Praise for Born Biracial

Parents aren’t supposed to bury their child, I recall saying in 1996 but that is just what I had to do when my youngest daughter passed away. I promised my daughter Michelle, a biracial daughter of a Black Panamanian father and a white mother that I would do my best to never allow that to happen again. More than 61,000 calls to the National Marrow Donor Program were generated by publicity from Michelle’s passing. The donor registry increased to 2 million in February 1999 alone—up from 1.5 million the previous year. If Michelle had been stricken with her childhood leukemia in 2019 her life most probably would have been saved. Michelle has and will continue to save lives, as will Project RACE and this book, Born Biracial. I urge everyone to read this book! You too can save lives.

Rod Carew

Baseball Hall of Fame

Cooperstown, New York

Born Biracial: How One Mother Took on Race in America is a long time coming; this is the lifetime work of Susan Graham. With her strong sense of self, she challenged the system that failed to recognize our biracial children. She has been a leader shaking up America by changing the laws that failed to be inclusive of biracial/multiracial children. This book is a reflection of her powerful influence with State Representatives and Governors which caused states to adopt new laws. In this book you will see the rush in Susan's heart as she made the path to ensure that all biracial people can self-identify. Excellent read!!

Sharyn Dones-Bergin

Attorney and Advocate

Within the pages of Born Biracial: How One Mother Took on Race in America, author Susan Graham has written a fascinating, but sometimes turbulent account of her journey and fight for posing one straightforward request; asking that her children and those who look like and share her children’s race have the right to magnify their race while self-identifying as citizens of our society.

Graham, a mother of two biracial children and the Director of Project RACE, reckoned with one minority organization after another demanding the self-identity, and respect of biracial/multiracial children.

For Graham and others alike, it’s really quite simple: The right of biracial/multiracial children to claim who they are is solely their right – not yours. As a race, their voices should not be silenced. No child of any race should be discriminated against, or humiliated for claiming who they are, including children in the biracial/multiracial category.

Parents, Minority Organizations, Multicultural Organizations, and Educational Institutions should all own a copy of Born Biracial: How One Mother Took on Race in America.

Cherrye S. Vasquez, Ph.D.

Books That Sow Strength, Character & Diversity, DBA

Educator, Author, Blogger

Born Biracial: How One Mother Took on Race in America is an important narrative to teach about the history of the multiracial movement.

Alice Robbin, Ph.D.

Associate Professor Emerita

Indiana University

How One Mother Took on
Race in America

SUSAN GRAHAM

BORN BIRACIAL: HOW ONE MOTHER TOOK ON RACE IN AMERICA by Susan Graham

Copyright © 2019 by Susan Graham

Published by Memories Press

www.bornbiracialbook.com

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews.

Cover design by Jose Ramirez

Front cover photo by Daymon J. Hartley

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019903912

ISBN: 978-1-7339088-2-5 Paperback edition

978-1-7339088-1-8 Hardcover edition

978-1-7339088-0-1 Digital edition

Printed in the United States of America

Author’s Note

This book is a memoir with a special focus on a matter of urgent and enduring debate in America today – the role of race in American identity, and the special challenges faced by people of biracial and multiracial ancestry.

Race is an issue that reaches deeply into personal life and often arises in the relationships of family, friends and colleagues. But it is also a matter of federal law and policy. In fact, as you will soon see, the question of racial identity impacted my family in an especially intimate way when I discovered that U.S. census form provided no race category for my own biracial children. I suddenly had to think about race.

That was the starting point of my own commitment to changing the public conversation about race in America, and from that moment on, I dedicated my life and work to the goal of affording full participation in our culture and democracy to biracial and multiracial Americans. This book is a part of my contribution to that public conversation.

Most of the people mentioned in my book are public figures who participated in one way or another in the struggle that I describe. First Amendment rights and the right to free speech are taken into consideration. On a few occasions, I refer to someone by a fictionalized name, and when I do, it will be noted in the text. Any similarity between fictionalized names and real individuals is strictly coincidental.

Dedicated to my son, Ryan,

with all my love

CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1: How it Started

CHAPTER 2: The Birth of an Advocacy

CHAPTER 3: Going to Washington

CHAPTER 4: National Fallout

CHAPTER 5: Odd Politics

CHAPTER 6: Multiracial Lives Matter

CHAPTER 7: The Big Decision and Data Games

CHAPTER 8: The “Quiet” Years and Personal Challenges

CHAPTER 9: Personal Chaos

CHAPTER 10: The 2010 Census and New Data

CHAPTER 11: Multiracial Pride

CHAPTER 12: Multiracial and Still Invisible!

CHAPTER 13: Snubbed Again by the Census Bureau

CHAPTER 14: The Movie

CHAPTER 15: Hate and Love

CHAPTER 16: It Gets Personal—Again

CHAPTER 17: Chatter

CHAPTER 18: The Fall

CHAPTER 19: The Win and the Weddings

CHAPTER 20: The Toll of Lifelong Work as an Advocate

Ten Reasons

Acknowledgements

CHAPTER 1
How it Started

“There’s no bitch on earth like a mother frightened for her kids.”

Stephen King

I was a mother who believed race would not play a part in the lives of my two biracial children. Naïve? I didn’t think so when they were born. For over eight years my husband and I never encountered any particular problems as an interracial couple, nor had we as a family. After all, this was Detroit during the 1980s, a time when earlier racial strife had become just a tragic memory, and the first Black mayor was at Detroit’s helm. So, naturally, I thought of my children as Ryan and Megan, not as biracial or multiracial people, not different from me or their father, but a wonderful combination of both of us. Eventually, things would change as I was asked, “What are they?”

I had not been asked their race or races when they were born. There was nothing about race on their birth certificates. Race was just not a factor in our lives. My family accepted Gordon and his family accepted me. We were a hard-working, middle-class family living in the near north suburbs. We had a lot of friends and socialized with people at the TV station where Gordon was a news reporter. Gordon won an Emmy for his series on guns in Detroit schools. Life was good. None of us could have foreseen the changes in each of our lives that were about to occur.

Did I mention why it meant so much to me to be a mother? Because I never thought I could be. In my early twenties I was diagnosed with an abnormal hormonal condition that would make conception impossible. It was a hard verdict to accept as my friends married and began to have children of their own, but there was nothing I could do about it, so I decided to put my energies toward my career and enjoy my freedom. There were challenging jobs. There were boyfriends. And for no-stress companionship, I took in a kitten. My 29th birthday passed and I believed I was content with things as they were.

I had recently gone through a tough romantic break-up and became interested in meeting a well-known African-American man who lived in my complex. One evening, mutual friends who were also neighbors, introduced me to him. At that time Gordon Graham was a street reporter and part-time anchor for Detroit’s ABC station, WXYZ-TV. I thought it might be nice to spend some time with him, and he obliged. I never expected it would go past that stage because he was 15-years-older than I—and married.

We spent our first evening together talking and hoped it would never end. That first evening became many. As we got more and more involved, I learned this was Gordon’s third marriage. I learned the marriage was troubled. I learned he had four children with an earlier wife. I learned his current wife was emotionally unstable. So many red flags, but after a while they didn’t matter. I was too deeply in love to care, and so was he.

He filed for divorce. One evening when we were having dinner at his new place, his soon-to-be-ex-wife demanded entry. I decided to go into the bedroom and close the door so they could talk. But within minutes, I heard shouts, then screams as she stabbed him in the back three times with a kitchen knife, and fled. I came out of the bedroom to find Gordon face down on the floor and blood everywhere. The police were called and he was taken by ambulance to the hospital. I accompanied him and when he was released, took him back to my home. The following day he got a restraining order so his wife could no longer have contact with either of us. Still, I did not feel safe and didn’t know if I would ever feel safe again.

Gordon and I moved to an apartment miles away. The divorce was finalized. A year later we were married in a Jewish Humanist ceremony at the Birmingham Temple in Farmington, Michigan with our families and friends in attendance.

One year later, in 1982, I was sent to a specialist in endocrinology by my gynecologist and put on a drug to help regulate my irregular periods. I didn’t like the endocrinologist, so when I began feeling sick from the drugs I went back to my gynecologist. After a brief examination he gave me an odd look. “You’re not sick,” he said. “You’re pregnant.”

Pregnant? So many doctors told me for so many years that I couldn’t have children, I was shocked. So was my doctor. He recommended a therapeutic abortion because the pharmaceutical drugs I’d been taking might have damaged the fetus. I broke into tears, totally confused and shaken. I went home to talk to my husband.

I was 32 and Gordon was 47. We were leading a pleasant, carefree, childless existence and now—this. Gordon didn’t want more children; he already had four. I felt very protective of the baby, but we agreed we had to make a joint decision. We met together with both of my doctors. They were firm about the potential for serious medical problems to our unborn child.

I had the abortion. My doctor told me right after that the baby would have been fine; it was the single cruelest thing anyone has ever said to me. I immediately fell into a severe clinical depression that lasted three months. It was the worst emotional pain I had ever felt. Many afternoons I would ball up in a corner and cry for hours. I was sympathetic to several women I knew who had abortions and were grateful for them. But I knew, too, I could never go through with one again. Now I wanted desperately to have a child. I changed doctors and worked with a new specialist with the goal of getting pregnant.

Ryan was born in 1984. His sister, Megan, was born in 1988. I became Super Mom and Momma Bear all together. I took parenting classes and eventually taught the Dreikurs method of parenting to other first time parents. I freelanced as a writer and public relations consultant. My first published piece was in a children’s magazine. I continued to publish frequently and picked up an array of clients. My office was in my dining room where I could watch the children. We were the perfect little Sesame Street family.

I vividly remember one day when I was driving Ryan to his preschool. He was in the backseat in his car seat and suddenly said, “Mommy, I’m black.” I had rehearsed a reply to this remark since the day he was born and started to give him my speech about how he is Black and White, the best of both worlds. Total silence. Finally he said, “Mommy, I’m purple now!” He had been merely learning his colors at preschool! It would not be discussed much again until he brought it up when entering kindergarten and faced with the race question on the admission form.

Another day stands out in my mind. There was a favorite store of mine in the neighboring city of Birmingham, Michigan. I often put Ryan in his stroller and we would walk through the store called Jacobson’s. A lot of the salespeople would recognize us and comment on how Ryan was growing so fast. On this particular day I was looking for clothing for him in the children’s department, but having a hard time finding what I wanted, as he had quickly outgrown all of his baby and toddler clothes and was going into a new size range. An older sales associate smiled at me and asked if she could help. “This is my first time and I’m totally lost,” I said. She looked at me, then looked at Ryan and said, “I think it’s so wonderful when people adopt. I’ll help you find what’s needed for him.” I was stunned. Because of the difference in our skin tones, she assumed my child was adopted. Then I thought to myself that she was the grandmotherly-type and that was just where her head and history were at. She didn’t mean it as a racist remark and I decided to let it go. Five years later, I would not.

Then, in 1989, while Gordon was in contract negotiations after eleven years at WXYZ, new management informed him their future plans did not include him. We were both devastated. His father had died several years before and his mother was getting older; she lived in Ohio, close enough for us to visit and for her to visit us. Living in the Detroit area was all I’d ever known. I was born at Women’s Hospital in Detroit and raised in a White, Jewish neighborhood in the mostly White suburbs. My mother had “help,” a Black woman who raised my three brothers and me. Our junior high school was integrated with the Black kids from “the township.” The adults were worried; we kids all did just fine. I just didn’t think about race and it was not discussed in my parental home, at least not in front of us children. My family and friends were here and I didn’t want to move. Gordon tried to get hired at another Detroit area TV station, but things did not look promising. He hired an agent to look elsewhere for a job.

His agent got a bite in Atlanta from CNN, which was still pretty much in its infancy. They wanted him to try out for an anchor spot, not a street reporter. His job interview would be live on CNN’s air. He left for Atlanta. I nervously watched his live audition with the kids and some friends. The children were too young to know what any of it meant, they just saw that their dad was on TV.

An offer from a TV station in New Orleans materialized at the same time. A friend of mine suggested I talk with a friend of hers who lived there. I called the friend and we had a long phone conversation. I explained that our family was interracial and the children were being raised in the Jewish religion. Would New Orleans be the place for us? She took a deep breath and said, “Honestly, no. As much as we would love to welcome another Jewish family to New Orleans, I have to be honest and advise you not to bring your children here. It would be awful for all of you.” I was, perhaps, a bit naïve and a little stunned at her strong admonitions, but I felt I should trust her warnings.

Meanwhile, Gordon and I had discussions about the two options, assuming they would both make offers. I didn’t want to move away from the only place I had ever known as home, but since we had to go, we wanted to make the right decision for our family. The offers in New Orleans and Atlanta came through. Gordon was 52-years-old when Megan was born. He told me he didn’t have the energy it took to be a street reporter in a major market and he would rather take the anchor position, which, as we would find out, had its own particular pressures.

CNN and its then owner, Ted Turner, were becoming a major force in the media world, but they made it by offering jobs at pay rates lower than other major markets. They sought and offered jobs to people who were in difficult situations—too old, too young, having had life-threatening illnesses, very diverse racially and ethnically, and so forth. CNN had its token Black male anchor in Bernie Shaw. They needed one at CNN Headline News. That would be Gordon Graham. He would have to take an enormous pay cut to work for CNN, but we would make it work somehow.

When I met Gordon, he was in very tough shape financially. His divorce attorney recommended bankruptcy. This new situation meant a second bankruptcy for Gordon, who could not even manage to balance a checkbook. Our financial lives fell on me to handle and I handled them well, rebuilding his credit and watching what we spent. We would be moving to Atlanta soon and were ready to start a new life in many ways. It also helped that the cost of living was less in the area where we wanted to move and housing was reasonable.

I took the children there on a house hunting trip and we must have looked at 30 homes before we found one we liked enough to put in an offer. The offer was accepted, but the homeowner lost his job a few days later and had to renege on the deal. It was up to Gordon to look for a home with our real estate agent. We sold our suburban Detroit home, but I never saw the house in Atlanta until we moved into it. Before I knew what hit us, a moving crew came in to pack us up, and we were on our way to a lovely home in the northern suburbs on a cul-de-sac where children played together.

Ryan was ready to start kindergarten and Megan would soon be ready for a good pre-school. Gordon’s work shift was weekdays 4 a.m. to 7 a.m. He was usually home just in time to say goodbye to the children, but he was always tired. Getting a new home and family settled took time and patience. I had an office in our home overlooking a lush greenbelt, squirrels at my window, and a big blue heron who came to visit on a branch behind my office. I began to work in the pharmaceutical marketing industry, writing executive reports for them. I would eventually accept an offer to write a weekly op-ed column for an Atlanta newspaper called Topside Loaf, an offshoot of Creative Loafing. But life was about to change completely.

We registered Ryan for kindergarten in Fulton County, Georgia. The school sent an information form to our house for me to designate his race. I could pick one from Black, White, Asian, Hispanic, or Native Indian/Alaskan. I called the school and explained I could not check only one race. The friendly woman I spoke to said, “Oh, don’t worry about it, Mrs. Graham. You don’t even have to fill that part out.” That worked for me, so I returned it blank. I later learned that because I had returned it without specifying a race, my son’s kindergarten teacher was told to pick a race for my child, based on her “knowledge and observation” of him on his first day of school. She entered “Black” on his school records. I wish I had known then what I know now. I wish I had an organization or even one person who could give me advice.

I suddenly had to think about race. Then, shortly after, the U.S. census form arrived and I realized there was no race category for my children, no biracial or multiracial box. I called the Census Bureau. “My children are biracial,” I explained. “You provide a box for White, Black, Native American, etc., but no space for biracial. What should I check?”

“Gosh,” said the sympathetic male voice on the other end of the line. “A lot of people have asked that question, but I don’t remember the answer. If you’ll hold, I’ll check (long wait). “We’re still checking. I’ll have to get with my supervisor” (another long wait). “OK, this is it. You should put the mother’s race down for your children.”

“But that can’t be right. They are not just my race. They are biracial.”

“Well, they can’t be.”

“I beg your pardon, but they are,” I said.

“Not to us.”

“Excuse me, but why should they arbitrarily be classified as the mother’s race, and not the father’s?”

“Because in cases like this,” he answered in a very hushed voice, “you always know for sure who the mother is, but not the father.”

Insulted, I hung up. My children were apparently White and fatherless to the United States Census Bureau. I suddenly realized my child was considered multiracial at home, was Black at school, and White on the United States Census. It was my “Aha!” moment. I knew something was very wrong with statistics and data in this country and that the underlying factor was race or ethnicity. The only other things I knew were that surely other interracial families were faced with these questions every day and someone should know what to do about it.

I began researching the issue of racial identity and how forms were supposed to be filled out. I was suddenly a mom with a mission. Gordon thought my recent passion for racial correctness was interesting, but he didn’t want to be involved. Since he obviously understood that our children were biracial, I was puzzled by an undercurrent of hesitation in him. I would come to understand it eventually, and by then it would be too late for him to disagree.

CHAPTER 2
The Birth of an Advocacy

“The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.”

Ayn Rand

We settled into life in Roswell, Georgia as best we could. I still longed for Detroit and home, old friends, and family. Ryan had started public school and we began the search for a school for Megan, who at two-years-old was smart and becoming a little too independent. Her father found her in the garage one day, happily swinging a dead snake around her head like a lasso. It was time to find a better place for her to play while the older children were all at school.

The neighbors were all nice enough, and they welcomed us. Their children had all gone to preschool in a church program. They said it was the “only” decent preschool in the area and that we had to take our daughter there to see the place. We agreed to go see it, even though we were not “church people” like the other neighborhood families. There were two other Jewish families on our block, but no kind of Jewish school was available in the area.

I will never forget the day we went to see the school. Ryan had gone to a very progressive, beautiful, and advanced private preschool in Birmingham, Michigan and did very well there. By contrast, this place was in the basement level of a church. The children didn’t seem any happier than the staff. I asked Megan if she wanted to go back there, and she said, “No.” Her feelings mirrored our sentiments. We continued looking. We went to see a school called “High Meadows,” which was quite a bit further than the church school or the others on our list. There was a sense of nature and calm at High Meadows. Sheep stared at us through their pens. A rooster and some kittens pranced through one of the classrooms we went to see. Children seemed happy as they played by themselves or in small groups. It reminded me of a Montessori school, but surrounded by nature. There was a learning experience around every corner. When I asked Megan if she wanted to come back, she said, “You and Daddy can leave now.” She was staying! She had made her choice and so had we. We were able to form carpools with some other High Meadows families that lived close to us.

Most people with young children know there is little time in the course of a day to keep up with everything. I felt buried under all the paperwork the children brought home from school. I had my writing and was beginning to learn about the interracial community. Gordon was on-air in the early morning hours, and would usually be home before the kids went to school. Often, he would come home, grab a cup of coffee, turn around and carpool to preschool.

Gordon met some professional people who ran a video company that made “industrial” videos for companies, unions, organizations, etc. They liked Gordon Graham and it was a good way to pick up extra money. Many days he went to his “second job,” where he would do voice-overs or appear on-camera with scripted material, as long as CNN executives approved the scripts to make certain there were no conflicts of interest. He was doing good work and people were starting to recognize him. He was also a very good father to our children. However, his first four children didn’t want any contact with him and one adult daughter, whom I met only once, blamed me for ruining her life because her father married me and no longer financially supported her.

Meanwhile, I was busy researching interracial identity and thinking about what to do with all those forms that require racial identification. Could my children and children like them be able to specify their entire racial heritage? Was it important? What could I do? I had to know more. I had to find a starting place.

I realized one day that multiracial children did have multiracial heroes, just like children of other races, when I went into my daughter’s bedroom. She was listening to a song by Mariah Carey and she exclaimed, “Mommy, she looks like me!” I often pointed out that my children have three racial identities: Black, White and multiracial. My own children were enough to confirm the racial identity of perhaps millions of children like them, and I realized this was about all of them.

Soon, I found a woman in Ohio named Chris Ashe, who was as outraged as I was. We were instant soul mates in this dilemma. Chris had already gone to her child’s school to ask for another category for biracial and multiracial children. She decided that state legislation was the best way to attack this—head on. Chris knew Black Ohio State Majority Leader, Bill Mallory, who at that time introduced a bill for Chris and multiracial children in the state legislature. I barely knew the difference between the house and the senate, but I was becoming a very fast learner.

Resources were scarce for interracial families with two start-up publications, New People and Interrace Magazine, both of which eventually ceased publication. This was before the internet made finding information so easy. I had a friend who offered to do a LexisNexis database search, which was used extensively by lawyers, to find what had been done legally in the area of race and civil rights. I didn’t even know what a database was, let alone LexisNexis.

There were some articles published by academics and they all seemed to focus on what would come to be called “the tragic mulatto syndrome,” how unfortunate biracial people were. Others chose to focus on interracial marriages, and the term “jungle fever” came to mean a Black/White interracial couple. Two reporters for the Washington Post wrote an article called “Love in Black & White,” which started with this: “Families disown them. Friends shun them. Strangers taunt them. Many interracial couples must wage a painful fight to be accepted. And why should that be surprising?”

Dr. Alvin Poussaint was a popular media guest from the Harvard Medical School Department of Psychiatry. If an expert in interracial subjects, race, mental health, or prejudice was needed, he usually fit the bill. He became a de facto spokesperson for prevention of biracial stereotyping, but he generally lumped biracial and Black people together. It all seemed so negative.

One of the most harmful magazine articles appeared in EBONY Magazine in October, 1990 by Kathleen Cross, titled “Trapped in the Body of a White Woman.” Cross wrote about the horrible fact that she was called “mixed,” and all the suffering she went through because, “I am a Black woman ‘becoming’ who can never really arrive, and there is much pain and isolation in belonging to a family that often does not recognize my membership.” I wasn’t entirely sure what she was trying to say, but I was beginning to take all of this negativity quite personally, on behalf of my children.

The only statistics available at the time showed an estimated one million couples in the United States were interracially married. It was assumed the data came from the Census Bureau, since they did have the numbers on the races of married people. The number of interracial marriages was going to grow because of increasing acceptance. People still asked, “But what about the children?” What about them? There simply was no one looking out for their interests. The multiracial children needed a voice, but I could not find anyone to speak for them.

I finally came across an organization based in California and called them. Then president of the Association of Multiethnic Americans (AMEA), Carlos Fernandez, told me that only two school districts in the country—Berkeley, California and Ithaca, New York—had added a category to school forms called biracial, bicultural or interracial. We also found that Gallaudet University had added a “multi-ethnic” category on its forms in 1988. Fernandez shared information about academics doing research work in the area and about some local interracial organizations around the country that were more about social events than advocacy. He cautioned me that supporters of changes in public policy could be found among them, but mostly they just wanted to be left alone to live their lives as their families had chosen. AMEA had apparently tried to convince the Census Bureau to add “mother’s race and father’s race” to the 1990 Census to accommodate multiethnic Americans; they failed miserably.

