual and political surgery.

The All Pure White blood and the All Powerful Black blood are the epitome of destruction against humankind's' mental, physical, emotional and spiritual health.

I believe if Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. were here today he would be on the side of those making peaceful changes for human rights. He would agree with this statement: "The simple language of a child asks only that we look at what is and then allow it to be!"

Finally, people everywhere -- past, present & future -- elevating the human condition like Josephine Baker, Harriet Tubman, Ruth Bryant White (the Harriet Tubman of the '90s) with her husband Steve of A Place For Us, J.F.K., Mahatma Gandhi, John Lennon singing his Imagine, will be eternally celebrated.

Thank you for listening!