Through a few discussions with Carlos, I had a rather short list of people to contact, but each of them led me to another handful. I became very discouraged over and over and felt it was hopeless. Most were academics: Dr. Maria P.P. Root in Seattle, F. James Davis, Ph.D. author of Who is Black? and others. I contacted everyone I could and then contacted their contacts. Most sent me copies of what they had written, told me where I could find their articles or order their books. I would listen to them, get more discouraged, and then look at my own children for encouragement, a constant reminder that children cannot advocate for themselves and need adults who will stand up for them and not back down.

They all seemed to keep repeating one thing: OMB Directive 15. OMB stood for “Office of Management and Budget” for the federal government and was a vast agency directly below the President. Directive 15 was drafted in the 1980s and defined the races and ethnicities in America. Apparently, a woman named Juanita Tamayo Lott, president of Tamayo Lott Associates had been the person who was primarily responsible for it, but no one outside of OMB personnel, it seemed, had ever spoken with her. I found out that this was so much bigger than a census every ten years. We all see these forms every day:

- Medical forms, including hospitals, doctors’ offices, and patient surveys;

- School forms, including school enrollment, private school forms, state tests, data reports on school populations;

- Employment forms, including applications, compliance forms, surveys, equal opportunity employment;

- Voting forms and redistricting information; and

- Law enforcement forms, including violation data.

I started to hear from the academics about the other reasons to leave categories as they were. They told me there is no economic benefit to being biracial. Some people believe all “mixed” people should be classified as “Black” (or whatever the minority is) because federal, state, and local dollars could be at stake. Although I could understand the rationale, I could not justify taking away my children’s heritage for those dollars. At some point in every conversation, I let them know that I was a White woman with multiracial children. Sometimes, I would sense a sudden coldness in their voices at that point, and in fact they would use my whiteness as another way to discredit me later.

At one point, an academic told me this: “What you’re doing is very, very dangerous.” I laughed and said, “You make it sound so horrible, so ominous!” He sighed, “It is. You don’t understand yet. What you’re doing is going against the very history and belief system of this country.” He was talking about the “one-drop rule,” the belief that anyone with even one drop of “Black blood” was Black. I laughed again and said, “Don’t be so dramatic.” He carefully explained more about the “one-drop rule” and that it went back to the days of slavery, and usually occurred when a White slave owner had a child with a Black slave. It was a foregone conclusion during that time period, which child was Black. When they counted the child as Black, they were able to take that child back to the fields to work and the child would be forever counted and treated as a slave.

There was no real biracial or multiracial movement at this time; therefore, I had to find a way to start one. My son, Ryan, and I decided we would have to try to make a change ourselves and I contacted a group called “The Interracial Family Alliance” (IFA) in Atlanta. We began as a committee of the group because they were already established and we didn’t have the resources to become incorporated as a non-profit, stand-alone organization. Our first meeting was held in October, 1991. We desperately needed people with a common goal to help us initiate change. The legislative director of the Georgia PTA spoke to us about the legislative process, and we set-up three subcommittees: government, schools, and medical issues. Some of the IFA members wanted to be politically pro-active and an educational source for others. Some only wanted to attend the social functions that the group held, as Carlos Fernandez had warned me.

We eventually contacted an attorney, and started a separate organization to change racial classifications on forms in the schools, hospitals, on the United States census, anywhere racial identification is required. I remember sitting at the kitchen table doodling different words: White, Black, and justice, mixed, biracial…. I tried to come up with an acronym, since every organization seemed to have one. I wrote and erased, doodled and crumbled up papers, wrote and erased more. I finally found what I thought was a good name and called Chris Ashe to share and get her opinion. We called it Project RACE (Reclassify All Children Equally), Inc., an organization whose mission statement is this: “Project RACE advocates for multiracial children, teens, adults, and their families primarily through education and community awareness. We do not advocate for racial classifications, but are committed to the appropriate inclusion of multiracial people and respectful terminology on any forms that require racial identification. We support public and private policies that make a positive impact on people of multiracial heritage at local, state, and national levels.”

My personal life underwent a quick transition as I became busier and busier with Project RACE and my writing. Gordon didn’t say much about Project RACE, and looking back on it now, I think that was when the trouble started. He never said he was against what Ryan and I were doing, but he would just give me an odd look when I mentioned my work and would say, “That’s your thing, not mine.” If it meant anything else, I was too busy to notice. He would often make dinner and eat with the kids because I was on the phone. More than once, I overheard him tell the children, “Project RACE is taking Mom away from us.” How dare he? Would my children come to resent Project RACE because their father did?

I tried to process everything I was hearing. Could this really be so dangerous? Wouldn’t established civil rights organizations align with us on this racial issue? Would it work to go school district by school district, state by state, with the federal government as the final goal? Why did I think I could lead this effort?

I began to get answers. Yes, it really was dangerous because it could cause some dismantling of current racial standards, however wrong they were, and I was still not going to be scared away. Civil rights organizations like the NAACP and the Urban League were beginning to come forward and make a little noise against what we were trying to do. We could do a lot of work and never get to the federal level, or if we did, they could shoot us down. I didn’t yet know if I could lead the effort, but I knew I was passionate about it and had to try.

I learned that a woman in Rhode Island tried to pass a bill in 1988, but the measure was defeated. Efforts failed in a few other states as well. Nevertheless, we obtained their bills and learned from them so that we could have a starting point to draft our own state legislation.

I tried to find one person in particular, Major Marvin Arnold, Ph.D., an Army major who wrote a doctoral dissertation in 1984 titled, “The Effects of Racial Identification on Self-Concept in Interracial Children.” He used interracial Army families for his study and brought the term “multiracial” to the listing of children’s races on an Operation Desert Shield/Storm Deployment Survey. Finding him was not easy. I discovered he was an alumnus of Saint Louis University, and wrote them a letter hoping to find Dr. Arnold. They forwarded my letter to him and he responded quickly and called me. Major Arnold, who was Black and interracially married, lived in Washington, would become one of our most active allies, and a personal friend; he fought the opposition as hard as I did and he eventually became what seemed like my only supporter in the nation’s capital.

Chris Ashe started Project RACE with me, but needed to resign a few years later. She was very proactive, and was in touch with board members of the Cincinnati NAACP; they were not against what we were proposing, but that would eventually change with new national leadership. Still, I missed the camaraderie of someone who really did understand the problem and had a personal stake in it—another activist mom. The IFA would come through with many parents who believed as I did, but some days I felt very alone, unsure of exactly what I was doing, but trying to listen to my gut telling me I had to do something.

Ohio House Speaker Mallory and I had several conversations. He had a multiracial grandchild and would give this legislation his full attention. It took a while, but Ohio’s HB (House Bill) No. 154 became a law, was signed by Governor Voinovich, and went into effect in 1992. We had our first state with legislation mandating a multiracial category on school forms! I had no idea that the only reason it was so easy was because the sponsor of our new law was one of the most powerful people in Ohio politics. I still had a lot to learn.

Meanwhile, back in Atlanta, I was stewing about what to do next. I wrote a piece about the inequities of multiracial terminology for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which was published on October 13, 1991, titled “A Matter of Race.” The response from around the country was amazing. People began contacting me and joining Project RACE. A high school counselor in Wisconsin joined, a biracial woman in Texas told us her story, interracial military families overseas signed up, lawyers and judges joined, and we welcomed everyone who volunteered to help in any way they could. I began getting long letters from prison inmates, who either praised or blamed me. I was very glad we had a post office box for our mail, so no one had my home address.

Objections to the term “other” on forms asking for racial information began to surface. We decided to see if we could do away with that terminology, because as my young son would tell people, “Other makes me feel different, like a space alien.” Then there were the people who would tell me that we were just making things worse by adding yet another classification and we should be working to do away with all the race categories. My answer was that I didn’t see it happening in my lifetime or in my children’s lifetime.

I knew several of the PTA (Parent Teacher Association) leaders and turned to them for thoughts on what could be done with school forms in Georgia. They encouraged me to personally call Dr. James Fox, Fulton County School Superintendent, and appeal to him to add a multiracial category. It was an easy conversation; he listened to what I had to say and answered, “Yes, this is the right thing to do for our students.” He promptly had “multiracial” added to all Fulton County School forms. It would never be this easy again.

During our first eight months, we persuaded school districts in Cincinnati, Atlanta, and Dekalb County, Georgia to add a multiracial category on student forms. We helped pass legislation in Ohio, and decided to introduce state legislation in Georgia and Wisconsin. We also began contacting state departments of education to try to convince them to make this change administratively.

I can tell you with no hesitation that those who think PTA members just make cakes and hold bake sales could not be more wrong. This wonderful group of mostly women taught me what to say, where to park, what shoes to wear to the capitol (low heels for walking on marble floors all day), how to think like a lobbyist, why having the legislative session book of lawmakers, (which included their photographs), is your best tool, what to say in a committee hearing, how to read a legislator’s body language, and so much more. They were a force to be reckoned with in politics and I am thankful to each and every one of them.

It became very clear to me that we would have to approach this as the rag-tag grassroots group that we were. We could not afford to hire a lobbyist; at that time we charged a minimal membership fee that barely covered out-of-pocket costs and gas for trips to the capitol. We knew we would have to start in our own backyards, trying to convince school districts, then states, and hopefully have enough successes that we could one day “bubble up” and work with Washington to have a national multiracial classification. In the meantime, we had to figure out how to give the local school districts a way to turn the “multiracial” numbers back into the five main racial and ethnic categories when the state data was reported to the federal Department of Education, which did not yet accept our classification. I came up with a way to reallocate the numbers, although it would not give us the full data we wanted to know—how many students considered themselves biracial or multiracial—but no one would ever be completely satisfied with any kind of reallocation. Some groups gained numbers, some lost, and others stayed the same. Most multiracial people who wanted to specify more than one race had simply chosen the “other” box until then.

The PTA women in Georgia thought it would be a good idea to approach Senator Sallie Newbill because she was a friend to education and was multiracial herself (White and Native American). She was expected to attend a PTA meeting that month. I was urged to be there, get introduced to the Senator, and make my pitch. She came into the room carrying several huge canvas bags, went to the front of the room, and dumped the entire contents on a table. Hundreds of letters came out. She said, “This is the way to get attention from politicians.” I never forgot that lesson. We would eventually use it in Washington.

A PTA parent introduced me to Senator Newbill after her talk. She said, “I am one hundred percent with you, but I’m not the best person to handle your piece of legislation. You need to talk to Senator Abernathy.” He was the son of the great civil rights leader, Ralph David Abernathy, Jr., who stood with Martin Luther King, Jr. and championed civil rights for Blacks. Senator Newbill was absolutely correct. We needed to get the Black lawmakers on our side and Senator Abernathy had a better chance of doing that.

The Georgia legislature ran for only 40 days each year, so I had to act fast. I called Senator Abernathy at his office, explained the legislation we wanted, and we chatted for a while. He finally said he had a sister who was interracially married and the family hoped for a multiracial grandchild one day. He would introduce and carry our legislation. Very often, politics is not about what you know, but who you know and I was able to say that Senator Newbill had referred me. I was getting somewhere. Other people were joining Project RACE, including lawyers, writers, parents, and people of every race and combination of races who wanted to stand up for the cause.

I began going to the state capitol nearly every day with the PTA moms. They introduced me to Tom Keating, who was an independent pro-education lobbyist whom they all knew very well. Keating was an amazing help. We sat in the balcony at the state senate while business was being conducted, and he did a play-by-play of the action below. He whispered things to me; “See the way the Speaker is holding his cigar? He’s not going to let that bill pass.” He was right every time. I took notes on everything he said.

Spending time with Senator Abernathy was an experience like none other. He always had two very short, very chubby Black men with him. I don’t think they ever said more than two words to me. Bodyguards? Staffers? Who knew? They just smiled at me a lot and flanked the senator wherever he went.

Senate Bill (SB) 149 was drafted and introduced. I had no idea then that I would be at the Georgia state capitol for years, trying to get this legislation passed. In less than a day, we began receiving negative attention. We were accused of trying to make our kids something other than Black, which was not true. Since the U.S. Census Bureau already classified my children as “White,”—the race of the mother—why would I bother changing that if I wanted them to be only reported as White? Why would I be doing this at all?

One day a good old Southern legislator called me and said, “You really can’t do this, darlin’. There are laws here that say that if you have one drop of Black blood, you’re Black.” I informed him that, in fact, we had checked and there were no such laws on the books in Georgia or in any other state. He was taken aback and none too happy. The sudden change in his voice sent a shiver up my spine. Failure seemed inevitable.

I learned how politics is a game of give and take, of calling in favors and persuading people that you are doing the right thing.

Payback came to me one day when Senator Newbill’s office called and said that the senator wanted me in her office in an hour. She had steered me to the right person to carry our legislation, I liked her a lot personally and professionally, and I owed her a favor. I quickly changed my clothes and drove to the capitol having no idea what she wanted or what had occurred.

Senator Newbill and I had talked about laws regarding guns in schools and I had begun to gather statistics for an article that would eventually appear in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. When I got to the Senator’s office, she explained to me that she had a committee hearing scheduled on one of her schools and guns bills for about an hour from then. She wanted me to sit next to her, and not say a word. She said I was becoming known around the capitol and legislators knew I had something going on that affected school children. She might introduce me, but did not want me to speak. If a committee member asked me to say anything, she would take care of it. “Just look very serious and if I point out something on paper to you, just nod your head.” I was scared to death.

The subcommittee hearing was called and I took my seat next to the Senator. She was a genius. She had the attention of the entire room, and spoke from her heart and imparted wisdom about her piece of legislation. Every so often, she would show me a piece of paper, I would nod my head, and she would go on. I was her “expert” without having to say one word. Her bill passed. I am still wondering if the subcommittee chair was in on the plan, but I’ll never know.

The same kind of situation occurred when the Fulton County Superintendent of Schools called and asked me to testify for him before an education committee hearing on an issue. I had written a piece for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution about kids and schools, which he thought would make me a credible speaker since I had researched the subject so extensively. I was gaining a reputation as an authority on many issues concerning children, although I certainly didn’t feel like one.

I spoke to a woman named Carol Coccia during those early years. She founded the National Coalition to End Racism in America’s Childcare System, to help families that wanted to adopt children of races other than their own. She lived in Michigan and told me very passionately that when she began the organization from her kitchen table; she never thought she would still be fighting the battle ten years later. I didn’t know then that I would still be fighting for our children over 25 years later.

CHAPTER 3
Going to Washington

“Hell, there are no rules here—we’re trying to accomplish something.”

Thomas A. Edison

“What is right is often forgotten by what is convenient.”

Bodie Thoene

By the time 1993 rolled around, I was learning more every day. I learned valuable lessons about politics, people, and myself. I had a tenacity that I didn’t realize I had. Yes, I had always been opinionated, but mostly on paper, not in a spotlight. This year changed all of that.

Ryan was in the fourth grade and Megan enrolled in kindergarten in the same public elementary school. The difference in enrolling the children for school was a blatant contrast. Ryan’s enrollment had not given an option for his entire heritage, and Megan’s enrollment form clearly had the word “multiracial” on it because of what we had done. They both were doing well and Gordon had more time during the day. We took a wonderful trip to Disney World and were just like all the other happy families there.

Project RACE was gaining ground with local and state institutions as more and more individual school districts added a category called “multiracial.” The precise terminology that we used would become an issue and continues to be today. Some people like the term “mixed,” and I never did. “Mixed” often brought up comments and headlines using “Mixed nuts” and “Mixed up.” When I thought about why I felt so uncomfortable with “mixed,” I realized that mixed is the opposite of “pure.” So if people weren’t mixed, were they pure? I certainly didn’t want to go there.

Many people told me they had contacted the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), because they believed the ACLU would surely represent them as interracial families. I began to see a pattern as they were repeatedly rejected by the organization that was charged with representing civil liberties for all Americans. I contacted the ACLU office in Washington and found an advocate in one of their attorney’s, Helen Hershkoff. She thought what was happening to our segment of the population was wrong. Now we were finally getting somewhere.

The attorney was going to be attending a conference in Atlanta and wanted to arrange a meeting for me with her and the national head of legislative issues, a woman named Laura Lee Murphy. This was progress! The meeting was arranged.

I drove to the conference site in downtown Atlanta and Ms. Hershkoff met me in the massive hotel lobby. She was exactly what I envisioned—plain, mousy brown hair, conservative clothing, White and Jewish. We bonded, chatted, and waited for Laura Lee Murphy. When Murphy finally appeared, she said this to me: “Look at me. I’m Black. And you want the ACLU to help people who are actually Black, but call themselves mixed or multiracial?”

I was stunned. The ACLU attorney was as shocked as I was, and very obviously embarrassed by the whole thing. I felt like I hit a large brick wall. Although I tried to explain to her that multiracial people want to embrace their entire heritage, the Irish/Black Ms. Murphy was having none of it. She would go on to reach high acclaim by the Black community, advocating Black identification in magazines with Black readership like Ebony. Laura Lee Murphy identified as Black and therefore everyone else of multiracial heritage should identify as Black. Knowing I would not change her mind, I left the hotel shaking my head and wondering what else could possibly happen. Helen Hershkoff and I had a few polite, but refrained, emails after that. In each case where there was discrimination against a multiracial person or an interracial family, the ACLU was nowhere to be found. Officially, the ACLU had “no opinion” on a multiracial classification. I just had to let it go and hope that we could change their minds in the future.

We gained support in other ways, The Girl Scouts of America and the YWCA of the USA both added multiracial to their application forms and signed resolutions in support of a multiracial category. The National PTA also issued a letter of support. I found an ally at the YWCA of Cobb County in Barbara Bruegger, its executive director. She not only helped with our cause, but asked me to be on their board of directors, a position I was proud to fill, especially because they had a shelter for abused women and a great reputation for working with the women and their families to leave abusive situations.

Barbara Bruegger was also responsible for getting me placed on a panel sponsored by the YWCA of the USA and The Ladies Home Journal magazine. I was in the company of some pretty powerful females who were well-known in various areas of society in 1993. It went very well and we found new supporters among the panelists and audience.

I was contacted by a woman in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Rana Holcomb was the mother of two multiracial children. Her children were denied an accurate racial classification in their schools and she tried to take it to a higher level. Her attorney, Robert Elliot, sent a letter to the United States Department of Education, and was told they could not help, and suggesting he file a formal complaint or grievance with the Office for Civil Rights and to contact OMB to complain about Directive 15. Holcomb would join Project RACE and continue to seek state legislation.

Going to Washington

We knew almost from the start of the advocacy that we would eventually have to go to Washington to get changes made in all 50 states. It would just take too long to get every state to pass its own legislation. Also, we were now talking about a national census and not just state forms, and we were going to go to Washington with some successes and knowledge. It had taken years to get to this point, but it felt as if everything was happening too fast. I had just wanted some changes made for my children, and now I was representing all children who wanted to embrace their entire heritage. Once again, it’s who you know that counts.

There was a considerable amount of maneuvering to be done while waiting for Congressman Sawyer, an old friend of Speaker Mallory’s in Ohio, to decide who would be called to testify before his Congressional Subcommittee. I was assured by Speaker Mallory that my son and I would be invited. I recommended a few other people who would help, including Major Marvin Arnold and Carlos Fernandez. I thought I had to include a man named Edwin Darden because he was in Washington and he did represent many interracial families there, even though he made it clear he did not like having me in his territory. The federal people would testify on April 14 and we would go on June 30. The federal lineup included Harry A. Scarr, Acting Director, Bureau of the Census; Juanita Tamayo Lott, who had pretty much written Directive 15, and Manning Feinleib, M.D., Dr.P.H., director of the National Center for Education Statistics, and other experts in population and statistics.

The letter arrived inviting my son and me to testify before the U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Post Office and Civil Service, Subcommittee on Census and Population on June 30, 1993. I would speak first on our panel, followed by Ryan (then 8-years-old), Maj. Marvin Arnold, Ph.D., Carlos Fernandez, and Edwin Darden. We were followed by a panel with Sonia Perez, of the National Council of LaRaza, Steven Carbo from the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund (MALDEF), and Helen Samhan of the Arab American Institute. Henry Der of the National Coalition for an Accurate Count of Asians and Pacific Islanders would go first.

The only thing we knew about speaking before a committee in Washington was what we saw on C-Span. We were given the approximate amount of time we could speak. Our written testimony would be entered into the federal archives. So, we wrote and rewrote endlessly. I didn’t think the five of us should go over the same territory, and tried to coordinate our speeches, but Fernandez and Darden did not want to share anything with us. This would not be the last time that we arranged for AMEA to be represented, only to get the cold shoulder treatment from them. I remember thinking that I felt I was dealing with young children instead of adults.

As the day grew closer, Ryan seemed to be the only person who wasn’t nervous. His father was going to drive us to the airport, but a company he did freelance work for had an emergency and needed him. They sent a limo for us! Ryan was an 8-year-old boy in heaven and loved the ride to Hartsfield Airport, but when we got on the plane he became very quiet, which was very unlike him. I asked him if everything was OK and he said yes. We flew on and he withdrew more. I was worried that the nerves had finally gotten to him and gently pressed him to talk about what he was feeling.

This went on until we got to our hotel. I asked him one more time what was bothering him. He finally told me. “Mom,” he said, “The problem is that you don’t know how to get a cab.” What?! Of course, we never had to hail a cab in Atlanta, since we drove everywhere. Perhaps he had seen people on television or in movies living in cities like Washington where they had to get a cab. I reassured him that I could hail a cab with the best of them. I was relieved that it wasn’t anything serious, and by the end of the trip, he would be flagging down cabs, too.

We made our way to the designated room the next morning. It was a hot, muggy day in Washington. The committee hearing room was large, but mostly taken up by the raised horseshoe style seating for the congressional representatives. If they had designed the room to be intimidating to speakers, they succeeded. We found seats with Marvin Arnold and waited. Henry Der went first and was obviously well-known by, and very comfortable, with the committee members. It was intimidating.

As we were getting to the panel seats, Chairman Sawyer said, “This would perhaps be, while our panel is coming together, an appropriate time to mention that three of our witnesses could not be here today. They are The National Urban League, the NAACP and the National Congress of American Indians. I might mention also that an old friend, Representative William Mallory, couldn’t be with us here today because of a legislative session, but is well represented by the witnesses with whom he’s worked.”

Our side had been able to stall the NAACP and Urban League, and Mallory never did intend on appearing, which is why we were there. His intervention with his old friend had worked perfectly. It was politics at its best.

It was my turn and I think I did well. Ryan went next and stole the show in his little navy blue sport coat, gray pants, white shirt and tie. This is what Ryan said:

“Thank you for letting me speak to this subcommittee myself. I am Ryan Graham. I am 8-years-old and I am in the fourth grade in Roswell, Georgia.

I feel great because I am multiracial. In my mind I say, Wow, when I see multiracial on school and test forms. I like being multiracial and I feel good about it, but I feel pretty bad for other kids who do not see multiracial on their forms. I think we need multiracial on forms for all kids like me and my little sister now because I think it’s the right thing to do.”

His speech was perfect. Chairman Sawyer thanked him and said Ryan was the youngest person to ever testify at a congressional hearing.

I couldn’t help but notice a strange arrangement that went on every so often. Chairman Sawyer would whisper something to his staff director who would then whisper to the person next to her, who would then whisper to one of the young pages and committee assistants sitting along the edges of the elevated dais. That person would leave the room and come back with a glass of water for the chairman. I just couldn’t help but be shocked at how many government people it took to get a glass of water. It was bureaucracy at its worst.

Our panel did extremely well, although much of the information was repetitious because we hadn’t all shared our testimony with each other. I gave all the information I could about the actions of the states and state departments of education. We gave real life examples of what our children had to cope with by not having an appropriate classification. I spoke about the importance of self-esteem and how it was connected to identity, and all in all, our panel made a good case for review of OMB Directive 15.

Right after the hearing, as we were walking back to our seats, we were stopped by people asking for more information. I lost sight of my son and went through the panic that takes hold of any parent when that happens. I found him in a corner being interviewed by a reporter for the New York Times.

At last, the big day was over. It was exhausting, but invigorating at the same time. We learned that two more hearings would happen, one in July with OMB people and some other groups that would ask for their own demography changes or complain about our wanting the racial classifications expanded.

In November, the third and final panel would occur with mostly civil rights speakers including Arthur Fletcher, Chair of the U. S. Commission on Civil Rights.

I think I was finally struck by the real importance of what we were doing. We were asking for a radical change in what had become “the one drop rule” in our country; the old adage that “one drop of Black blood makes you Black.” I felt that the government was finally taking our issues seriously and was going to look at every aspect of the multiracial movement that they could. We just had to stay the course and move ahead with our gains at the state level, while trying to make some friends in Washington. That would prove difficult. Chairman Sawyer’s staff director seemed to have her own agenda. She told me she had a multiracial child. I knew she had to portray a bipartisan, equal front, but she seemed bothered by our future inquiries about the hearings. We were able to meet with a few people who were for the multiracial category and were willing to help us, providing they pretty much stayed anonymous. We had our quiet champions on the Civil Rights Commission, in the Office of Minority Health, and in some key education areas. A few good people kept us informed of the progress in Washington, but for the most part, we were hanging out there all by ourselves. It was frustrating. It was maddening.

One thing that the hearings accomplished was the sudden interest by the media. I think we were interviewed by every newspaper, radio and television station in the country. While we were in Washington, Ryan and I went to a large mall to buy some gifts to take back to Megan and Gordon. We walked into a men’s tie store and a man came over to see if he could help us. He looked at us both and suddenly said, “I saw you on TV last week! I know who you are!” This was the kind of thing that happened frequently with Gordon because he was on television every day, but was very new to us. We were being recognized and we left the store with two beautiful ties and lots of smiles.

When Ryan and I were at the airport waiting for our return flight, a man had been sitting near us reading one of the Washington newspapers. He left it behind and I picked it up. There in the front section was a story about Ryan’s testimony. It was pretty heady stuff for an 8-year-old and his mother.

A producer from the popular CBS television show, “Forty-Eight Hours” contacted us. They wanted to do a full segment on Project RACE featuring Georgia Senator Ralph David Abernathy during the next legislative session, which would not be until January. Everything was planned, as information flew from my desk to theirs.

But we did have to step back from the national media attention and refocus on state legislation while we waited for more hearings in Washington. Illinois legislation had been introduced and we had an excellent group of Project RACE members to handle anything that came up in the state.

My children were both doing well and I was the standard issue suburban mom, attending school meetings, driving to soccer practice, and sharing stories with other moms. I was doing freelance writing for the medical industry and an occasional op-ed piece in a newspaper. Life was a balancing act, but it was also very interesting.

I had been a freelance writer for many years. Then, in 1993, I was offered a freelance, regular position at Topside Loaf, a liberal newspaper in Atlanta and north of the city. It was an offshoot of the popular Creative Loafing newspapers. I would write an opinion column once a week—a regular newspaper columnist—and could pick the topics I wanted to write about. I continued to work from my home office, phoning and faxing to the newspaper office. My editor was Jill Hannity, wife of conservative talk show host, Sean Hannity. I didn’t know then that I would appear years later on Sean’s TV show, “Hannity and Colmes,” representing Project RACE and that Sean Hannity and I would at least have one Republican—Newt Gingrich—in common. It’s interesting that Jill Hannity is now known as Jill Rhodes, having opted for anonymity. Her background on internet sources reveal her journalism background, but omit that she was an editor at a very liberal newspaper. That stint may have proven to be an embarrassment to her and her husband years later.

Working from a home office is not easy. Yes, it sounds like a wonderful scenario: sweet, quiet babies cooing all day, the dog would instinctively know when not to bark, and you could work in your jammies. In reality, babies cry, dogs bark, you sometimes miss days of showering, and you feel like people who go to work every day at an office have it made. I finally had to set a rule for my children: See daddy for problems unless they involve fire or blood. Their father would begin to resent that, but the children seemed no worse off and very few real emergencies happened. My first priority was being a mother, second was Project RACE, and third was my writing. Admittedly, being a wife made its way further down the list, as Gordon and I hardly even saw each other. Still, we were a parenting duo, as far as I knew, and tried to co-parent as best we could.

1993 brought another interesting alliance. Kathleen Rand Reed, the founder of a research company that focused on the sociocultural and ethnic aspects of organ and tissue donation contacted me. She would go on to become a trusted advisor and friend. Whenever we needed an anthropological expert, Kathleen was there.

Another interesting fact was that Arab Americans had been trying to get their own racial classification for many years. Helen Samhan, Deputy Director of the Arab American Institute was their point person and I think we shared frustration with Washington more than anything. It would take them another 15 years for the Census Bureau and OMB to even consider a Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) category.

We were still waiting for responses in Washington. A 2000 Census Advisory Committee would not let a Project RACE person participate on the committee, but we were able to have Maj. Marvin Arnold’s wife, Jean Arnold, state our issues at one of their meetings. To this day, we are not allowed on the Census Advisory Committees; more about that later.

Back in Atlanta, we were starting to get some actual numbers before and after adding the multiracial category in Fulton County, Georgia. We were also getting data from the Cincinnati Public Schools. The data would be key to showing that adding “multiracial” did not take numbers away from other minority races, but rather, the numbers came from students who used to use the “other” category. It also proved that there were more multiracial students than American Indians, which had their own category, so justification existed for our classification.

Project RACE was growing. Although most of our members were in Black/White interracial marriages, we had a very large Filipino membership with many, many interracial marriages. Our Asian membership was also spreading all over the country.

Newt Gingrich was making quite a name for himself and began holding town hall meetings in his district. Some people had an opinion of the man; some very positive and some extremely negative. We wanted to meet with him because he could give us insight as to where we could go in Washington and how to get there. Also, there was the possibility that we could win him over as an ally. We would have to bide our time; wait and see.

Some of the academics were helpful at this point in time. Dr. Naomi Zack at the State University of New York at Albany was especially helpful in providing information, writing to the subcommittee, and giving us more historical context. I would eventually be a contributor to her book, American Mixed Race.

One academic really stands out in my memories of this time. F. James Davis, author of the groundbreaking book Who is Black? One Nation’s Definition came to Atlanta. He and his lovely wife, Lucille, had dinner at our home, and we drifted to the deck for coffee and conversation. Gordon went to bed. Jim and I would have talked all night if people didn’t need to get some sleep. He was enlightening and fascinating. He found our multiracial movement to be something he could champion, and I think he liked that we were trying to change the old one-drop rule. I had a lot to learn as an advocate and I had some very good teachers.

CHAPTER 4
National Fallout

“If you don’t have a seat at the table, you’re probably on the menu.”

Elizabeth Warren

After we had testified in Washington in 1993, Chairman Sawyer and his committee came to the conclusion that the whole idea of race and the government needed to be looked at more closely than they could with hearings alone. They called for a workshop to be convened by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). I learned later that this was not unusual. On the plus side, it would give us more time to make more gains for a multiracial classification and give us more of a voice. On the downside, it was yet another meeting of hand-picked government folks. We assumed that everyone who testified would be invited. We were wrong.

What we did not know then, was that this meeting would have a huge impact on our work. It would be a turning point.

Ohio’s Speaker of the House, Bill Mallory, once more played an important political role in Project RACE. When I told him what had occurred in Washington, he said he would make sure I was invited to that meeting. Soon I received an invitation with a note asking who else I would like to be there from the multiracial community. I requested they invite Major Marvin Arnold, Carlos Fernandez from AMEA, and Edwin Darden; the same people who had testified with us before, but they were not invited to this workshop. I don’t know what happened with AMEA and the government people. I heard that Carlos and other AMEA board members had a meeting during this time with some OMB people, but he never did tell me what happened. I could not waste precious time on whatever was going on with AMEA. That we included them and they excluded us would become an issue in the future.

The meeting was to be held in February, 1994. We waited, but none of the other people received invitations. Meanwhile, it was obvious that OMB and the Census Bureau were stacking their side very full and leaving our side nearly empty. I had no choice but to prepare to handle this myself. A few days before the workshop, I discussed the situation with Bill Mallory, and we managed to get two other people into the room, but not as speakers: Marvin Arnold, the Army Major and Kathleen Rand Reed, the anthropologist, both of whom lived in the Washington area.

The meeting took place in Washington on February 17 and 18. Marvin and Kathleen worked very hard to gather information with the hope they would get to speak, but knowing it could go either way. I was very disappointed with the huge number of government people there, especially since I was the only person from the multiracial community given a place at the table. I did feel like I was on the menu for two days, but at the same time, I tried to keep myself as positive as I could.

We sat through an overview of what the meeting hoped to accomplish, and then people started speaking. One of the invited speakers was the Director of the Fairfax County, Virginia public schools, a man named Deeb Paul Kitchen, Ed.D. He was one of the early speakers. Kitchen was obviously an ally of the government folks; maybe some of their children went to schools under his purview. He certainly was folksy, telling about how these parents wanted a new box with a laugh. He certainly got everyone in a good mood—everyone except me. I was never quite so angry.

As I recall, there was a speaker in between Kitchen and me, who also joked about what parents of multiracial kids wanted. Then it was my turn.

I hit them with the school issues first, explaining that “valuing diversity” is more than just a fashionable phrase, and that progressive schools did not want to wait for OMB Directive 15 to catch up with reality. I looked right at Deeb Kitchen when I said it.

I also told them what was happening in schools. How in North Carolina, a teacher asked a multiracial teenager in front of the class, “You’re so light are you sure your mother knows who your father is?” I let them know about what happened in Georgia when a teacher said to a child, “You should go home and figure out what you are—you can’t be both.” And how in Maryland, a school secretary came into a kindergarten class and announced she was there to decide a child’s race.

Then I moved on to medical, employment, and census issues. I announced that the State of Georgia had passed our legislation during the past week, and let them know that Senator Ralph David Abernathy III had sponsored the bill. I presented our issues with Directive 15 and the changes we would like to see.

The room was completely quiet when I concluded by saying of my children and children like them, “You don’t know who they are—you don’t know where they belong—and that is the problem we face today.” As I walked back to my chair, Superintendent Kitchen stood, stopped me, shook my hand and said, “I’ll do whatever I can to help.” The tone of the meeting had completely changed, and I was shocked with the knowledge that it had changed because of what I said.

Then Marvin Arnold was able to give a short presentation and Kathleen Rand Reed was able to speak when people in the room were allowed to make brief statements. I believe we made all of our points very well. The next day we heard from the government people. We had been clearly outnumbered, but not out smarted.

It’s kind of funny looking back on it now and seeing the three-page, single-spaced list of 75 participants. People were included from the Bureau of the Census, various racial and ethnic organizations and coalitions, someone from every university in the country doing any research on racial data, people from every conceivable federal agency, including HUD, GAO, and the Department of Agriculture. The one lone advocate was Susan Graham, Project RACE.

Chairman Sawyer had asked me to keep in contact. I wrote to him after the workshop and said this, “Mr. Chairman, to state it as simply as possible, I walked into a mine field on February 17 at the workshop. One need only look at the agenda book and recognize the deck was stacked against multiracial children.” Our concern was that the government agency players, statisticians, demographers, and academics were still going to study this thing to its death. The National Academy of Sciences put out a call for more studies from more academics.

Eventually, the workshop would lead to OMB holding “convenient public hearings” in Boston, Denver, and San Francisco. When we complained that no states that were progressive about the multiracial classification had been included, and that those in the south were excluded completely, Suzanne Evinger of OMB explained to me, “We have budget constraints.” These were hearings in which the public should be given their due hearing about the multiracial classification, but people could only respond to Directive 15, a government directive not even entirely understood by those who wrote it or used it, let alone the public. Yes, we were angry.

In addition to the hearings, OMB placed a notice in the Federal Register, soliciting letters from the public. We were not yet reading the exciting Federal Register on a daily basis back then, but we did find out about it. I recalled back in Georgia how Senator Newbill emptied large bags of letters and said, “This is what counts.”

We pulled out all the stops to get people to write letters to OMB about Directive 15. Our “model” had the following wording:

I endorse the following addition to Directive 15:

Multiracial: Please specify the combination of your origins from the list below that best describe your multiracial identification.

___ American Indian or Alaskan Native

___ Asian or Pacific Islander

___ Black

___ Hispanic

___ White

We had to adopt this format when we were told that OMB would not in any way allow for just a category of “multiracial,” since that would not give them the ability to “bridge” past data. They were looking for a way to reassign people back into the five standard classifications instead of finding ways to accommodate multiracial as its own identity or stand-alone box. We also included in our sample letter: Observer Identification is not acceptable, which was another extremely important point. Ramona Douglass of AMEA and I prepared a joint seven-page response to OMB. She also asked people to write letters. We had a September 30 deadline, which would eventually be extended. No one was out of our reach on this issue. We had people posting to the growing interracial internet groups online and sending notices to every local interracial family group in the country. Our Project RACE members were urged to write and have family members and friends write.

Roderick Harrison was now our contact at the Census Bureau and although he tried to appear neutral, it was obvious that he would be happy if Directive 15 was not changed at all. This would be the start of a very cold relationship with the bureau. Oddly, I was sent an invitation to the Swearing-In Ceremony for Martha Farnsworth Riche as Director, Bureau of the Census in November of 1994. I thought at the time that it must have been sent to me in error.

Meanwhile, OMB had asked the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, to give their views on Directive No. 15. A five-page letter was sent to Katherine Wallman by then Assistant Attorney General Deval L. Patrick, who went on to become Governor of Massachusetts. The response delved into civil rights laws and stated, “Thus, we urge that any proposed changes to Directive 15 not be adopted until a full field study has been conducted to evaluate their impact upon the reliability, timelines, and usefulness of those data to this Division’s law enforcement responsibilities.” More studies.

We were not backing down. Sometimes I was shocked at what we managed to get in the way of support. We got support from an odd mixture of places, like the Detroit City Council, which passed a resolution prompted by us in support of multiracial legislation. I felt very proud of my hometown city.

After I went back to Atlanta, I heard from Dr. Kitchen and the Fairfax County schools did, in fact, add a multiracial classification for our children. I also returned from Washington to the very good news that the State Superintendent of Public Instruction for North Carolina agreed to add the multiracial category to all school forms in the state for the 1994-95 school year.

The NAACP was experiencing financial and leadership problems during the early 1990s. Benjamin Hooks was the Executive Director and CEO of the NAACP and we had a very important letter of support from him, which read, “…I can say that the NAACP does not object and has not questioned the right of persons of mixed racial ancestry to define or describe themselves as ‘multiracial,’ ‘interracial’ or ‘bi-racial’ in response to the U.S. Census. We have questioned the undercount of minority residents in the Census, but that has nothing to do with those persons for whom the designation ‘multiracial’ is appropriate.” We felt everything with the multiracial community was status quo. I was introduced to Sandra McGary, who was the president of the very influential Cobb County Branch of the NAACP. McGary was also a national NAACP board member. She and I became good friends and she wanted to help multiracial people get a classification. In 1993, Reverend Benjamin Chavis was elected as NAACP president. McGary was eager for me to meet Chavis. Her chapter was hosting a very large fundraising dinner and Sandra invited me to sit at the president’s table, and she would introduce me to Chavis.

Gordon and I went to the large banquet held in a hotel ballroom. I can honestly say that it is the only time he and I would ever run into overt discrimination as an interracial couple. The looks at us were ugly. I tried to tell myself that people were just looking at us because they recognized Gordon, but it was a tough sell. Clearly, people thought he was the invitee and I was the White woman with him. When we went into the ballroom with the crowd, I was the only one asked for a ticket, which made me feel very discriminated against. I can tell you from personal experience that discrimination is extremely stressful and unnecessary. I certainly was not feeling the “White privilege” that I would be accused of later. I felt different, unwelcome, and just wanted to leave.

We found the president’s table and put our things on two chairs while we went to look for Sandra McGary. I was getting even angrier as more mostly Black women stared at me. When we got back to the table, two Black women had taken our seats. I bent down and whispered in one woman’s ear, “This is the president’s table and you are in our seats. We can do this quietly and you can move, or I will make a scene.” They moved.

Chavis was at the head table. McGary got me, and we walked over to Chavis together. She introduced me and left the two of us together. I explained as succinctly as I could about Project RACE and what we were doing. Chavis did not give me much of a response and I felt the issue just was not on his radar, which was probably a good thing for the time being. I certainly didn’t want to stir up any possible negative reactions. The situation was at least stable for the moment.

The “Forty-Eight Hours” news crew came to Atlanta and followed us around the capitol for several days. Their piece would highlight Senator Abernathy, show Project RACE members at the legislature and feature the Dones-Bergin family and my own. The footage of Senator Abernathy glad-handing the White lawmakers is priceless as they all played to the camera. One day Abernathy said he wanted to take the TV crew to lunch to get the best “home cooked” meal in all of Georgia. We drove in two cars and he was in the lead car. At one intersection, he jumped out of the car, stopped traffic, and proudly pointed to the road sign, which read “Abernathy Road.” He jumped back into his car and we were all laughing in the car behind. Finally, at the very small restaurant in downtown Atlanta, we all got out of our cars and went in. Abernathy hugged the owner and told her what to put on each plate, including black-eyed peas, corn bread, and chitlins. We all finished eating and then Abernathy suddenly got up and left. The television crew was left to pay the bill. We all laughed about that, too. The segment would air sometime in March.

Our legislation passed in 1994 and was signed into law by Georgia Governor Zell Miller on April 14, 1994. We had a large bill signing ceremony at the state capitol. Pictures were taken and in each photo a Black man appeared with our group. He just walked into the room with us, and he did have a nice smile in all the pictures. We had no idea who he was, and finally assumed he may have been security. Gordon even got into the picture, although he was getting tired of the whole multiracial cause. I think he felt that since Georgia’s legislation was finally done, I would be back home more. Still, some days it felt like I was in the middle of a three-ring circus, with Ralph David Abernathy as ringmaster!

Other than the passage of our legislation, things were not going well for Senator Abernathy in Atlanta. He was stopped in East Point, Georgia and charged with running a red light, failure to yield to an emergency vehicle, and reckless driving. He would go on having his troubles. In 1997, airport authorities discovered marijuana in his underwear. During this time, Abernathy called me one day and said, “God came to me last night and told me I’m supposed to take over Project RACE.” I told him God made a mistake.

Republicans called for the Senator’s impeachment and went on to censure him in 1998. Later that year, he was convicted on 18 felony charges. He went to prison. In 2002 he was arrested again when his fellow inmates charged him with theft by deception. He certainly was a colorful character and the three years I spent with him gave me quite an education in the ways of state legislators. I don’t think many legislators actually believed that a bill of Senator Abernathy’s had passed. We did whatever we had to do, legally, to get our legislation passed and signed into law. Sometimes you can go through the entire legislative process only to have the Governor veto your bill. Luckily, we didn’t have that problem in Georgia, and we did not come up against a Governor’s veto of our legislation until Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in California many years later.

I realized about this time, that although we had major success in the states, we would need help in Washington to get OMB to change racial classifications or introduce a national piece of legislation. I was advised by my fellow advocates in Georgia to go to my Congressman, who happened to be Representative Newt Gingrich. He was not well-liked by the public, but had made quite a name for himself—positively and negatively—on The Hill in Washington. I put in a formal request with his staff and they told me it would be a long wait. I prepared a packet of information for my Congressman and updated it constantly so that I would be ready when he was. I had a very long wait ahead of me, indeed.

During this time, a civil rights issue made national headlines in Wedowee, Alabama, when high school principal Hulond Humphries told an interracial couple that they could not attend their school prom and that there would, in fact, be no school prom if they carried through with their plans to attend. The principal also stated in an open assembly at the school that Revonda Bowen’s parents had made a “mistake” (by having her) and did not want anyone else to make the same “mistake.” The girl’s father was White and her mother was Black. Tempers flared. The biracial girl in the relationship, 16-year-old Revonda Bowen, threatened to sue the school. Carlos Fernandez of AMEA viewed this as the class action case he had been waiting for all these years. But Bowen chose attorneys from the Southern Poverty Law Center, including Morris Dees, to represent her in a discrimination suit. It was not a class action suit, and she settled for around $25,000. Humphries would actually go on to be elected to the Wedowee Board of Education some years later. Everything about the situation generated front page news.

I don’t think Carlos ever really got over this big fish that got away, but he was ready to step down as president of AMEA. In 1994, Ramona Douglass was elected the new president of the organization.

Ramona and I initially got along pretty well, but that would not last. Ramona called me her “sister” and she said what she thought I wanted to hear. She quickly got the lay of the land in the multiracial movement and moved to get ahead of Project RACE. I had an entire large file folder called “Ramona’s Wrath.” We were two headstrong women who wanted things to progress as smoothly as possible. Ramona Douglass would always remind me and everyone else how she fought in the Black civil rights movement and was a true activist. Ramona seemed to have two sides, one was my good friend and the other was my mortal enemy. Talk about frustration. I am not saying I was easy to get along with, but I was always upfront and honest. With me, you knew exactly where you stood. With Ramona, who knew? We’ll get back to Ramona.

The major change for Project RACE around this time was that we got on the internet, after being convinced by a neighbor and Project RACE member that our future was there. At her advice, I called a friend of hers who was a webmaster to see if he could be our webmaster, although I had no idea what that entailed at the time. My friend set up my computer—remember, this was 1994—and taught me the basics. I would use my old dial-up modem to surf the internet and found some public interracial groups.

My neighbor’s webmaster friend explained to me what a website was, but told me he was too busy to start one for us. He advised me to post our needs on two “cyber bulletin boards” that webmasters frequently went to on the web. It was as if he was speaking a new and different language.

I made up an ad for a webmaster, stipulating that there would be no pay for their expertise. It was strictly a volunteer position. I posted the ad one night and went to bed. When I woke up the next day and checked, I had hundreds and hundreds of responses from all over the world. It was amazing. Most of the people who answered, practically begged for the opportunity to get some experience. Many were self-taught geeks who wanted to show what they could do. I had no idea how I was going to weed them out and pick one, when I opened yet another email. This one was from a webmaster named Jay Fubler Harvey, whom I had “met” on one of the interracial forum chats. He let me know he would love to set up and run our website for us. Bingo! Jay would remain with us for more than ten years before leaving to start his own “Daily Multiracial” site.

Being an internet presence was a revolutionary change for us. We began communicating by email, told people they could go to our website for information, and would eventually take new memberships over the internet. We also found out about electronic hate and the vitriol that would come out of people when shielded by the anonymity and distance the internet put between us. It was pretty mind-boggling for me and eventually my children and their friends would be on computers helping and teaching me.

The “48 Hours” piece aired nationally on March 23, 1994 and the response was simply amazing. Our membership tripled. When one big story appears about an advocate, the rest of the media start calling. We were contacted by Linda Ellerbee’s production company, Lucky Duck. They wanted to do a Nick News piece on Nickelodeon TV featuring Ryan. Their crew came to our home in Roswell, Georgia and spent two days camped out in our living room. We were all exhausted by the end of the taping, and I was lying on a sofa, talking with the crew. The phone rang and the producer was the closest to it. I recall saying, “Can you just get that? It’s like you live here now.”

Rev. Jesse Jackson had a show called “Both Sides” on CNN. I was a guest and although it was set up as a debate, I was at a disadvantage from the start because I was in a very small studio, by myself, in Atlanta, speaking to a solitary camera and the rest of the guests were in-studio in Washington. They could see me, but I couldn’t see them and I realized what a help it is to be able to see body language and expression. Edwin Darden from IFA-Washington was a guest in the studio as was Barbara Arnwine, a Black woman from the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights under Law, who was very clearly against a multiracial classification of any kind, arguing that we would be taking numbers away from the Black classification, would stratify the races, and hurt civil rights enforcement. She also called it a “hodgepodge” category and said it “speaks to some other political agenda.” I wasn’t aware of any political agenda. Darden made a few points, but was very low-key and bland. That left me to defend what we were trying to do. Jackson kept confusing race, religion, and nationality. He said, “If we have someone who is of French and Jewish or an Italian and Greek person…” He was still confused because this was not about religions and nationalities. It was exasperating.

They brought on a student from Howard University (a Historically Black College), Erin McKinney, who said she identifies sometimes as Creole and Jewish, and Black at other times, and was worried about scholarships and affirmative action. The show was very obviously weighted toward the other side of the debate from us.

Things became very heated between Reverend Jackson and me and the following argument took place:

Jackson: “Susan, are you pure White?”

“I guess I’m as pure White as someone could be. My relatives are from Russia and Poland.”

“So, if a Russian Polish person marries an Italian person is that person under this new category?”

“That’s more multiethnic than multiracial.”

“Would that fit in the new category?”

“No. We are not talking about nationalities, we’re talking about races,” I answered.

“Would that fit the new category?”

Nothing I said could make him understand. I still think about that interchange and have to laugh whenever I see Jesse Jackson on television.

An academic was starting to annoy me. Jon Michael Spencer taught a course in the African and Afro-American Studies Department of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He sent a letter to Project RACE in which he requested information about Project RACE “so the students in my class may grasp a better understanding of the concerns and issues surrounding the interracial experience and the multiracial movement.” He went on to write a book filled with hatred for me and misinformation about the multiracial movement. It would not be the last. Another academic, Rainier Spencer, in Law Vegas was writing attacks aimed at me.

My parents lived in Las Vegas at that time and found out that this professor was going to be speaking at a public event. They decided to go. When they got back, my mother called me and said, “Your dad was wired.”

“Wired?” I asked.

My little Jewish mother said, “I wired him for sound, of course. We have a little micro-tape of the whole thing. I’ll send it to you. I thought we did quite well.” What?! My father was wearing a wire and recording it? I must say that I was very impressed with my parents and I listened to the fascinating tape they sent to me.

Much to the total chagrin of the Black and multiracial academics against me, I was asked to be a contributor to an anthology called The Multiracial Experience: Racial Borders as the New Frontier, edited by Maria P. P. Root. My chapter was titled, “The Real World.” I was one of only a few non-academics invited to participate in the book, which would not come out until 1996. It was very successful when it was published and for many years after. It’s still in print.

But scholars were finding they could make names for themselves by opposing us, too. They came at us from the African and Afro-American studies departments of some of the most prestigious universities in the country. One put out a statement recommending the census change the Black option from a race to an ethnicity; another claimed that the one-drop rule should always exist.

We began to think about ways we could get the word out about what was happening in Washington. I met with Xernona Clayton, a vice-president at Turner Broadcasting. She committed Turner Broadcasting to produce a public service announcement (PSA) for us, but which would never happen, in reality. Meanwhile, I had been introduced to Pamela Poitier, daughter of the famous actor Sidney Poitier. Pam and I became close friends during this time and it was not unusual for her to drop by our house. She had a company called 3P Production Company and she wanted to direct the PSA. All we needed was some funding. Pam suggested she call her father, who had two multiracial children—half-sisters to Pam. Certainly her father would get involved, donate to the production, or give us some funding sources where we could use his name. She called him. He turned her down completely and said he did not want to get involved at all in the multiracial rights movement. She was shocked and felt let down, but I told her we would just move on and not to take it personally. We had not been successful with getting celebrity backing and this was just another failed attempt. I think there was just too much still undecided for them to toss their hats in our ring.

Toward the end of 1994, I still did not have a meeting scheduled with Representative Newt Gingrich, but he was my congressional representative, so I began sending letters to his office asking him to intercede on our behalf with the powers that be in Washington. In every case, he forwarded a letter on to the people I named, with a personal note like the following one to Alice Rivlin, Director, Office of Management and Budget: “Dear Alice, Susan Graham, a constituent of mine, has contacted me about problems she is having with your office. I would appreciate it if you would take her concerns into consideration. I have enclosed a copy of her letter for your review.”

I wrote a letter thanking Gingrich each time, and giving him additional information. One package included a video tape of the Nick News segment about Ryan. I have to say that Newt Gingrich was the only member of Congress who was coming to our aid. He was taken very seriously in Washington and he was an advocate for our multiracial children. I would take all kinds of heat from the multiracial community Democrats, who could not understand how I could deal with a Republican, let alone this Republican! I had a standard answer: “I’m a lobbyist and I will dance with whoever signs my dance card.” We had Democrats and Republicans championing our legislation in the states, Democratic and Republican governors signing our bills into law, and I, for one, didn’t care what political party they were with. It often felt like I was the only one. I started to hear about entire internet discussion groups discussing the movement and me. We were accused of everything from not being a “real” organization to somehow sabotaging the Wedowee principal/prom case. Meanwhile, some activists on the internet, backed by Charles Byrd were suggesting “street action” in Washington.

Charles Byrd of the now defunct Interracial Voice would go back and forth advocating for things we were doing and putting us down completely. He sent me things with quotes like this one: “The tiger does not proclaim his ‘tigritude.’ He pounces.” Byrd was hostile and loved provoking a good or bad fight. Either way, he was active enough in the community that I thought it would be a good idea to stay in touch with him at the very least to know what he was up to. In coming years, he would sponsor a rally in Washington, which was only attended by 200 or so people, and eventually he would disappear from the scene altogether and write a book about Buddhism and an occasional piece about other topics related to race and ethnicity.

We were getting publicity from all directions, newspapers, magazines, radio, and television. One of our Project RACE families was featured in Business Week magazine in an article called “Should the Census be less Black and White?” Also around this time, the authority on child-raising was a pediatrician named T. Berry Brazelton. Mothers and fathers sought him out for child-rearing advice. He wrote one popular newspaper column titled, “Teach biracial children to take pride in both races,” which was very widely distributed across the country, and possibly around the world.

We were amazingly busy and had new members joining literally every day. All we had to do was sit tight and wait for the federal government.

My work load never seemed to stop, but I had ideas brewing about writing two books. I started “hanging out” online in a chat room on America Online called “The Writers Café.” I was swept up in being able to be on a computer “talking” to people not only states away, but continents away! It was pretty heady stuff and I began spending more and more time talking to people online. One of the regulars in the café was author Tom Clancy. Tom and I became friends by typing in the chatroom and would go on to talk about Project RACE and his non-profit for kids quite often and progressed to phone calls about the health needs of children of all races.

Through the café my desire to work on a book was moving up on my “things to do” list. I needed a writing partner for the first idea, which was a book that needed to be half written by a poet. Many people in the café suggested a poet named Sam Pereira, who was also a regular in the chat room. I sent Sam an Instant Message (IM) one evening and we began talking about the project. I liked him immediately. He immediately liked the book idea about a poet and a journalist who meet online. The biggest problem was that Sam lived in California and I was in Atlanta.

My friend who persuaded me to get a computer had also become a good friend and our sons were best friends. She started talking about taking a trip to San Francisco and wanted me to go. I could meet with the West coast leaders in what was becoming the multiracial movement, meet Sam Pereira to talk about the book, and meet a few other writers in the area. It seemed like a great idea.

The trip was informative, fun, serious, and creative all at the same time. Sam and I got along better than I had even hoped for, and we started work on the book immediately. I was thrilled to be working with someone when most of my writing was such a solitary act and it seemed that more people were beginning to hate me because of Project RACE. I needed friendship, camaraderie, and to get feedback from other writers.

About this time, I was meeting some pretty amazing women in the café and nine of us started to email each other and copy all the rest of us. We lived all over the country and did all kinds of writing. Among us we had a popular novelist in Texas, a librettist in New York, a soap opera writer near Chicago, a screenwriter in Los Angeles, a historical romance writer, a newspaper editor in Florida, a poet in Alabama who would go on to be an influential advocate for women in Honduras, and a writer in Texas. I was the writer and children’s advocate in Atlanta. We began to call ourselves “The Sistahs.” We were there for each other through many divorces, marriages, problems with our children that ranged from drugs to bad accidents to my daughter, career issues, caring for elderly parents, and on and on. We were a very tight group of successful and outspoken, but emotional and caring women.

The Sistahs encouraged writing my book with Sam, as they had also gotten to know him through the Writers Café. They would eventually make him an honorary Sistah with the name SamSis. Together we were SuSam.

Sam and I decided to set the main location of our book in Evanston, Illinois. Northwestern University is there and the poet in our book was a poetry professor. We decided it was important enough to take a joint trip to Evanston. Plus one of the sistahs lived there and we could meet. Over the years various sistahs would meet other sistahs. I have met all but three. Nevertheless, we were as close as sisters throughout tragedy and triumph over many, many years.

CHAPTER 5
Odd Politics

“I am an EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR. I solve problems you don’t know you have in ways you can’t understand.”

T-Shirt Slogan

A legal case came to us. A Florida woman, Loretta Edwards, took her two children to enroll in schools in Palm Beach County. She wasn’t able to put biracial or multiracial on the forms, of course. The mother was told she had to pick one race only for her children and refused. The school principal looked at the children and announced that they were “White,” which we had on video tape. We had an attorney who was a Project RACE member and had become interested in the civil rights work we were doing. He happened to live in Florida. He agreed to take her case pro bono. Neither Edwards nor Project RACE would have to pay attorney bills.

Edwards sued the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), holding Directive No. 15 responsible, citing the children had been harmed by the incident emotionally, psychologically and otherwise. The case stated the following: “Directive 15 embodies antiquated and odious prejudices and fears related to ‘racial mixing’ and ‘miscegenation.’ It perpetuates the discredited ‘one drop rule.’”

I’m not a lawyer, but my understanding at the time was that the case was dismissed by the court because there was not “concrete injury that they have personally suffered.” Apparently, psychological harm didn’t count. No, we didn’t win, but the case did get covered by the media and the issue was out in the news again. It was a loss that hurt, but I knew it didn’t mean that we had to give up. Loretta Edwards and I would end up taking both of our daughters with us a few years later when I testified again before Congress. The little girls thought it was great fun to travel to Washington with their mothers. I remember shopping with Megan for a special dress and sweater for her to wear on the day her mother would once again testify.

The attorney who brought the lawsuit would go on being an advocate for Project RACE and our multiracial children. We had many conversations about it and I went to Fort Lauderdale, Florida to meet with him and Edwards right before the suit was filed.

We were about to get to know more about politics in Washington. President Bill Clinton gave a speech in Dallas on April 7, 1995 in which he said he would not oppose a multiracial category when questioned by the press and went on to say, “I think it ought to be done.” Ten days later, we had a formal letter on the way to the President.

Another academic book came out titled American Mixed Race: The Culture of Microdiversity. It was another anthology and I had been asked to submit a chapter. Naomi Zack, a professor at the State University of New York at Albany was the book’s editor and driving force. Zack was a vocal advocate for the multiracial community.

We continued to introduce and re-introduce legislation in states including Indiana and Michigan early in the year. They would both be passed by the end of the year. In Michigan, one Black state representative, Ed Vaughn, wrote a letter to all the Black “Brothers and Sisters” in the Michigan house stating: “Danger always stalk [sic] the movement of our people towards freedom justice and equality. The enclosed bill is a good example of that. This bill (actually 2 for the same purpose 4439 & 4440) is an effort to establish a “colored”, “creole” or “mulatto” race by calling them ‘multiracial.’” His three page letter that went back to the days of the slave master, ended with this: “These bills are dangerous. Fight against them. As Frederick Douglas said when asked what should we do in terms of the Black struggle? His reply was Agitate, Agitate, Agitate!” We were able to appeal to other Michigan representatives and senators to overcome the opposition of Mr. Vaughn, who refused to speak with us. Each new fight made us stronger and more resolved. Note: Creole is not a race. Their origin is in Haiti and many have settled in South Florida and the Gulf Coast through New Orleans. Representative Vaughn was confused.

We continued to work with State Departments of Education and were successful in North Carolina and Florida. Ashleigh Miller, whose mother had sued OMB, would become the first child in Florida to be designated “multiracial” on her school form. Georgia remained our most progressive state covering all school forms, state agency forms, employment forms, and applications.

OMB provided one last deadline for public comment: September 30, 1995. This was our new target. We put out a newsletter explaining how to send letters, and included samples. We sent that newsletter out to everyone we could think of. We would have to wait to find out how we’d done, but I had a feeling OMB would be very surprised at the sheer number of positive responses. Over 800 letters came into the federal government in favor of a multiracial classification.

In May, I went to San Francisco to meet with Ramona Douglass, Carlos Fernandez, Nancy Brown of Multiracial Americans of Southern California (MASC), Kendra Wallace, and a few other people in the multiracial movement. We were being “watched” by many academics who questioned everything we did, but at about this time, someone began calling what we were doing “the Multiracial Movement.” We realized that we needed to show some cohesiveness in the leadership of the national organizations and our members, whether they were chapters or individuals. One of the topics of discussion was the fact that Katzen of OMB told me we had to “pick our terminology,” and she was right. We had to come to terms. Did the community want the term multiracial? Mixed-race? Multiethnic? Multicultural? Interracial? Biracial? We had already polled the Project RACE members and they came back soundly in favor of “multiracial.” We went back and forth during this meeting, but finally decided that we would all use the term “multiracial.” That and self-identification for race and ethnicity seemed to be our only common ground. There was more talk and consternation about a multiracial classification than self-identification, although I always thought both were equally important.

Project RACE members strongly believed that it was important for children to have a specific term, and that it should be “multiracial.” Without a respectful term, would things go back to Mulatto and Zebra? Without a proper term, what would OMB and the Census Bureau call us? More than one race people? Check two or more people? Number four on the skin-gradation chart? No, the word multiracial was and still is of huge importance. As I often pointed out, you would think that a group such as the NAACP that had started as colored then went to Negro, then Black, then African-American would understand the power of racial identification terminology.

We were still “darlings” of the media. To keep moving with only a positive message would remain a problem throughout my years in the advocacy. One TV show wanted us to fight a KKK leader—we refused. Even Oprah Winfrey’s producers called and wanted us to be on Oprah. It became very clear to me in our talks that they were going to swing to the negative “poor mulatto” kind of show—we refused. Many people had a hard time believing that we actually turned down Oprah, but the necessity of keeping a positive outlook on multiracial children was more powerful than her. One of my favorite tapings was with Kurt Barling from the BBC’s show “Black Britain.” Kurt was a wealth of knowledge about multiracial history in Great Britain, himself multiracial. Handsome, intelligent, kind, and funny, we all had a wonderful time.

The internet chatter stayed at a pretty hostile level. The interracial listservs were particularly combative. If I tried to stay out of the battles, I was accused of keeping everything to myself. Charles Byrd said in one particularly unkind email: “Graham could provide a wealth of info about OMB and various and sundry political contacts that she has cultivated, but therein lies the rub; she seems to take the opposite view that keeping things shrouded in mystery strengthens her hand politically—as it relates to the multiracial movement.” Byrd and some of the activists and academics stirred the pot whenever possible. He attacked me personally for an article in The New Yorker in which I was quoted as saying, “multiracial people know to check the right box to get the goodies” when talking about scholarship programs without a multiracial option. My point was that when a multiracial person is forced to pick only one race, they may choose to pick a minority race, which could give them entitlements. It’s true, we all know it, but we’re not supposed to acknowledge it, apparently.

Byrd also went after Ramona Douglass, publishing a confidential email from Ramona and stating: “Now, it’s not a big deal to be called ‘racist’ by the Project RACE President and ‘elitist’ by Ramona Douglass. I am a big boy now; besides sticks and stones may break my bones, but…. My Virgo character, however, will not allow me to let certain claims and accusations from the above letter go unchallenged.” His attacks on Ramona and me would go on for years. They would both make confidential correspondence very public.

Tom Clancy and I continued to talk online during 1995. We exchanged interesting information about race. In an email, he wrote, “I actually hate race. It’s such a waste of time and energy for our country. I mean, who gives a good goddamn what a person looks like? Either you get it or you don’t. On the other hand, if it’s medically important to a sick kid, that’s that.” He was a baseball fan who tried to help with Rod Carew’s daughter’s illness. Not many people knew that Clancy had a foundation for children with cancer. He was an interesting man to work with, a tough façade, and a big heart for sick children. He married a Black woman several years after he helped multiracial kids. It was a very big loss when he died in 2013, which I felt very deeply.

Project RACE and AMEA wrote to President Clinton in a joint letter. This was the President’s response in a letter dated October 19, 1995:

Dear Friends:

Thank you for your letter of July 17. I appreciate hearing the views of Project RACE and the Association of Multi-Ethnic Americans, and I’m very sorry that I was unable to respond sooner.

It is important that my Administration know the concerns of organizations like yours. I have shared your letter with the Office of Management and Budget so that they may better understand your ideas.

Thanks again for getting in touch with me about this crucial issue.

Sincerely,

Bill Clinton

Rather ho-hum, it wasn’t quite the reaction we were looking for. Although it really didn’t do much for us, the letter was important and still hangs in my office.

Meanwhile, things were heating up with the NAACP. Harold McDougall was employed by the NAACP and it seemed his number one goal was to discredit anything having to do with a multiracial classification. He would repeat over and over again that the Black community would be losing numbers if we got our way. We repeated over and over again that they would not, because most people who truly wanted to identify as multiracial had been identifying as “other,” and not as “Black” or another minority category on forms that asked for race. McDougall certainly was the “go to guy” for the NAACP on our issue and he wanted me out of the way.

From the very start, it angered me that Washington was eliciting and listening to the representative of another racial organization—and to hear them say it, another entire population—to put parameters on the multiracial population. It was neither fair nor correct to think that all Black people felt the same way and were all represented by the NAACP. We hardly had the power to dismantle other minority numbers even if we wanted to, which we didn’t. McDougall and I would argue back and forth for years.

Joseph Lowery of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) also began making noise against us. Also Hugh Price and Billy Tidwell of the National Urban League took stands against us. Once again, it seemed that everyone was against us and once again I had to just let it not influence me so that I could go on with our work.

Ramona Douglass and I played “good cop, bad cop” quite a bit and became good at it. We issued joint statements time and time again, for groups like the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), asking for accurate reporting about the multiracial community. Many in Washington had heard enough from me, and Ramona was given opportunities to supply them with her information and knowledge. Ramona was a good speaker, but she wanted everyone to like, if not love her. We wrote a joint letter complaining of no representation on decision-making committees at the federal level. As a result, Ramona was put on the 2000 Census Advisory Committee in November 1995, which made a recommendation that more workshops be held, more studies done, and everything completed by summer of 1997 in order to adequately prepare for the 2000 census.

There was a sudden change in Ramona with the appointment to the advisory committee. She told many people that she was the “chosen one” to represent the multiracial community, which I just took as ego-speak. At the same time, she began to tell me how even though she had been “chosen,” she still considered Project RACE and me “important.” She wanted us to do the work and she wanted the credit. It was divisive. She told me how much she loved me and signed her emails “always,” while making herself the national spokesperson. She called me in tears many times, asking for my advice. It was bewildering. Then she accused us of building a lawsuit (the Florida case) without including AMEA. I let her know that it was a private lawsuit by a private litigant who happened to be a Project RACE member. It was not a class-action suit. She then demanded information about it as a member of Project RACE. One exchange was especially insulting to me, as Ramona continued to badger, patronize, and belittle me in emails. She also attacked Steve and Ruth White of “A Place for Us,” another interracial organization, and warned me that they would “muck up” California legislation. Ramona seemed to be trying to get the federal folks who were against us to have a meeting in Washington. There was not much interest from them.

The situation was even worse on the interracial listserv on the internet. Carlos Fernandez got into a fight with the academic Rainier Spencer. Ramona and Charles Byrd were going at each other. People I never heard of were pouncing on everyone and nothing was moving forward.

We managed to make more progress outside of the government. ACT, one of the national tests for high school seniors, agreed to add “multiracial” to their list of applicants to fill in their racial or ethnic background. The SAT refused. We found that the SAT’s parent company, The College Board, regularly used and sold racial and ethnic data to outside companies. For example, when Ryan took the SAT, he didn’t have a place to mark multiracial, so he complained, and drew in his own multiracial box. A few weeks later, he began receiving types of sales magazines with all Black students on the cover; they offered only information about historically Black colleges. A few weeks after that, one arrived with all White kids on the cover; yes, it advertised for mostly White colleges.

I was writing letters to everyone who opposed us, including Dr. Mary Francis Berry, Chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, who was quoted in The Palm Beach Post as saying that we had, “…wittingly or unwittingly taken an action that will exacerbate racial tensions, not improve their children’s lives, because the reason for race labeling is to ‘divide and conquer, divide and oppress.’” We were not advocating for racial labeling, that is something the government did; we just wanted our children to have an honest, all-encompassing category for themselves. It was deplorable that the chair of a civil rights commission would rail against any group’s civil rights. We began to refer to the commission as the U.S. Commission on Selective Civil Rights. We sent copies of the letter to Washington politicians and agency heads, and interracial internet lists. We called everyone on the carpet that we could. We were fearless.

The OMB issued a Federal Register notice in September of 1995, listing some of the ways they were thinking of using to deal with this issue. One of the identifiers they were considering was a “skin-color” gradient chart for multiracial children. What a slap in the face to our community by the administration. Wasn’t there a sane voice anywhere in Washington?

Also in 1995, Ramona and I planned a summit in San Jose to once again bring together the various leaders in the multiracial community. By November, Ramona and I were barely communicating. I sent her copies of President Clinton’s letter to us, yet she repeatedly accused me of withholding it. She told me that she was “chosen to be the sole spokesperson for the multiracial community in Washington.” She would tell me one thing, and Carlos Fernandez would tell me something else. I remember feeling that dealing with Ramona Douglass just took too much energy, too many emails, too many ridiculous accusations, and too little mutual respect. I was more than happy to disconnect from Ramona, but she kept coming to me for information. I was in a real catch-22 situation. If I worked with her, she drove me crazy and if I didn’t work with her, she bad-mouthed me. She called me her friend and her enemy. She referred to me as her “sister” in one breath and as a person with “no knowledge” of Washington in the next breath.

In August, 1995, we had yet another Project RACE/AMEA meeting in California. I felt as if I was always on a plane heading toward a storm. We went over the usual issues and updates. Kathleen Rand Reed gave an update on multiracial data and research, and Kendra Wallace spoke about student group activities.

Back in Washington, the Census Bureau was conducting field testing and asking multiracial people such questions as: What race do you affiliate with most? They still didn’t get that multiracial people affiliate with all of their races and the point was not to choose just one.

Also in Washington Newt Gingrich became Speaker of the House of Representatives, making him the first Republican Speaker in 49 years. Changes were coming. He was named TIME Magazine Man of the Year for 1995, the architect of the “Contract with America” and his attempts to balance America’s budget.

We somehow made it through 1995 and headed into the new year with mixed hope and dread while we waited and waited for OMB to make its decision. We were not going to sit still—we had more to do if we had any chance of a multiracial classification and self-identification.

Early in 1996, a Project RACE member, Jeff Rubin, who was an attorney with Alameda County wanted to try initiating multiracial legislation in the state of California. Assembly Bill No 3371 was introduced by Assembly member Bob Campbell. Even though we had some bipartisan support, we felt this would be a longshot, but we had to try it. Ramona Douglass turned out to be a hindrance by stating that state legislation is “unnecessary.” She insisted on going to Sacramento for a hearing on the bill, although we tried to appeal to her to stay out of it. Then she stated that she was there on behalf of Project RACE! It was also the first time a hapa (half Asian) group would speak against us. The bill was defeated on May 30, 1996. It would not be the last time for legislation in California.

A story about Project RACE appeared in U.S. News and World Report in April with this headline: DON’T YOU DARE LIST THEM AS ‘OTHER’: MULTIRACIAL AMERICANS SEEK FULL RECOGNITION. It brought in more members and helped get more national attention for our cause. We found that the media tends to feed off one another, and indeed, that story led to another national story put out by The Associated Press and others. Members of the multiracial community were also writing our own stories and getting them published. The New York Daily News ran an opinion piece I wrote, which brought a great deal of interest from New York. It seemed that we were constantly in the news. If we didn’t write an article, we were commenting in letters to the editors. Radio talk shows had also “discovered” us, and I felt as if I were fighting everyone on the national airwaves. CBS Radio News tried to set up another side to debate me on their radio show, but Wade Henderson of the NAACP and Joseph Lowery from the SCLC both refused. My opponent was Richard Womack, Acting Executive Director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. He brought up all the usual objections to a multiracial classification until he just plain ran out of things to throw at me, so he said that we (interracial families) chose to bring “these children” into the world and give them these problems. I let my temper take over, albeit in a subdued, rational way, and Womack never debated me again.

In July of 1996, Charles Byrd organized a march on Washington. It was called the “Multiracial Solidarity March.” The goal was to display pride, power, and unity for the multiracial community. I did not attend, although there were many people scheduled to speak. Project RACE did sponsor a bone marrow donor drive near the event. In fact, we held 17 bone marrow donor drives around the country in 1996 because if a multiracial person needs bone marrow, the match has to be as racially and ethnically close as possible. We work to enlarge the number of multiracial donors. As it turned out, only about 200 people showed up at the march, but they were able to generate some local and national publicity. There was some infighting between Byrd and Ramona Douglass over her closeness with Hapa Issues Forum, and its leader Greg Mayeda. Neither Byrd nor I could see any reason to pursue acceptance by the hapa community, as they seemed reluctant to endorse anything about the multiracial classification.

In August, The American Statistical Association (ASA) used offensive language in describing multiracial people as “Americans of mixed or murky racial and ethnic origins.” We issued a press release denouncing the American Statistical Association. Even organizations that were supposed to be unbiased did not hold back when it came to the multiracial population. They would not have done that to any other racial or ethnic group. The ASA did offer sincere apologies and said they did not mean to offend us or anyone of multiracial heritage.

In addition to the work we were doing in enlarging the donor pool for bone marrow recipients, we also began giving our members and interracial families’ information on saving cord blood, which is blood taken from the umbilical cord when a baby is born. It would otherwise be discarded. Storing the cord blood would enable a person to use their own cells if they were to suffer a disease in the future. The International Cord Blood Foundation asked us to revise their “Ethnic Background Questionnaire,” which I did with Reggie Daniel, who was at UCLA.

Newt Gingrich, now Speaker of the House, was still sending letters to people on the Hill, supporting us.

The Census Bureau released its report on results on race and Hispanic origin questions for Census 2000 on December 2, 1996. They tested questionnaires that:

- Added a multiracial category in the race question;

- Placed the Hispanic origin question immediately before the race question; and

- Combined both of these changes.

We would always question their questions, since we knew that the way they asked the question had a direct bearing on the answer. For example, many times their questionnaires would ask a multiracial person something like this: Which of the five categories reflects how you most identify racially? That still made a person choose between their parents. How could the government get away with this type of question? They just did.

The first committee we appeared at in 1993 was dissolved in 1996 and became the “Committee on Government Reform and Oversight.” There was an entirely new list of players in the House of Representatives and we lost the connection to Representative Sawyer’s office. They held a Full Committee hearing on June 6.

In late 1996, I received a letter from Nathan Douglas in Maryland. He was the father of a biracial child. He was a supporter of what we were doing and had been a speaker at the Multiracial Solidarity Match. He summed up my involvement in this way: “You, Susan, are a threat to most so-called ‘Black’ people because you call into question their fundamental beliefs about who is ‘Black’ and why.” I think Nathan was right on in his comment.

Throughout 1995, I kept in touch with Representative Newt Gingrich’s staff. I made certain I was still on the list for a meeting and asked the staff to send out letters when we ran into a roadblock in Washington. They wrote to OMB and the Census Bureau, and recommended Project RACE to the Census Advisory Committee among a long list of others. Gingrich’s staff was doing everything they possibly could to help us. The staff people were professional and wonderful. It was just taking so long. I received a call from Gingrich’s scheduler on September 25, 1995 saying, “You are at the top of the list to meet with Newt.” Finally. This was akin to meeting with the king at that point in time. Newt was everywhere, giving his opinion on everything.

Once again, I wrote a letter to Representative Gingrich thanking him for all he had done to help the multiracial community and requesting a meeting with him. And then I waited.

I received a phone call on January 8, 1996 from Newt’s office telling me that he could meet with me that afternoon. Not much advance notice, but I had a presentation folder ready for months. I knew that I would have only ten minutes with my congressman. I had to be succinct and ready for any questions.

I drove to the office, rehearsing in the car. I knew this could be the single most important meeting I would ever have and there was no room to blow it. I was shown into a small room, sparsely furnished with a sofa and two chairs. I sat on the sofa. Newt Gingrich came in with only one of his aides. He gave me a firm handshake and let me speak. I handed him the packet of information, which he glanced through and we talked about the volatility of race discussions in the United States. We talked about things he could do to help, including helping to pass state legislation, forwarding information to the media, dialogue immediately with the Government Reform and Oversight Committee, and draft national legislation. I remember thinking about the intelligent grasp he had of the importance of a multiracial classification. I didn’t agree with everything the Speaker did, but no one could deny his intelligence. He finally looked at me and said, “This is the right thing to do for kids. I’m with you on this.” He turned to his aide and said, “I want you to see that whatever we can do for Mrs. Graham and multiracial children is done.” I was elated! I finally met with Newt Gingrich and had his complete support. It was official—we did have a friend in Washington.

Gingrich would go on to write many more letters not only to other members of congress, but to Governors of States, if we needed him to. His name was influential and we needed that backing.

Not everyone was feeling positive about this. I got blasted on the Interracial Internet list for “making a deal with the enemy.” Huh? This was a bipartisan issue—neither all Democratic nor all Republican. Most people who were against us on a national level were Democrats anyway, especially Black Democrats. When questioned about my “involvement” with Newt, my standard answer was still, “I’m a lobbyist for multiracial kids. I’ll dance with whoever signs my dance card to get the job done.” People like Charles Byrd had a field day with this and he drew in whomever he could to the argument. During this time, Newt’s staff was busy interceding on our behalf all over the country. His district office people were wonderful, but there wasn’t the same kind of support in his Washington office, which was understandable.

During this time, if Newt Gingrich was holding a public meeting in his district, I was there. One meeting was with the school boards, PTA representatives, and other education advocates. It was a good meeting, and Newt welcomed me personally. At that point, someone in the PTA took a photograph of Newt and me standing together. Years later when Kim Williams was writing a book, she would write that she came to my home in Marietta, Georgia (I never lived in that city), and I had a big picture of myself with Newt Gingrich in my living room. There was no picture of Newt Gingrich in my living room, but it became one of those false stories that took on a life of its own. I don’t know how many times I was admonished for “the picture in my living room” when there was none. Eventually, the woman who took the picture would send me a print. It measures 3” x 5”, hardly the big deal that it was misreported to be. In fact, it stayed in its original envelope until I found it just recently while doing research for this book.

Newt Gingrich held town hall meetings at various locations in his district. I needed to speak with him about an issue that came up regarding opposition, so I decided to go to the Saturday meeting. Gordon reluctantly went with me. We were the last two people to get seats, way in the back row. Newt spoke and took questions and answers. When it was over, I turned to my husband and said, “I have to see if I can get 30 seconds with Newt.” He said, “Good luck. I’m going to the bathroom.”

I was going in the opposite direction of everyone else who was leaving. I fought my way to the front of the room where the Speaker was still shaking hands and talking to people. I did it! I was right across from Newt when this very short man stepped in between us. I’m a very tall woman. I don’t know what possessed me to do this, but I looked down at him and said, “Don’t make me hurt you.” He looked stunned and I realized that he was a Secret Service agent. What had I done? Thankfully, Newt overheard me, laughed, and said to the guy, “This is Susan. You can let her by anytime.” I was safe! I told Newt what I needed and was out of there! In the future, whenever I saw that Secret Service agent, he just looked at me and laughed.

It was extremely important to have support from Speaker Gingrich. He became more and more influential as Speaker of the House and our cause was one he actively spoke about. He included a multiracial classification in speeches. Of course I knew the Republican agenda, an agenda that wanted things like entitlements and affirmative action done away with, but those were not our issues. A wealthy California businessman named Ward Connerly was on the path of doing away with affirmative action for colleges and having some success. Connerly was a staunch Republican conservative, but there certainly were liberals who shared his feelings about affirmative action. I was one of them.

Something good happened when the Bureau of Labor Statistics came out with their data and report on the multiracial category. The report said, “The proportions for Blacks and Asian or Pacific Islanders were not affected by the introduction of either the Hispanic or the multiracial options in the list of racial categories.” A little over 1.5 percent of people in their data identified as multiracial, and the preferred terminology was “multiracial” over biracial, Mestizo, mixed race, etc. It was finally some good news for us.

Life on the home front was deteriorating in many ways. Gordon and I didn’t do much together. One thing we did do together happened around this time. They loved to party at CNN, so Ted Turner and CNN were having a company party at someone’s home—a home that had been featured in House Beautiful! It was pitch dark out when we got to the place in the middle of nowhere. They had people directing the guest traffic and we were shown where to park. It was a long walk up to the “main house.” Once in the main house, we were led to a very skinny stairway and up to a small room, where we were greeted by a man who was the spitting image of Rhett Butler in “Gone with the Wind.” I was confused, but just followed what other people were doing. I didn’t see food. There were glass showroom types of displays all over the room and Rhett was our tour guide. The place was filled with Civil War memorabilia. While I could appreciate the artifacts, I was thinking more about the work I could be getting done at home. But apparently this was one of the most extensive and authenticated collections anywhere and we were supposed to be very impressed, which we were. Later that night I realized from the way Rhett watched everyone in that room, he was on security detail. After that and a tour of the amazing home, we were shown where the food was. There was a different themed food in every room. My favorite was the all-chocolate room. We made it through that party successfully.

The other party I remember more because of Gordon. We had not been getting along very well and drove out to this home, which was a very a long drive. We didn’t speak the entire way. It was another lovely party in another lovely, big home. As we were getting ready to leave, the host couple was in front of us accompanying some other guest out. The homeowner was explaining how the property used to be an old Southern plantation. Gordon said in his rather booming voice, “This is my forty acres and a mule!” Everyone broke into laughter and it certainly was the line of the night. It was the single funniest thing I ever heard him say.

The rest of life was not very funny then. Gordon and I went to different therapists. He was a man whose life was full of inconsistencies. On TV he had a “Mr. Nice Guy” image, but his personal life was often less than nice. He often told people that he was a very private person in a very public business, yet when things were peaceful, some kind of trouble seemed to start up.

I began to notice a difference in him the longer he worked for CNN Headline News. We couldn’t go anywhere without him being recognized. People would say, “I watch you every morning!” and he seemed more and more comfortable with the adoration of his audience. We couldn’t go to the neighborhood supermarket or out for a dinner with the kids without the recognition.

I never hid the fact that I was married to Gordon; I just didn’t put it in the front of my own identity. I was Susan Graham first, not Mrs. Gordon Graham. The marriage was deteriorating and it would be a good thing in the end that I retained my independent image. At the same time, he was gradually moving away from me entirely, but I didn’t even notice.

We talked less and less and total silence was becoming the norm, I was usually in my home office, working, or with the kids. There was school, preschool, soccer, dance, and the usual day to day things to take care of, and chores to be done. No one could tell on the surface that we were not a happy little family unit, which was, I’m sure, like many other families. But trouble was brewing quickly and quietly.

CHAPTER 6
Multiracial Lives Matter

“DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software created.”

Bill Gates

“Let’s say intelligence is your ability to compose poetry, symphonies, do art, math and science. Chimps can’t do any of that, yet we share 99 percent DNA. Everything that we are, that distinguishes us from chimps, emerges from that one-percent difference.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Early in the advocacy, we heard about problems with medical issues: different drugs affecting people of different races, anesthesia issues, and bone marrow donor matching.

We know that multiracial children who have blood diseases have a harder time finding a bone marrow match because bone marrow has to match racially and ethnically. Finding a bone marrow match is like finding a needle in a haystack anyway, but the already nearly impossible search is that much harder for a biracial or multiracial person.

We contacted the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), the organization at the time that tracked bone marrow donors and patients. They were not interested in helping us, and told us they would not add multiracial to their forms. Then, in September 1995, famed baseball player Rod Carew’s daughter Michelle was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. We received a call from a friend of the family, asking if we could help. The problem was that Michelle needed a bone marrow transplant. Her father was Black with Panamanian heritage, and her mother was White, of Russian/Jewish ancestry. We held many bone marrow donor drives, but Michelle died in 1996 at the age of 18. Her illness and death brought to light the critical need for multiracial people to become donors.

When someone called or emailed with a family member needing a bone marrow transplant, it meant the situation was critical. The national organization called “Be the Match,” did the actual matching and held their own donor drives or did so in conjunction with Project RACE or other minority organizations. One year we held 17 donor drives across the country, with our largest in Washington, DC. Our goal was to enlarge the pool of multiracial donors. Our teens also did a wonderful video about medical issues, which is still on YouTube.

This medical issue became the toughest part of my job. I would talk to family members with children who had critical illnesses. I usually became close with the family, and more often than not, a donor could not be found, and I would grieve, too. I always wondered if there was anything else we could be doing for these children. We did discover and went on to promote banking of a newborn baby’s stem cells in cord blood. Families can save and store a baby’s blood from the umbilical cord at birth for future use, if necessary. But lifelong storage costs a great deal of money for most families and therefore is impossible for many who want to do it. Sometimes families can donate the cord blood from the baby and hope it is still available if they need it. As with most innovations, there are often things that make it unavailable. Nothing, it seemed, could make it easier for even our youngest multiracial patients. We would have to wait for more medical breakthroughs.

Meanwhile, a debate began about race-based medicine between some advocates and some academics. The human genome is the complete set of genetic information for humans (Homo sapiens). The information is encoded as DNA sequences within the 23 chromosome pairs in cell nuclei and in a small DNA molecule found within individual mitochondria. In 2012, the Human Genome Project produced the first complete sequences of individual human genomes.

Estimates are that we are 99.9 percent the same anatomically. But the remainder is huge! The truth is that we simply don’t know with any accuracy if medicine is race-based, environmentally-based, lifestyle-based, sex-based, or a million other variables. Perhaps it’s a combination of factors.

I’m not a medical doctor, but I have talked to plenty of them. What they have told me is that of course race plays a factor in medicine, but they will probably not tell a patient that. Why? Because it’s politically correct to say there are no differences in the races. I am not a geneticist, but I have talked to plenty of them, too. They have told me also that race is a definite factor in medicine, and they will gladly tell that to anyone who asks.

One needs to just look at the example of sickle cell anemia—a blood disease that primarily affects African Americans, or Tay-Sachs, which primarily affects certain Jewish people. Cystic fibrosis afflicts mainly White people. These are established facts. We also know that certain racial groups have incidences of things like high blood pressure and diabetes. Most of these realities have been established over years of clinical studies.

The government’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) does have medical personnel collect racial information, but not necessarily for people who check more than one race. If it is important to collect this information for mono-racial people, why isn’t it important when it comes to the multiracial population?

As much as we do know about racial factors in medicine, we know nothing about the incidences of disease for someone who is multiracial. Much of the information the medical profession does have comes from these clinical studies. But many minorities distrust the medical establishment enough to not be involved in the studies. There is certainly no harm in asking someone to fill out a form and mark their race(s). It could provide some life-saving information.

Recently I had an appointment with my doctor. His staff gave me a short form to fill in my race. I could only check one. I asked them about how a multiracial person should fill out the form. The nurse said, “Oh, just mark ‘other.’ It’s a new form that has to be filled out for the government. It’s not important.” Not that important? I contend that it is very important.

Sociologists Michael Oni and Howard Winant wrote decades ago that race is not a biological construct, it is a societal problem. They seem to be the only people on earth who know this conclusively.

The nay-saying academics got their big boost in 2011 when Dorothy Roberts wrote Fatal Invention proclaiming that race is not a biological construct and using the drug BiDil as the primary example. The BiDil story is a complex one. Basically, it’s a combination drug that was used to specifically help Blacks with congestive heart failure. It was the first race-based prescription drug in the United States. The combination preparation was first rejected by the FDA in 1997 and then approved in June 2005. It was based on only one trial.

The drug discussions on the internet and at medical conferences exploded. If you believed BiDil made a difference to African Americans, you admitted that there are racial differences and this was fraught with people’s agendas—people in the pharmaceutical industry, medical community, Black population, and one-drop rule advocates.

Do I know if BiDil could have saved lives? Absolutely not. No one really knows. BiDil was very expensive, marketed with controversy, and therefore was not prescribed or used by patients. It was eventually taken off the market.

The book A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History by Nicholas Wade came out in 2014. It makes the case for the need for more race-based studies, not fewer. We need more information, not less.

I have taken criticism because I tend to agree more with Wade than with Roberts, but I’m really trying to get people to understand that more research is needed. Unfortunately, my critics have spewed that I must be evil for believing there may be differences in people of different races that could be cause for more medical research.

I published “Medical Monday” every week on our popular blog. It is rare for a week to go by when we don’t hear of a mention of race in medicine or the conclusions of a clinical trial that tracked race and came up with something new in the race-based medicine discussions. There are medical professionals out there who are trying to find more answers.

On a more positive note, former President Obama had asked Congress for money for a new initiative to “develop medical treatments tailored to genetic and other characteristics of individual patients.” Mr. Obama used new and interesting terminology to describe what has been referred to as “personalized medicine” and “individualized medicine” as “precision medicine.” Apparently, terminology does matter.

Apparently, my detractors think I am somehow trying to portray the notion of racial superiority, which is ridiculous. Just because there could be DNA differences does not mean any race is either superior or inferior to another. Perhaps we actually are all one hundred percent alike. Only more research can make this conclusion. We need to know. This will continue to be a contentious debate for many years to come, but one we must have.

CHAPTER 7
The Big Decision and
Data Games

“There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them.”

Denis Waitley

The transition from 1996 to 1997 would have been seamless if we had not found a Congressman to introduce federal legislation for a multiracial classification. Congressman Tom Petri of Wisconsin did that for us on February 25, 1997. Every organization that represented multiracial children and interracial families was for the bill, except for AMEA.

At the beginning of 1997, I still had many questions about the federal legislation for Congressman Petri: When will the legislation be introduced? Will the legislation mandate multiracial and multiethnic on all forms? Do we have co-sponsors for this bill? I did not think it wise to discuss this with the other multiracial groups; it was premature. Timing is very important in politics and this needed to be timed right. Never the less, Ramona Douglass would write me scathing emails about hiding things from her when she was told about the legislation.

I would be asked to come back to Washington to testify twice more that year.

Invited to speak about Project RACE at Tougaloo College in Mississippi. I gave my speech to an auditorium packed with mostly Black students. I spoke passionately about what it meant to declare multiracial identity in the college years, especially in a Historically Black College (HBC). Usually it meant being one of the only students who were brave enough to do it, which led to a discussion about fitting in on campuses across America. I finished my speech and was walking out when a girl ran up to me. She couldn’t have been more than 20 and she was crying. I asked her if she was OK and she kept crying and said, “I never knew I could be proud of being multiracial. Thank you for telling me I can be.” I never forgot her.

I met Professor Dick Johnson there and we had a long, wonderful talk. He gave me a piece that he wrote called “Prejudice.” I’ve never forgotten it, or Professor Johnson, and I thank him for giving me permission to reprint it.

PREJUDICE

by Dick Johnson

Associate Professor of Philosophy

Tougaloo College

Tougaloo, Mississippi

April, 1997

You look different from me. Your skin is a different color. Your hair is thicker than mine and has a different texture. Your eyes are shaped differently and aren’t deep set like mine. Your nose is broader than mine, not thin and straight; and you speak differently and carry yourself differently.

I am not used to these characteristics and they are new to me. I’m unfamiliar with them. Because I am unfamiliar with them, and don’t know how to act around them, they frighten me, and they make me very uncomfortable. Because I’m frightened of them and uncomfortable around them, I think they are just not right. They are just not what they are supposed to be. So, you are not what you are supposed to be. There’s something wrong with them, so there must be something wrong with you too, and if there is something wrong with you, then you are bad.

I’m beginning to feel better already. Now I know how to act towards you. I’m not so uncomfortable any more. Since you are bad, I can criticize you, reject you, keep you out of my community, ridicule you, and discriminate against you—all because you are bad.

So prejudice gives us simple, easy, and comfortable ways of dealing with those who differ from us. It is much easier to criticize and reject than to have to make decisions on the basis of our thoughtful and intelligent thinking—that is hard work, and you may make a wrong decision.

But while it is easier, simpler, and more comfortable, prejudice is unjust, unfair, and wrong.

If we remain unaware of what we are doing, we just keep doing it. If we develop the habit of thinking like I have just done, we will continue doing it; feeling quite righteous because we are against the BAD, never realizing the terrible wrong we are committing towards others because it is our thinking itself which is, in fact, the BAD.

So prejudice flourishes.

Ryan and I were asked to come back to Washington on May 21 and 22 to testify again before what was now the House Government Reform & Oversight Committee, Subcommittee on Government Management, Information, and Technology. It was four years since we had first testified and now Ryan was 12-years-old. We knew there was much Democratic opposition on the committee: Eleanor Holmes Norton (DC), Henry Waxman (CA), Carolyn Maloney (NY), and Barbara-Rose Collins (MI), just to name a few. Ramona Douglass would also testify. We had as many multiracial people and interracial families as we possibly could in the hearing room.

When these kinds of hearings take place, the government does not cover any expenses, no air fare, no hotel, no food, unless the hearing was scheduled and then had to be changed for whatever reason. My accountant just shook her head one year because I had personally spent over $4,000 on travel for Project RACE. All invitations are made by the committee or sub-committee. We were just happy that a few of the multiracial advocates were given the opportunity.

My testimony focused on the progress we had made since the 1993 hearing: seven states now officially recognized multiracial individuals, individual school districts like Fairfax County, Virginia had adopted a multiracial classification, The National ACT test and the YWCA of America and Girl Scouts had adopted the term “multiracial.” I also presented hard data from the schools in Fulton County, Georgia, where we analyzed data from 1991 to 1997, which showed 1.39% of students considered themselves multiracial, hardly a massive shift from the Black or other categories. We provided this alternative model for Directive 15:

Check one. If you consider yourself to be biracial or multiracial, check as many as apply:

_____ American Indian or Alaskan Native

_____ Asian or Pacific Islander

_____ Black or African-American

_____ Hispanic

_____ White

We also warned about the dangers of too many blank fill-in spaces. People tended to write in things like “Texan” or “Alien.” We did not want to be known as “other” or “some other race.” And we totally rejected any format that allowed a multiracial person to specify multiracial, but then asked us to write in the race we most identify with. It is an insult to the multiracial community. Once again, we stressed the importance of doing away with observer identification in favor of self-identification. I also stated, “The myth is that party lines must be drawn on this issue. This is a bipartisan issue. This is a children’s issue. This is a civil rights issue.”

There was plenty of testimony against us: Harold McDougall of the NAACP, JoAnn Chase of the National Congress of American Indians, Harold Hodgkinson of the Center for Demographic Policy, and a myriad assortment of others.

Some of the experts were neutral and we had Ramona Douglass and Nathan Douglas. We were surprised that Ryan and I were placed on a different panel than Ramona and Nathan. Harold McDougall was on the same panel as I, something Ramona accused me of somehow orchestrating. The panels and panelists were completely at the whim of the congressional subcommittee staff. I could not have influenced panel placement if I had wanted to.

This time there was plenty of media coverage, especially focused on Ryan. USA Today reported, “A 12-year-old Georgia boy told a House hearing that government forms like the 2000 Census should include a new ‘multiracial” category.’ My mom is White and my dad is Black, and most forms ask me to choose between those races. I feel very sad, because I can’t choose, I am both.”

Ryan was questioned by Representative Danny Davis (D-Il), a Black legislator from Chicago, who laughed and told Ryan that he is Black, not multiracial. Ryan handled himself more professionally than Representative Davis and informed the congressman that he sees himself as multiracial and it was more important how he identified himself instead of how Representative Davis identified him. Davis came over to Ryan and me after the hearing and again told my 12-year-old that he was Black and basically laughed at him. Then he said something very prophetic at the time, “Of course, you could be president one day.” Was he intuiting Barack Obama? Needless to say, the tiger-mom in me came out and I wrote Congressman Davis a long letter when I got back home. In it, I told him that his behavior toward my son was simply deplorable and hardly befitting a United States Congressman and that planting seeds of hate, self-doubt, and racism in yet another generation of our children can only lead to the destruction of our society.

Harold McDougall of the NAACP was there to testify and essentially said that the Black category would lose numbers to the multiracial community. We had proven over and over again from the real data we had from schools that most of the multiracial population did not previously use the Black box; they used the “other” box. In his terminology, McDougall said, “Thus, the creation of a multiracial classification might disaggregate the apparent numbers of members of discrete minority groups, diluting benefits to which they are entitled as a protected class under civil rights laws and under the Constitution itself.” Suddenly, the multiracial community was responsible for maintaining civil rights laws? He even spun a story about how Tiger Woods’ multiracial identity has not kept him from public racism. Sometimes I just wanted to scream and this was one of those times.

Representative Maxine Waters would present testimony concluding with this: “The ‘multiracial’ proposal poses a risk to the ability of federal agencies to collect useful data on racial classifications. For this reason, I must vigorously oppose the proposed OMB changes to Directive 15.”

Ryan and I had a meeting in Washington around this time with Sally Katzen of OMB. She began by telling Ryan that her son had parents of two different religions, so she understood the problem. She suddenly turned to an aide and said, “Go over to the White House and bring something back for Ryan.” The aide hurried out. Much later, she came back with a package of chocolate M&Ms with a picture of the White House on the package. Smiling, Katzen proudly handed it to Ryan.

After the meeting, Ryan and I were in the elevator and he said, “Mom, that was not a great meeting and all we got were M&M’s.”

1997 saw the involvement of other racial and ethnic groups trying to block us. Kweisi Mfume was now head of the NAACP and he gave a radio address with the organizations views of the “new multiracial category.” He said, in part:

“There are repercussions in the census numbers that have very real impact on our lives. Provisions of the Voting Rights Act are specifically directed at correcting past discrimination (particularly in the Deep South) where African Americans were denied their constitutional rights. With some figures showing 70% of African Americans fitting into a multiracial category, will we be able to identify Black voters in terms of fair representation? And how will that be achieved with a new multiracial category? With the Courts eradicating minority voting districts across the country, we must ensure that any new multiracial category must not give aide to the enemies of the Voting Rights Act.”

Mfume and the NAACP were still trying to scare people into thinking that Blacks would immediately all jump to the multiracial category. He also stated that “no category should be allowed to weaken others.” In a move I would never understand, Ramona Douglass came to Mfume’s defense on the interracial internet list. The Black population of the country at that time was 12.8 percent of the total population, a percentage that would continue to grow even with recognition of multiracial Americans.

Newt Gingrich made a speech in Washington on June 18, 1997 and called for “Adding a multiracial category to census and other government forms to begin phasing out the outdated, divisive and rigid classification of Americans.” He was certainly becoming more vocal about our cause and showing it to be his cause, as well.

Newt sent a letter to Franklin D. Raines, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, dated July 1, 1997, officially adding his endorsement to our stand. I never quite understood Director Raines’ position on the multiracial category. He was a Black man, married to a White woman, with multiracial children. His own children would benefit from a multiracial classification, yet Raines would not take any stand on this issue, personally or politically.

June 7, 1997 would be a turning point in the multiracial advocacy in yet another leadership meeting in California. I was there, as well as Ramona Douglass, Carlos Fernandez, G. Reginald Daniels, BJ Winchester, Unity, many representatives from the hapa community, as well as representatives of I-Pride, Hapa Issues Forum, Multiracial Americans of Southern California (MASC) and the Biracial Family Network (BFN). AMEA would change its stand completely, under pressure from the hapas that the term “multiracial” wasn’t necessary. Hapa leadership was convinced that using the term “multiracial” was not a good thing, because it did not include hapas, but in reality, it did. It was obvious that they wanted to claim a total win if OMB came back with a “check all that apply” format with no multiracial identifier. Ramona particularly wanted to please Greg Mayeda from Hapa Issues Forum; my impression of him was that he clearly had his own agenda and was just playing Ramona. I told OMB that we were fine with check all that apply if at least the instructions included the term “multiracial.” This was a subtle, yet very important difference. Ramona and Carlos were also no longer interested in how the numbers would be tabulated, something we had all fought for. With a check all that apply format, how would the multiracial numbers be counted? If someone checked Black, would their number be tabulated as Black no matter what other race they were? AMEA no longer cared; they were eager to show the federal government that they were on their side and they had “won.” Even self-identification was no longer important to them. It was critical to us.

I tried to get the participants to focus on the federal legislation and the July hearings, but they wanted no part of any of it. When Ramona Douglass began talking about how she had been chosen to represent the multiracial community and that Project RACE should change its long-standing ideals, I simply got up and walked out. I ended up in the emergency room of the local hospital that evening apparently with a serious allergic reaction, thanks to the seafood buffet at the hotel. I was told by a few people from the meeting that Ramona was incensed that I did not return her phone calls, when I was actually extremely ill according to the ER doctors.

The interracial internet list exploded! People took sides. One very long and eloquent statement said, “…our leadership has apparently decided to jettison the very term [multiracial] through which we have achieved focus and solidarity. This is an incredible miscalculation!” and “…let me suggest that the wording from the Project RACE model needs to be reconsidered by the summit group. ‘Multiracial’ appears in the Project RACE model. This is an absolute essential part.” Ramona Douglass refused to amend AMEAs stand and Ramona told people it was time to move on. This would be devastating to the community.

Our website was exploding as well. We had more members than ever and were constantly updating our site.

Meanwhile, Ramona saw herself as the savior of the community and “bridge builder” with other communities. She began talks with NAACP, Mexican American Legal Defense Fund (MALDEF), The Urban League, and other minority organizations to get their support. I gave up trying to explain to her that they would never give their support for counting multiracial people as multiracial, and that was the only way to get a true count. Again, I did not think that we should have to get permission from other groups to do what our own group needed. During this time, Ramona called me crying and asked me if I would be willing to “die for the movement.” I told her hell no, I would not die for it. Then she told me that she would die for the movement because she was the only one really committed to it and therefore she had to be the one to “carry people into the next millennium.”

I simply refused to get into a public pissing match with Ramona. I felt she had betrayed the multiracial community and marginalized the work of Project RACE. To keep going over the same ground would be counter-productive, which was the last thing Ramona Douglass and I would ever agree on.

Hearing on July 25

We were pretty sure by this time that OMB was going to sanction some kind of “check all that apply” scheme on the Census and for other federal agencies. We still lobbied for multiracial wording to be used and pointed out that they could sanction a check all that apply method and add: “If you are multiracial, you may check more than one category,” on the instructions or have a separate “umbrella” category with multiple races under that category, similar to Asian with Chinese, Japanese, etc. under the broad Asian category. We wanted to be certain that multiracial people were counted as multiracial and not reallocated back into the five existing categories. This was extremely important. My testimony was clear, concise, and I again gave reasons for a way to make everyone happy—more or less.

The Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, was, as I mentioned, scheduled to testify. It would be the only time he would offer to do that for any organization as Speaker. Apparently, budget talks were at a critical point and there was talk of shutting down the government. We waited. The Committee Chair, Steven Horn, kept saying they were waiting to see if the Speaker would be able to make it. In the end, he could not be there, but he did send written testimony—he did weigh in on the controversy and it was on the record. He also stated that he was for one box on federal forms that simply reads, “American.” The political importance of the Speaker of the House weighing in on this issue was critical to getting anything at all for multiracial individuals. I believe that without this support, we would have come away with nothing.

OMB would have done nothing without the pressure from Speaker Gingrich.

Sally Katzen of OMB testified that a final decision had not been made, but also reassured members of Congress that a “check off more than one” racial category plan would not jeopardize civil rights enforcement.

Almost all of the Black representatives were against us. Representative John Conyers (D-MI) came out with a proposal that incorporated multiracial as an umbrella with sub-identifiers. This is what he said:

“I would like to propose what I believe is a very simple solution for the OMB—we should include a ‘multiracial’ category on the next census and within the same question allow people to check all of the racial categories with which they identify. This way, people who wish to assert that they are indeed ‘multiracial’ would be allowed to do so, while we could continue to keep careful track of the racial makeup of our nation.”

It was a complete surprise to us, and we were thrilled. But then the other Black members very quickly silenced him and he backed down from that proposal. It was very interesting to watch a long time congressman come up with a reasonable solution that should have made everyone happy, and then be shot down by members of his own Black race. I sat there wishing that people could really see the kind of games that are played in Washington, DC.

Remember the federal legislation that was introduced by Representative Tom Petri of Wisconsin? The Black legislators apparently got to him as well. He completely bailed out on the multiracial community at this point and withdrew his support and any involvement for HR 830. The media had dubbed it “The Tiger Woods Bill.” Not only did he take us by surprise, he sent an aide to tell us. We had a 2 p.m. meeting scheduled with him personally, about ten of us went to his office and he actually had an aide tell us he had to take his daughter to the dentist. Petri very simply betrayed us. We tried to remain stoic, but it wasn’t easy. His aide strongly suggested we find a new sponsor for our legislation. Now that it was in the daily national political dialogue, it seemed too hot an issue for anyone to handle. Newt Gingrich understandably had his hands full with the government shut down and wasn’t able to help us find a new sponsor, so the federal legislation was dead. It was a crushing and surprising blow to us, but as usual, we would find a way to carry on with the fight for our multiracial children.

Who?

In the late summer of 1997, another person came out of the woodwork and took me to task for just about everything and anything I did. She said she lived in Tucson. We began a polite email correspondence, which deteriorated into her saying that since I am not multiracial myself, I should not be leading a multiracial movement. She ended several emails with this: “Do I make myself clear?” No, she never really made clear how she could do a better job as a multiracial person than I was doing as the mother of two multiracial children.

Some days things just went from bad to worse. Colin Powell, very popular with the American public, came out in favor of the one-drop rule. AMEA was producing quotes from the hapa community more than from the multiracial community.

A multiracial woman named AD Powell was always aligned with the Project RACE goals. I could never get a very good handle on who she was or what she did, but I know she authored several books on racial subjects. Sometimes, I felt like she was the only one who understood how politics worked and how we could make it work for us. I sincerely appreciated her continued support throughout the years. She started a popular FaceBook page called “Against the One Drop Rule.” Other people would come and go: Maria Root, Linda Mahdesian, Nathan Douglas, Deb Smyre, Kathleen Rand Reed, Marvin Arnold, W. J. Nelson, Charles Byrd, James Landrith and others. Some people felt we should be marching, fighting activists, and would not be happy with more peaceful ways of getting our points across. I think some people just got tired of the fight and the infighting.

The Academics and Suicide

An academic in Virginia, Jon Michael Spencer, came out with a new book: The New Colored People: The Mixed-Race Movement in America. G. Reginald Daniel called me after he read the book and said, “If you choose to read it, which I would not recommend, you should have a joint, a big bottle of Vodka, and maybe some hemlock with you.” Spencer said the multiracial category in the United States would be “tragic,” not only for Blacks but for multiracials themselves. He advocated for the one-drop rule of slavery. He wrote some pretty incredible lies about me. Keep in mind the fact that he never even spoke to me. His book had some success with the academic community, but not with the general public. I ran it by an attorney for possible libel action and while the lawyer thought I may have a chance, he warned me that libel suits are pretty difficult to prove in the courts. I didn’t have the money to gamble with the legal fees, or the time to pursue it.

Another academic popped up in September of 1997, Kim Williams, a Ph.D. Candidate at Cornell University. Williams told me that although she thought she could be multiracial, she and everyone in her family identified as Black. She was the one who thought she saw a picture of me with Newt Gingrich in my living room. She wanted to come to Georgia and go through all of the Project RACE archives. I told her that I would speak with her, but our archives included some confidential information and no, I would not let her go through the many boxes of information. She told me that Ramona Douglass was allowing her to go through the AMEA correspondence, hoping to convince me to do the same. I told her that since she had Ramona’s records, she didn’t really need mine anyway. Williams was writing a book on the basic multiracial movement that would eventually be published with an array of mistaken information about me. She did take her dissertation seriously though, and it seemed for the next few years, Kim Williams was everywhere.

Federal Register Notice

The long-awaited Federal Register notice came out on July 9, 1997. It would be our last opportunity to advocate for multiracial people at the federal level. We wrote a joint press release from Project RACE, Charles Byrd of Interracial Voice, and Ruth White of A Place for Us, the three national entities still advocating for a “mark one or more” category that utilizes the term “multiracial.” Byrd, a long-time activist in the multiracial community was livid at Ramona and pulled out all the stops on the internet listservs.

Then the long awaited Federal Register revisions to race also came out on Thursday, October 30, 1997 and while it wasn’t a surprise, we could not fully embrace the federal government’s decisions. As we had anticipated, we did not get a category called “multiracial.” We did gain the ability to check more than one race. Also of great importance was that respondent self-identification would be facilitated to the greatest extent possible. Two very big wins!

The revision of Directive 15 took over seven years to produce. In the Federal Register notice, OMB was very careful to cover their collective asses by throwing in each and everything that had been publicly done. What went on behind the scenes was anyone’s guess. They also looked to something called The Interagency Committee, which made the recommendations. Below are portions of the Federal Register notice of October 30, 1997 that are of particular importance to the multiracial population:

1. “The new standards will be used by the Bureau of the Census in the 2000 decennial census. Other Federal programs should adopt the standards as soon as possible, but not later than January 1, 2003, for us in household surveys, administrative forms and records, and other data collections.” Note: It would take federal agencies much longer to carry out the revisions. The Department of Education took closer to ten years.

2. “…respondent self-identification should be facilitated to the greatest extent possible, recognizing that in some data collection systems observer identification is more practical.” Note: Observer identification is still occurring. This is clearly not something that OMB enforces. Multiracial people are still being “eyeballed” and someone else is picking racial classifications for them.

3. “The Interagency Committee recommended that, when self-identification is used, respondents who wish to identify their mixed racial heritage should be able to mark or select more than one of the racial categories originally specified in Directive No. 15, but that there should not be a ‘multiracial’ category.” This further demonstrates that observer identification can utilize single categories. So, if a child has parents of different races and the observer knows this, they can make the child only one race, with the full sanction of the federal government.

4. By omission, nothing was clear on tabulation and it was pretty much left to the individual government agencies to decide how a person who checked more than one race was to be counted for their data. Note: This has made quite a mess out of federal data and statistics. The Department of Education (with the National Forum on Education Statistics), for example, issued an 88-page book titled: MANAGING AN IDENTITY CRISIS: Forum Guide to Implementing new Federal Race and Ethnicity Categories, I often wondered from the title, just who was having the “identity crisis.” Its guidelines are all over the place, with examples that make no sense and the conclusion that if someone chooses the Hispanic check off and any other race, they automatically become only Hispanic. Other agencies tabulate multiple check-offs differently. And they were afraid we would mess up their statistics! “Permit the collection on population groups provided that any additional categories can be aggregated into the minimum set of standards.” Note: This does not address what to do if someone checks ‘other’ and writes in multiracial or biracial, for example. In which category do they end up?

5. “Do not identify or designate certain population groups as ‘minority groups.’” Note: any group that is not the majority is a minority.

6. “Based on research conducted so far, two recommended forms for the instruction accompanying the multiple response question are ‘Mark one or more***’ and ‘Select one or more ***’” Note: I’ve never been certain where this came from, or what it means, but it has allowed the Census Bureau and other governmental agencies to call multiracial people MOOMs (Mark One Or More), and most recently “combination people.” They have stayed far away from the dreaded “Multiracial” word.

The Federal Register notice is ten pages of very small single-spaced writing that tries to not contradict itself. It’s pretty dry reading, but if you’re interested, you can probably still ask OMB for a copy.

Television gets us in 1998

The National Multi-Cultural Institute in Washington, D.C. invited me to participate in their annual conference as a presenter in May of 1998. I agreed to present a workshop with Laura Kangas of Riverbend Associates, a diversity consulting company. I had known Laura for a long time and we were both looking forward to working together. I also agreed to participate in a debate with Harold McDougall of the NAACP and others.

The day that we both arrived in Washington was like a little reunion. Laura and I went to dinner and she shared with me that she was adopting a little girl from China. She showed me pictures and we both cried and celebrated. Our workshop went very, very well and we had to say goodbye, since she had to get home and prepare to welcome her new daughter. I was left alone to practice my speech during the debate.

Clarence Page, columnist for The Chicago Tribune was the moderator. A seasoned public speaker, he put the audience at ease. The room was packed and C-Span had their television cameras focused on us. I had been given the choice and decided to go first so that I would have less time to be nervous. I did well! People in the crowd were nodding their heads in agreement as I told about how my children and millions like them had been treated by our government and supposed civil rights organizations like the NAACP. I got a solid round of applause. I hardly remember the two speakers who came to the podium after me. Then McDougall’s turn came. He tried to appeal to the audience with humor and when that failed, sympathy. The audience was not having it. There was a question and answer period after he spoke. Many friends and members of Project RACE made their feelings known. I remember one man who held up a sign with his son’s picture, saying he was multiracial no matter what the NAACP thought. The “debate” was pretty much ours.

When I returned home to Atlanta, I found out that C-Span was airing the presentations. I turned it on and recorded it. It was to air many, many times over the next few weeks and the response to us was tremendous. I finally got tired of watching myself and I think my family did, too.

1999 and Changes

I was glad that the OMB and Census Bureau decisions were behind us, because my life was about to change again.

Gordon was fired from his anchor job at CNN Headline News in Atlanta. As I explained earlier, his contract with CNN had a provision in it that he could do “outside” work, but any and all scripts were to be cleared with the Vice-President of News. Gordon had done an industrial film on a freelance basis that was apparently about airline pilots and their union. Gordon did not have the script OK’d by CNN management. I think he thought that he could get away with anything. He got caught when the pilots’ union wrote a letter to CNN, demanding they fire Gordon Graham. He was escorted out of the building. This feeling of some kind of entitlement that he had would only get worse as the years went by.

It was just about the time I started to love living in Atlanta! I had made some good friends, we had joined a Jewish Humanist Group, and the kids were both doing well in school. Ryan was in the first class to attend a brand new, beautiful high school in Roswell, and Megan was in the Talented and Gifted (TAG) program. I had stopped writing for the newspaper, but had plenty of business from a company in New Jersey to keep me busy over and above Project RACE. Sam and I grew closer as we continued working on the book.

Gordon often said that people get divorced because they were not “paying attention” to what was going on at home. Neither of us were paying attention. We were both tired and preoccupied with other things. It was a most uncomfortable way to live. Sam, my book co-author was my place of peace during a turbulent marriage and a long ride with the government. We talked every day, and took several trips associated with events happening in the book. If Gordon ever wondered what was going on, he never asked or mentioned it. We were both oblivious to our marriage, but concerned about the kids.

It would take time for Gordon to find a new job and he finally got an offer in Tallahassee, Florida with a new venture, Florida’s News Channel. It would take a while to sell our home, find a new home in Tallahassee and get moved. He left for Tallahassee and I was the sole fulltime parent for months. I tried to talk Gordon into his going alone to Florida and the kids and I staying in Georgia. He had agreed to a divorce earlier, with the proviso that we would wait until the kids were older and Megan was ready for college. We agreed to try to get along as best we could for the next ten years, although looking back on it now, it may have not been the best decision. We would move to Tallahassee. I did not want to go.

Gordon would sometimes drive back home to Atlanta on the weekends, but his employer didn’t like that arrangement. We found a home in Tallahassee, but had not sold our home in Atlanta, which would prove to be very challenging emotionally and financially. The children seemed resilient to the change, although it was hard to leave childhood friends behind in Roswell, Georgia.

I loved Atlanta more than I ever thought I would. It was part of the old south and the new south. The city and suburbs were alive and friendly. I had made many close friends and finally felt that Atlanta was “home,” only to be uprooted again. Gordon also said he could live anywhere and that he was like a chameleon that just fit in. The truth was that the only close relationships he had were his family and an old friend or two. The move to Tallahassee was easy for him and traumatic for me. I was leaving a big city with a lot to offer for Project RACE and myself, for a sleepy, college town in what was more south Georgia than north Florida. People just weren’t as friendly. Tallahassee is the capital of Florida, but since we had already worked successfully with the schools by administrative mandate there, I really had no reason to interact with state government. When the national 2000 election became a debacle, with George W. Bush finally winning the Presidency after miscounts, “hanging chads,” and a mad public, I was happy not to be involved in state politics. I moved to Tallahassee when it was embarrassing to say you lived there.

I know now that I should have stayed in Atlanta, but I couldn’t have known what was ahead in this place called Tallahassee.

Ryan was getting older and was thinking about starting “Teen Project RACE,” specifically for the 12 to 20 age group. He began accumulating information that would be of interest to multiracial teens, and started with celebrities: Johnny Depp, Justin Guarini, Keanu Reeves, Alicia Keys, Derek Jeter, Tiger Woods, Vin Diesel, Jessica Alba, Mariah Carey, and more. Teen Project RACE was a big hit with the teen members of Project RACE and with the media. He would eventually leave Teen Project RACE in the hands of his sister as he went off to college.

I had an experience I will never forget as we were moving into our Tallahassee home. We needed some repairs done to the outside of the house and a neighbor recommended a man who had done a lot of work for him. My new office was in the front of the house and I could see the entire front yard and area of the home. The man, always dressed in jeans and a plaid jacket, made all of the arrangements with my husband. I felt very odd when my husband introduced me to him—and felt what I thought was racism coming from him. There was no reason for me to interact with him, so I stayed far away. I didn’t realize that subconsciously, I was putting him into a southern redneck category. He drove a pick-up truck and was a laborer. He also had a stronger southern accent than I had ever heard in Atlanta. My prejudices put him into a classification and I sensed, whether correct or incorrect, that he was someone who disapproved of interracial marriage and multiracial kids. I would see him from my office window every day watching my children leave for school and I could see him watching them very carefully. It made me uncomfortable with where I was and the people around me. I stayed in the house.

One day Gordon left to do some errands and the man kept looking at my office window. I had a bad feeling about this. Soon, there was a knock on the door. I thought to myself, “Here it comes. He’s going to tell me how wrong interracial marriage is. He’s going to talk about my children and I’ll have to hurt him or at least hurt his feelings!” I answered the door. This is how the conversation went:

“Excuse me, Ma’am,” he said. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

“I suppose, but I don’t know anything about the work you’re supposed to be doing.”

“It’s not about the work.”

“Oh?” I said nervously, and thought to myself here it comes!

“You see, I know you have a mixed family, and so I need your advice.”

“My advice?! What’s this about?” I said, trying not to sound hysterical.

“I’m sorry to bother you, ma’am” I haven’t talked to anyone about this, but me and the wife are expecting our little girl from China any day now and I thought maybe you could give me some advice, being that you are in a mixed family.”

Wow! Had I been wrong! He reached in his pocket and pulled out a picture of an adorable little Chinese baby girl and his chest puffed up as he shared the photograph and story with me. I cried, he cried, we hugged, and talked for a long time. I would see him around a few years later and he would show me pictures of their second daughter from China!

That situation gave me some real insight into how we judge other people by looking at them. I was giving the “eyeball test” that I hated when people looked at my family. I was wrong—very, very wrong, and I learned something about myself that day from that man—anyone can be judgmental. As painful as this revelation was to me, I learned from it and never made the same mistake again.

CHAPTER 8
The “Quiet” Years and
Personal Challenges

“You have enemies? Good! It means you’ve stood up for

something at least once in your life.”

Anon.

March 14, 2000 was a very important day for multiracial people in America. It was the day OMB issued its guidelines for the reallocation of race and ethnicity. It was how they would add up the new numbers. They rejected a multiracial classification, but instead allowed for multiple box check-offs. It was pretty unbelievable on one hand that we got any recognition, but OMB and the Census Bureau had done exactly what we thought they would do and found a way to placate the multiracial population while still re-tabulating race into single categories. One of the things we lobbied against was “observer identification,” which we called “eyeballing.” OMB finally made the right decision by stipulating self-identification—a good thing. We looked at the entire new guidelines, called it a “bittersweet victory” and took some time to look at what we would do next.

Steven Holmes wrote in the New York Times in “The Politics of Race and the Census”: “The four words on the census form, ‘check all that apply’ sound more bureaucratic than revolutionary. Yet when used in a question asking people to describe their race, those words represent the latest shake-up in the way the country views itself racially.” Meanwhile, The Detroit News and Free Press proclaimed on the front page, “Multiracial finds a spot in the census: New forms to offer more choices.” And so it went in the media, with some news outlets proclaiming victory for the multiracial community, others saying check all that apply would be a tabulation nightmare, and some claiming the NAACP and Census Bureau the winners. All I could do was read, watch, and give our side of the story. We had members in 43 states and were growing. There was still much that could be done in local and state arenas. How could we abandon the children who needed the multiracial community to step up and donate bone marrow?

Once again I felt that we had been damaged by organizations like AMEA, the hapas and others for accepting the newest numerical scheme. I think a few people like Charles Byrd and AD Powell recognized how serious the implications were, but not many others really understood that not having the terminology of “multiracial” would be the biggest mistake of all for the multiracial population.

I was looking forward to receiving my 2000 Census form in April. I felt that I needed to verify how the Census Bureau would follow-up if I omitted filling in any race on the form, as more and more people were choosing to do. Gordon and I were still planning to divorce, but would wait until the children were older to actually file. The tension of living in such a pre-determined situation was not easy. Mostly, he and I kept to ourselves, did our jobs, and had little to do with each other.

I mailed back my census form and waited for an enumerator to show up, since I had decided to leave the race questions blank and see what would happen when the Census Bureau sent someone to my home. I tried to put it out of my mind. I was offered a fulltime writing job at a dot-com company and knowing that I would be financially responsible for the children and myself after the divorce, I took it so that I would have a good income. Project RACE was on a bit of a sabbatical after ten long years, the kids were doing well in school, and I was enjoying my new employment. I was still taking care of Project RACE correspondence and writing. I didn’t know it was the calm before the storm.

One day I came home from work and the children told me a lady had come to see me. Megan said, “Dad took care of it.” Ryan added, “Dad told her we were all Black.” I was stunned. It had to be a Census Bureau enumerator following up because I had left race blank. That Gordon would undermine all of our work was infuriating. I can’t remember ever being so angry. When I asked him about it he handed me the woman’s name and phone number and said, “You can call her and tell her whatever you want.” I felt like my world had crashed, but I couldn’t let it bring me down too far. Still, Gordon had betrayed me and all the work I had done. I would never forgive him.

Some people urged me to close down Project RACE, since we did what we could, had many victories, and OMB had made their decision that would be the law of the land for at the minimum of the next ten years. But then I would look at my children and I would again vow to keep up the fight.

We had to decide how we wanted to proceed, but also how we did not want to proceed. James Landrith, who now had a website called “The Multiracial Activist,” called for a “Multiracial Leadership Roundtable” in Washington honoring Ward Connerly, a well-known California political activist, University of California Regent, and founder of the American Civil Rights Institute. He was the man behind California’s Proposition 209 prohibiting race and gender based preferences in state hiring, contracting, and state university admissions, formerly known as affirmative action. Landrith wanted Project RACE to join the roundtable. I felt it would really muddy the waters if we began aligning ourselves with Connerly’s fight and declined the offer. Speaking at a small news conference at the event, Connerly said, “I, for one, will only tell the census how many people are living in my house. Beyond that, it’s none of your damn business.”

In March of 2001, the Census Bureau came out with new numbers for the multiracial population. The figures reflected an increasingly multiracial population with some 6.8 million Americans (2.4 percent of the population) indicating they were of more than one race. They had a press briefing and seemingly made a big deal out of it. They were trying to acknowledge diversity in our country and acceptance by the bureau. They had to admit there were still problems with the “some other race” category.

AMEA put out a press release taking full credit for the Census decision. Meanwhile, we were advocating as we always had. Since the OMB allocation scheme seemed to count any multiple-race response as a minority, we wrote to the U.S. Dept. of Justice, Civil Rights Division, about the misallocation in redistricting, among other things. We just kept doing what we do.

Ryan, Megan, and I began to deal with the State of Florida about multiracial issues. We were given speaking opportunities and enjoyed meeting other Tallahassee families and being a part of The City’s Race Relations Summit. Gordon decided not to go with us and it was a relief to me.

I was surprised to receive an invitation to a meeting held in New York on November 11, 2002. It was facilitated by Kenneth Prewitt, a past Director of the Census Bureau, and included such known civil rights organizations as the Arab American Institute, the NAACP, National Council of La Raza, and more like them. I could not attend the meeting, but it did bring some interesting email between Dr. Prewitt and me.

One of our long-time members was successful in getting Head Start to add a multiracial classification to its forms. We also used this time to step up awareness of the need for multiracial bone marrow donors and held bone marrow donor drives.

I received a call from Nick News in January of 2003. They were looking for Ryan to be part of a show for Black History Month in February. We quickly figured out that Ryan was a bit too old for this show, but Megan could do it. We would be in New York on her 15th birthday. It just so happened that Gordon would also be in New York doing a news conference for a new Black television news network that never did get off the ground. But, we were all there in different hotels, with different people, and on different missions, which was just as well. The financial backers and heads of the new Black television network were constantly telling Gordon how great he was and how they were going to make him a “household name.”

Linda Ellerbee, a journalist I have always admired, was the host of the Nick News show. There was an academic on the stage with about 12 other kids. The staff was wonderful to us, as was Linda Ellerbee, who sat on the floor with us at one point, eating pizza, and laughing a lot.

The kids were told what to wear, and they thought the hair and make-up professionals were great fun. During the taping, the parents stayed in one room where there was a bank of monitors to watch. One of the other mothers and her little blond haired, blue-eyed daughter had befriended us. I thought the mother would lose it altogether as we watched the monitors and she got upset with her daughter’s answers to questions. I thought Megan was doing a really great job, and handled the dialogue very well. The taping put a strain on everyone, and we were tired, but not too tired for shopping in New York. Megan had somehow managed to get free tickets to one of the popular teen shows, TRL, taped in New York, and she took her new little friend with her. The mother and I walked in the cold New York snow, got revived, and did a little more shopping.

The other mother and I thought that since we had some extra time, we would take the girls and head toward the Black television news press event at a hotel on Times Square. I got the distinct feeling that Gordon was a bit embarrassed when his White wife, a White, blond woman, and two children walked in. The room was mostly filled with Black journalists and some well-known backers of the new venture.

I had purchased three tickets to see Rent on Broadway after going out for dinner for Megan’s birthday. The show was fabulous and it would be the last time I can remember Gordon and I putting our differences completely aside for our daughter. We all ended up back in Tallahassee, ready to resume our lives. The old marital tensions returned and worsened. The personal chaotic years were just about to begin.

In April, I heard about an initiative by Aetna to start collecting racial and ethnic data from its insurance members, saying the collection of such data will reduce the risks associated with racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare, but they would not allow for a multiracial classification or the ability to check all that apply. We decided that Aetna insured enough people and were asking for data so we would take them on. Although we wrote many letters to them, not much changed.

2004

Project RACE focused on local things like school forms, financial aid forms, and medical forms. We had to keep up with the Census 2010 working groups with no help from the Census Bureau.

Gordon’s pay at the news station was simply not enough for life in Tallahassee, even with my working fulltime and freelancing. Gordon had always wanted to teach a college course and jumped at the chance when he was offered a class at Florida A&M. The culture at “FAMU” was Black. It was one of the “historically Black colleges” and Gordon was suddenly becoming very Afrocentric. His students and other faculty did not know he was married to a White woman, and he apparently wanted to keep it that way. Social invitations from other professors and adjuncts clearly did not include me. Other passive-aggressive moments happened and Gordon was openly resenting my work for Project RACE and aligning himself more and more with the Black culture at the college. I asked him to take out the trash one day, which was not unusual, but this time he turned and answered in a southern drawl, “Why yes, Miz Scarlett!” He actually sneered at me.

Gordon and I were each seeing therapists and we also saw a therapist together so that we could work on showing a cohesive front to the children. Communication was so bad that we couldn’t even drive to the therapist’s office together. Gordon’s therapist suddenly wanted him to see a psychiatrist, but he did not share much information with me. I saw him taking some pills one day and asked about them.

“The shrink gave them to me,” he said.

“What are they?”

“It’s Zoloft or something like it.”

“Do you really think you should be taking more than one?” I asked as I watched him down a few of the pills.

“Hey, one makes me feel great! More will just make me feel better!”

Gordon Graham was an enigma from the first time I met him. His character could be very contradictory and confusing. Often, he would be insensitive and stoic, much like the training he had as a Marine, which he would often say he became only because they let him come in as an officer. Other times, he was downright sentimental, especially with his elderly mother and aunts. They saw a side of him I never saw.

Very often when I told people who my husband was, they would say, “He’s such a nice man!” Then I would ask when they had met him and they answered that they never met him, he just looks like a nice man on TV. I often wondered how we make our decisions about how much we liked news “personalities.” What makes us trust them or believe what they are saying? That we didn’t really know these people, but felt emotions, pro and con, about them was fascinating to me.

Gordon was becoming more physically aggressive. He was a strong man, who ran and lifted weights every day. The kids were at school one day and I said something to him that made him angry, and he pushed me. I said, “If you ever lay a hand on me again, I’ll call the police.”

During that time, we managed best by not speaking to each other. Our record for not saying one word between us was 12 weeks—three months of not speaking, but living in the same house together. Mostly, we left notes for each other. We were careful not to use the children to convey messages, but I’m sure they felt the tension in the house.

One day Gordon asked me to go to a meeting with his attorney because I was the one with the head for business. I asked what this was about, and he said he was promised a million dollar contract by the president of Florida’s News Channel and he needed an attorney to work out the details. I said, “You know Bob must have been joking. Why would he suddenly offer you a million dollar contract when the last contract he made you sign from a hospital bed awaiting surgery?!” He got very angry and said that I would be better off protecting both of our interests and I should believe whatever he told me.

The attorney we saw knew us fairly well, having handled some other legal matters for us. The three of us sat in a conference room and Gordon proceeded to tell us how valued he was and how a million dollar a year contract was definitely going to be offered. The attorney looked at me nervously and asked my opinion. I was honest and told him I simply didn’t believe it. Why would they offer a million dollar a year contract to someone making under six figures a year? It honestly made Gordon appear delusional. The attorney finally told us that he would represent Gordon and to have the FNC president call him. Gordon happily said he would do that and we left. The phone call never came and no contract was ever offered.

No, I’m not saying I was perfect—far from it—but Gordon’s behavior was so radical and irrational! I jokingly told him that at least he could count on me being a bitch all the time. All of the writers at the dotcom were laid off, and it didn’t help that I was home all day again. I had also gained weight and wasn’t happy with myself. The combination of personalities just made for a terrible way for both of us to live.

Gordon called me from work one day and said he wanted to talk to me when he came home. Actually talk? It had been a long time. We went upstairs to have a conversation.

“I know about you and Sam,” he began. “I recorded your phone calls with him and I know everything.”

“You recorded my phone calls?” I asked, honestly surprised that he would even think to do such a thing, let alone carry it out and then tell me.

“What are you going to do? Divorce me and marry Sam?”

“Look, Gordon, we’ve been talking about divorce for years, is this really such a surprise?!”

“Do you love me or Sam?” he asked, staring at me.

“I love Sam.”

“I have proof of the affair,” he said. “Don’t expect anything out of the divorce.”

We talked a little more, both calm. He said he would not move out of the house, but he would move out of the bedroom. Things were about to get very weird.

The following week, I got a phone call from one of Gordon’s co-workers who wanted to talk with me about him. I told her I had no interest in hearing about the childish games everyone at Florida’s News Channel was playing and had the feeling they wouldn’t be in business much longer; the signs were everywhere.

Megan, now in high school was miserable. She would not speak to her father for days, and then began running with a strange new group of kids. One day, Gordon took Megan to school in the morning. When she got out of the car, he said, “By the way, your mother and I are divorcing and I’m moving to an apartment today.” And he drove off. Megan didn’t speak to him for a month. I don’t know where that all came from and was as surprised as she was. Gordon didn’t move to an apartment and came home that evening as if nothing had happened. I felt like I was living a nightmare and it started to affect the kids. Things were happening quickly and I was unable to stop them.

During this time, I had a routine colonoscopy, which did not turn out to be routine. I was told they found polyps that could very well be cancerous. Gordon was with me and was unfazed by it. I just wanted to be left alone. I cried for a while in the master bedroom with the door locked, just to call Sam and then be by myself. I took a sleeping pill, which wasn’t unusual, and fell into a fitful sleep.

The next morning, I was in my office when I heard Gordon go upstairs. I stayed on the main level, having a great deal of paperwork to do. When he left for work later, I went upstairs and found the door to the master bedroom gone! Since I had locked the door the night before, he was paying me back by taking the door away.

In November I had complicated surgery. Gordon and I had an argument while I was recuperating, he pushed a table into the area where I had had surgery, and the police were called. They told Gordon that he would have to leave for 24 hours. Early the next day he was back again and mad. We mostly tried to just stay as far away from each other as we could.

On December 31, Megan and I went out for an early New Year’s Eve walk around the neighborhood. Ryan was at work at a local supermarket, and Gordon was at work. It was a clear, but cold night. Megan and I got back home, went for a short walk together, went into the house, and waited for Ryan and Gordon to come home for dinner.

I was in my office in the front of the house and saw Ryan drive down the long driveway to park his car in the “big” (three car) garage. Then he was suddenly running in the house, telling me to call the police, his dad was in the garage trying to kill himself! I called 911 and it seemed that the police were there very, very quickly. Three police cars. The officers disappeared into the garage. They finally came out and asked to speak with me. They asked me what had happened and I told them honestly that I had no idea. I had been out for a walk with my daughter, who I was now trying to shield from seeing her dad. They told me that Gordon had taken an unknown quantity of pills, had hooked up a pipe to the tailpipe in an effort to asphyxiate himself, and was drinking heavily. He would probably be OK. The ambulance arrived to take him to the local hospital. The children and I followed shortly in the car. We were all dazed. When we got to the hospital, Gordon was sitting up in a bed, telling doctors that he had just been celebrating the New Year with a little pre-partying and drinking, and he was fine. They came out and told me they thought he had some serious issues and were going to “Baker Act” him, which I found out later meant that they could hold him for three days for psychiatric review.

I didn’t know what to believe or think anymore. That this man with such a big ego was trying to kill himself didn’t make sense to me. And why try it when he knew Ryan would be coming home from work and pulling into the garage? I’d heard how a suicide attempt was sometimes just a “cry for help” and wondered why he would do that when he was getting help from all the therapists and a psychiatrist. Could he be overmedicating himself? Was he trying to scare me? Get sympathy? All I knew was that my children were very, very hurt and they only had me to turn to. We cried together at the hospital and finally went home.

I got a phone call later that night from the hospital. Gordon was not responding as he should have from the carbon monoxide and they had to transfer him to a hospital three hours away to have the treatment he needed in some kind of hyperbaric oxygen chamber. He would get there by helicopter and I should expect to get a call from the other hospital the next day.

I tried to find out all day where he was and what was going on, but no one seemed to know. It was an emotional and frustrating time. I finally got a call late that night from a doctor with a very thick accent, which I could barely understand, who told me what facility Gordon was in and that he was cooperating and going to group sessions. This doctor wanted me to drive there right away and bring the children, so we could have a family session and we would all be together. I tried to explain why I did not think that was a good idea in light of the pending divorce and I was not going to wake the kids in the middle of the night to take a three-hour drive. The language barrier was growing. I wasn’t even sure where the facility was. Instead, I arranged for an ambulance to take him back to the Tallahassee hospital the next day, where he was assured of psychiatric help and would be closer to the kids. I didn’t know if it would help or hurt him being closer to me.

I knew he could not come back home. At this point, I feared for my safety. Ryan took his father things he said he needed and Megan refused to speak to him. What was once a barely livable situation was now just not doable. Gordon walked out of the hospital within a few days.

I hired a divorce attorney who arranged for a temporary injunction/restraining order so that Gordon could not come within 500 feet of me. A police officer was assigned to him so that he could get his personal belongings from the house to move out. A Black cop came with him, and they were sharing stories, and laughing as Gordon packed up his things. Gordon also took $500 in cash that I had in my dresser drawer just in case I ever had to take the children and leave.

He hired an attorney. I hired my own lawyers. Things were about to get very messy. The only winners were the divorce lawyers. Despite our grand plan of waiting ten years so they wouldn’t be traumatized, the children were the ones that were hurt.

CHAPTER 9
Personal Chaos

“It’s come at last,” she thought, “the time when you can no longer stand between your children and heartache.”

Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Every day was a challenge with Megan. We all tried to keep up with her changing and challenging moods. She was living with me in the house and I told her that she had choices. I would keep the house and stay in Tallahassee if that’s what she wanted, she could move to California with me, or she could live with her father in Tallahassee to finish high school. If that was what she wanted to do, I would sell the house. It didn’t make sense for me to live in that big home by myself.

I had promised Megan that she could go on a trip to Europe that was sponsored by her school, with chaperones. I told her that this was an “extra” of raising a child and she agreed to repay me when she returned and got a summer job. I was happy that I could advance her the money and was excited for her. When they returned from Europe, I was told by the head chaperone that they had almost called me because my daughter seemed to be most interested in meeting boys in Europe than in anything else. It didn’t surprise me, but it would only get worse.

This is the type of occurrence we all went through: Megan ran off to a friend’s house, called me and said she wanted to be an “emancipated minor” and live with her boyfriend. I said that wasn’t going to happen and she said she really wanted to live with her father. I spoke with my attorney, who spoke with Gordon’s attorney, and everyone felt it would be best to have a judge make it official. That way I would not be legally responsible for whatever she was going to do next. We all went to court, Gordon, Megan, both lawyers, and me. The lawyers gave the explanation to the judge that this minor child wished to live with her father and it was fine with all parties involved. The judge called Megan up to the witness stand, and asked her if this was true, if she wanted to live with her father. To everyone’s shock, Megan said, “No, I really want to live with my mother!” This would change almost daily, but for now, she and I walked out of court together and went to the car. She looked at me and said, “I’ll get what I want yet.” And she would.

One night Megan was out with some friends and I took a sleeping pill and went to bed. The next morning when I opened my bedroom door, I almost stepped on a body! It was a boy and he was sound asleep. There was another one next to him and a few more that I could see in the hallway. I ran into Megan’s bedroom, woke her up and asked her what was going on. I was not exactly calm. She said that two “boy bands” were sleeping in the house. She had met them while at a bar, they didn’t have anywhere to sleep, and she invited them to sleepover in exchange for helping us clean out the large three car garage. When I asked her why in the world she had done this, she claimed she had called me the night before and I had happily agreed to this arrangement. Huh? That is not something I would ever do. Megan was supposed to help me clean the garage, and this was her way of getting help. One of the “boy bands” left immediately, having stolen a few of my possessions. The other band felt sorry for me, I think, stayed and did help clean out the garage. I kept wishing it was a nightmare, but it was very real.

Cleaning the garage would become an interesting side issue in the divorce. Plans were made for Gordon to be deposed by my attorney. I was there with the lawyers. Gordon’s lawyer showed up alone. Apparently, one of Gordon’s aunts had died and he was out of town for the funeral. His attorney wanted to ask me some questions, anyway, which my lawyer and I agreed to. He started with this, “We know you’ve been going through important financial records in the garage.”

“Yes,” I answered. “I’m cleaning out the garage to sell the house. It’s mostly old junk and file boxes of routine paperwork. I don’t know anything about ‘important financial records.’”

“Mrs. Graham, we understand differently. How do you explain this?”

I pulled my chair closer to the conference table and looked him in the eye. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do for you. There are about 50 boxes in the garage waiting to be shredded and other things to be donated to a charity. Some of the boxes are pretty soggy from that rain we had last week, but I will gladly have someone load them on a truck and take them to your office or Gordon’s apartment and you can have it all.”

He coughed and said that would not be necessary. My attorney smiled at me and we went on.

I thought about what had happened, and realized that Megan must have told her father about the clean-up. What kind of games was she playing? Whatever it was, the stakes were high for all of us.

Megan and I were out and she wanted to drive home. I had to stop by a friend’s house who would often make dinner for us to take home. While I went inside to get the food, Megan left with my car. I called her cell phone. No answer. I was stranded. My friend finally drove me home. I was more upset than angry.

Within a half an hour, Megan returned home and stormed up to her bedroom. I followed her to get my car keys back. “I hate you!” she screamed.

“I just want my car keys.”

“You’re trying to ruin my life!” she yelled.

“I just want the car keys. You can’t drive my car anymore after what you’ve done.” I reached over and got the keys from the nightstand and left the room. Within minutes there was a Tallahassee police officer at my door. Apparently, Megan had called 911 and said I had hit her. She turned her bad behavior into a nightmare for me. Since I told them that it was absolutely untrue, the police said they would remove Megan from the house and would investigate. She ended up at her boyfriend’s place and I was left in something between terror and tears.

A police investigation was conducted by Children’s Protective Services. They spoke to some of Megan’s teachers, school administrators, people who knew me, neighbors, etc. If they found me guilty, I could go to jail. My daughter was playing a very dangerous game with my life and there was nothing I could do but be honest and hope that the truth won out.

Two police investigators called for a meeting with me and my attorney at the lawyer’s office. We were all seated and one looked at me and said, “Mrs. Graham, we have completed our investigation and we have concluded absolutely no wrong-doing on your part. We are sorry for any inconvenience this has caused and this case is closed by our office.” I closed my eyes involuntarily and took a deep breath. I felt extremely relieved for me, but sad for my daughter, whose plan had failed. I could not get help for her because she didn’t want help. She said she never wanted to speak to me again, and she hasn’t.

The divorce proceedings went back and forth for over a year. Friends of mine saw Gordon numerous times around town with different women. I stayed home or was at work, having taken a writing job with another dotcom. Ryan called me almost daily and I was usually reduced to a crying mess. Gordon decided he would pay for Megan to live in an apartment with her new boyfriend, which was exactly what she wanted. She was 16-years-old. I decided it was best for me to leave town as soon as the divorce was final. I remembered when someone told me her daughter had a friend whose mother had moved to Hawaii after her divorce and left the kids in Michigan. She said, “Can you imagine a mother doing that?!” Now I could imagine it very easily.

The parents of one of Megan’s friends suddenly said they were interested in buying the house. Everything was going smoothly for a change until Gordon showed up at the real estate attorney’s office for the closing. The house was now in my name and there was no reason for him to be there, especially since I had a permanent, lifetime restraining order against him that forbids him coming within 500 feet of me for the rest of my life. He refused to leave. The closing attorney called my divorce attorney, who called Gordon’s attorney, who called Gordon and told him he had to leave the offices. He refused. No one wanted to call the police. We came to an agreement that he could wait in the office of one of the lawyers while the closing took place. Everyone was uncomfortable and I was frightened, as well.

Two days later I moved to California. Yes, Sam and I had written the book together over the years, and he was also my rock during the long, stormy divorce. Sam and I had fallen in love and we wanted to be together. We married in April, 2005 in a small, private ceremony. This was the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. Sam was a peaceful, caring, and sensitive man and we were both finally glad to be together.

I was busy getting settled in my new home. I was sick of moving and the emotional tumult all around me. I wanted to settle into a quiet life in a little town in the Central Valley. The company I worked for wanted to keep me on and let me telecommute the work. I loved what I was doing, but had to be on the job at 4 a.m. to 8 a.m. PST. It was fine with me for quite a while.

Getting up in the middle of the night really wasn’t working and I wanted to work on my other writing and some fiction. Sam and I got a puppy, a Bichon Frisé. We named him Sonny and got busy raising our pup. When I was married to Gordon, the kids and I wanted to get a dog. Gordon took a firm stand with a definite “NO.” He told the kids that we couldn’t get a dog because I was allergic, which wasn’t true, but even a non-allergenic dog was out of the question. He also said that he didn’t want to end up caring for a dog when everyone else got bored with it. Ryan had started a pet sitting service in Atlanta when he was eight-years-old, so that he could spend some time with the animals. His little sitting service was very busy. Ryan, Megan, and I all ended up getting the dogs we always wanted when the divorce was final.

Ryan came to visit me several times and we had a lot of fun being California tourists. The first time he came out, he told me he wanted to go to Los Angeles and be on “The Price is Right.” I laughed and said, “Sure!” We drove four hours to get there, attended a “class” on how to get on the show, stayed up all night studying, arrived at 6 a.m., got shuffled around all day, finally got interviewed by the producers, and got into the studio. We weren’t chosen to be on the show as contestants, but we did get front row seats. Another time, Sam and I took Ryan to San Francisco to have a walking and eating tour of Chinatown by our dear friend, the late Shirley Fong Torres, also known as Wok Wiz.

Project RACE was moved rather seamlessly. Things had settled down in the multiracial movement and a lot of individuals thought that by getting to check all that apply on the census, all was taken care of. That just wasn’t true. Most of the federal agencies still had not decided how they were going to tabulate multiracial people. I knew we had to keep the term “multiracial” alive when people in and outside of the community were using mixed and other terms. It was getting difficult to keep the community together, although our website was getting more hits than ever before. We needed a new Teen Project RACE president, so we started a national search for the best candidates. In May, 2006, Kayci Baldwin, a teen from New Jersey, was chosen and would revive the teen involvement. Her large family and their circle of friends helped her out, with her mother, Kelly Baldwin, becoming another vocal champion for Project RACE. I owe a lot to the Baldwin family, as they have stayed active in Project RACE all these years. After Kayci graduated high school and went on to Harvard, her sister Kendall took over the teen division until she, too, graduated from Harvard. This is a family of over-achievers! Then their younger brother, Karson, went on to start Project RACE Kids and then become president of Project RACE Teens. Kelly Baldwin was always there when I needed her and I am deeply grateful.

I broke my shoulder that year in an accident, and would have to take some time to heal. It was my right arm and Sam had to do everything for me. I was so used to being independent and alone in everything I did that depending on someone else to take care of me was uncomfortable, but reassuring at the same time. I was determined to not let my injury slow me down.

The U.S. Department of Education finally issued their proposed guidelines on racial and ethnic classifications. We put out an “ACTION ALERT” for members of the multiracial community to respond. Other organizations did not respond at all. We crafted a well laid out argument for a multiracial umbrella category or usage of the term multiracial. We were not happy with the tabulation of multiracial individuals and certain aspects of their proposal, and we were, at least, on the record.

We were still focusing on the work that needed to be done in the states, as the states did not have to necessarily follow federal guidelines. For example, the minimum suggested racial and ethnic designations could be used, but with the addition of a multiracial category. I was asked to provide a statement in a move by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health to update their classifications.

It was time for me to get involved in California state politics and it came at me in a flurry of activity. Legislation (SB1615) was introduced in California by Senator Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto). It was also titled “The Ethnic Heritage Respect and Recognition Act.” Why just ethnicity and not race? It was brought to the table by one of Simitian’s hapa staffers, Asian and hapa organizations, MAVIN, and AMEA. It was a bad piece of legislation from the start. Basically, it would make it state law for California forms to simply mimic federal forms and federal reallocation schemes. I was contacted by Simitian’s office and could not back this bill. It would ax any chance of ever having the word “multiracial” on a form. We went back and forth to try to find a way to compromise on the wording in the bill, but were unsuccessful. Meanwhile, the backers of the bill (AMEA, hapas, etc,) passed the first subcommittee hearing. I was shocked to see them hold a press conference declaring victory. Passing the first subcommittee is only one of the first steps in the passage of any legislation. They were dancing in the streets of Sacramento very prematurely.

Project RACE officially opposed the bill. It never made it to a vote.

Meanwhile, we were drawn into a battle between a mother and her biracial child and the New York State Department of Education. We stepped in and helped the department accept “multiracial” on school forms beginning with the 2006-2007 school year, although many misleading media reports were made—a case of too many people being involved at the same time.

Time flew by. One thing that was very difficult for me was not being able to be at Ryan’s graduation from the University of Florida. I wanted to celebrate with him, but his father would be there, and it would not be doable with the injunction in place. It broke my heart, but at least I was able to watch my son graduate from college on an internet broadcast from the university. I took solace in the fact that I probably was able to better see him on the stage being handed his diploma than if I had been in the large audience. My gift to him was a paving stone on campus with his name and graduation date. I knew a part of him would always be there. He was hired almost immediately by Gallo Wines, and was able to come visit several more times. Megan was going to Florida State University in Tallahassee. Things were relatively quiet.

In 2007, I got word that Ramona E. Douglass, president of AMEA, had died. Not too much was known about her death, and many people were upset that AMEA did not release a statement. I had a good guy/bad guy relationship with Ramona over the years, and although we had many major differences, we were able to mainly keep them private. When Ramona shared some of our confidential emails, I did get justifiably upset with her. Still, she gave of herself as she could to the multiracial movement.

Sam and I bought a new home in California, got moved in and settled. Then the unthinkable happened.

It was December, and a friend and I were throwing a birthday party for another friend at the clubhouse where Sam and I now lived. I was getting ready for the party when I heard the phone ring. Sam came into the bedroom and said, “You need to take this call.” I heard a woman’s voice telling me she was a nurse in the intensive care unit at Broward Hospital in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. There had been an accident and Ryan was in the ICU. “You need to get here as quickly as you can,” she said. The next 24 hours were a blur as we threw things in suitcases, made arrangements with the neighbors to take care of our dog and home, and were driven to the airport in Fresno. I called Gordon when we were on the way to the airport. Megan answered the phone. I told her we knew what happened and were on the way. She screamed, “You’ll ruin everything,” and hung up.

I kept thinking about what had happened the night before while talking to a friend on the phone. I suddenly said, “Something has happened to Ryan. I have to get a plane.” She laughed and told me I was always worrying about my son. When I told Sam later that night, his reply was the same, yet I couldn’t seem to shake the feeling and had trouble sleeping.

Ryan had fallen down a staircase at a restaurant he had gone to with some friends. The city was busy that night and the restaurant overcrowded. He fell on a cement landing and his head took a beating. The bouncer at the restaurant apparently was a trained EMS technician, stabilized Ryan and called an ambulance. He had bleeding in his brain and the neurosurgeon had already operated on him once. He was intubated and in a coma.

When we arrived at the hospital, Gordon, his mother, Megan, and her boyfriend, Kyle, were already there, having driven from Tallahassee to Ft. Lauderdale. I assured Gordon that I would not enforce the injunction during this time, he didn’t have to worry about that, and Ryan should be our only concern. The four of them had taken over Ryan’s small apartment, and Sam and I had no choice but to spend two weeks in a suites hotel.

People came and went—one of my brothers, a nephew, Ryan’s girlfriend, co-workers and friends. We tried to piece together what happened and the most constant story from the people who were with him, was that Ryan either slipped or was pushed down the stairs from the second level bar area where he had gone to use the bathroom. I called an attorney I knew in Florida to see if Ryan might have a legal case. The lawyer sent out an investigator. When he showed me pictures of where my son had fallen, I just cried.

Ryan endured two more surgeries. We befriended some of the other families of young men in the ICU and helped each other through the really bad times. Falls, auto accidents, motorcycle accidents, over and over we heard about kids like Ryan. But the difference was this was my kid! But my kid was actually an adult, over the age of 21, which made all the paperwork and discussions with medical people extremely difficult. We had no authority to make decisions for our son, who was an adult. I still saw him as my little boy. They had stabilized him, treated him, and we would just have to wait until he came out of the coma. Days of watching the myriad monitors he was hooked up to went by slowly. I spent the days trying to get as much out of the medical personnel as possible. Late at night, Sam and I would go back to the hotel and I would have a glass of wine and cry—every night.

Ryan was brought out of the coma on Christmas Day, but he was not out of the woods yet. He hated the breathing tube and fought everyone to pull it out. A “family story” resulted when he asked every one of us to take off the big lobster gloves they had put on him to stop him from pulling out the tube. He called me over to his bedside, “Mom, just take one off, OK? I’ll really be good.” I said, “Ryan, I can’t do that.” He called the next person over and said the same thing over and over again. Finally, he called Sam over and said, “Hey, Sam, I’ll pay you to take these gloves off of me. How about $500?”

He had no recall of anything that had happened that horrible night. He wanted to go home, but instead he was moved out of ICU to a regular room. He would make it, and we would just have to wait and see how much brain damage had been done, if any. Sam and I had to get back home and the joint decision was made for Ryan’s father to stay until he was released. His girlfriend, Jesse, said she would take care of him when they were ready to release him and would stay in touch with us.

Ryan left the hospital a few days later, but he was changed. He would not speak to any of us on the phone. Gradually, he would listen to us, but only for a few minutes at a time. One minute he seemed like the same old funny Ryan, and the next minute he was filled with anger. The hospital had neglected to put him in a patient registry for people with Traumatic Brian Injury (TBI). I focused on getting him the services he needed, but every step was a battle.

Project RACE had made me a much smarter consumer when it came to complaints. I was getting nowhere with the hospital, so I filed a complaint with the agency that handles accreditation of all hospitals. A few weeks later I got a phone call from a woman who identified herself as the head of nursing for Broward General Hospital in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. She told me that she had been given the complaint and wanted me to know that she had a son who lived in California, and if a hospital had done what they had done to my son, she would be doing the exact same thing I was doing. She said she would do whatever she could for Ryan and that no other patient with a brain injury would ever go unreported in the database again. She was very reassuring and I felt we were finally getting somewhere.

When I was finally able to get Ryan the assistance he needed, he decided he would not go get the help that was available. Again, he was over the age of 21 and I was helpless to do anything. I never felt so unable to be Supermom for my own child. I need not have worried, as he would eventually make a complete recovery.

Barack Obama was running for president and we were thrilled to think that a multiracial person could be president of the United States. He was elected on November 4, 2008 and it only took three days to see our worst fears come to fruition. On November 7, he held his first press conference. This is how the Associated Press (AP) put it:

“It popped out casually, a throwaway line as he talked to reporters about finding the right puppy for his young daughters. But with just three offhanded words in his first news conference as president-elect, Barack Obama reminded everyone how thoroughly different his administration — and inevitably, this country — will be: ‘Mutts like me.’”

I vividly remember when I first heard our multiracial president refer to himself as a “mutt.” I actually felt like I had been punched in the stomach. I had been working for 18 years for something this one man undid in a sound bite. I felt badly for every single biracial or multiracial child in America. Suddenly, the word “mutt” was acceptable and everywhere, all because of one man in one moment. He would also be called our first Black president, although his mother was White, he self-identified as Black. The press happily embraced both “mutt” and “Black.” It was a hard time for the movement and everything we had worked for. He would later say on the television show “The View” that the African-American experience in this country is interesting: “We are sort of a mongrel people. We are all mixed up.”

I came very close to closing down Project RACE during this time. The president had set us back, and there was a general apathy in the community. When I got to this point, something always seemed to stop me from closing our doors. I received an email with this subject line: I need your help. This time it was a woman in Missouri who wanted to pursue legislation there, but needed our help. This woman was ready to take on her state, and we were with her. The state department of education was now able to use the federal guidelines as a way to not include a multiracial option.

California children were still on my mind. The old Simitian bill went down in flames, but that didn’t mean we should stop trying to make a difference. I found out that an Assemblyman named Anthony J. Portantino was championing a cord blood piece of legislation and I called his office to lend the support of Project RACE to his bill. I called his legislative director, Diane Shelton, and we ended up in a long discussion not only about the bill, but about the multiracial bill situation. She told me she had a multiracial grandson. Bingo. We put our heads together and came up with what would eventually be Assembly Bill No. 52, introduced on December 2, 2008.

Legislation usually moves very slowly, or so it seems when you’re waiting for something to happen. You have to work hard to get supporters while your sponsor is trying to move the bill forward. We were able to get a letter of support from actress Kim Wayans, who was writing a book about a multiracial character and others, but we felt we needed to develop support from the California Department of Education.

My first meeting with Diane Shelton was very memorable. She was very specific about where I should park, warning me that parking was very, very difficult near the capitol. I drove to Sacramento in about two hours, only to find the parking lot she sent me to was full. I drove around and when I couldn’t find a space anywhere, I started to panic. I pulled into a driveway at a facility with a very large sign that read “State Employees Only!” There was a man sitting in a booth where I turned in and I explained that I couldn’t find parking and asked his advice on finding a place to park. He winked at me and said, “You can park here this time, just go up to the roof level.” I wanted to give him a great big hug. Diane and I spent the day together talking to legislative counsel on wording for the bill, speaking with committee members, and I got to know the lay of the land at the capitol.

At the end of the day, Diane said she would walk me to the car. It was 98 degrees on a very sunny, humid day, and I was looking forward to getting in my air-conditioned car and getting home as quickly as I could. I told her where I had parked and she walked me out of an exit that looked familiar. What I didn’t know was that every entrance/exit of the building looked alike. I could have been in any one of four exits. We started walking, and walking, and walking…. The heat was unbearable. We had skipped lunch, and being diabetic, my blood sugar levels had already dropped; this just made it worse. I told Diane that I had parked in a state employee parking structure and she said, “Oh geez! They will have towed your car! Believe me!” I felt like crying. On top of everything, I would have to get my car back. I guess I looked pretty bad, because Diane left to go find some water for me. While she was gone, I realized she had no idea where to find my car. A man walked by and I described the parking garage to him and the look of the building next to it and asked if he knew where that might be. He did. Thank God! He told me it was right around the corner and when Diane came back to make sure I was still alive, he went over it all with her.

My car had not been towed. I told Diane that I would drop her off at the capitol and then get on the freeway to go back home. I guess I was in too much of a hurry because I backed my car out and hit a brick wall. The only damage was to my ego.

Soon after that, a meeting was set up with Superintendent Jack O’Connell, some of his staff, Assemblyman Portantino, Diane Shelton, and me. I was able to find the perfect parking spot this time. The meeting could not have gone better and we came away with the support we needed. The bill would go back and forth between the Assembly and Senate during 2009. We could sit tight for a while with the 2010 Census coming up, as well.

CHAPTER 10
The 2010 Census and New Data

“The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”

Ronald Reagan

“Paper work is the embalming fluid of bureaucracy, maintaining an appearance of life where none exists.”

Robert J. Meltzer

April, 2010 brought Census Day around once again. This time I did not have multiracial children at home and filled in the census for my husband and myself. I decided to leave my race blank, and see if the bureau sent out another person for follow-up. I was certain we could have an interesting discussion. They did send someone out to follow-up on my form.

The woman came in my home and we sat down to discuss my census form. I explained that I was pretty tired of the entire race issue and had decided it was none of the government’s business, I understood that she would have to “eyeball” me and make a determination of my race(s) for me. I pointed out the pictures of my kids that were in the room and explained my dilemma. She said she understood and that I might want to do what she does with the form, which was just to check “some other race”! She told me that she resents the question and uses the “some other race” category to show her resentment. I found it so ironic that she obviously was not following U.S. Census Bureau guidelines, and I decided to designate myself as multiple races.

We would have to wait until probably 2011 for the results, so I turned my focus back to California. We put our support behind the life-saving cord blood legislation that Assemblyman Portantino had passed. We also worked on getting Senate support for our bill by talking to senators and their staffs.

AB 1281, The California School Racial Equality Designation Act was going well with some fine-tuning from legislative counsel. I was asked by Assemblyman Portantino to provide testimony during the hearing of the Assembly Education Committee. Portantino also testified, as did Anthony, the grandson of his legislative director. The hearing room was packed. After our testimony, the Chairwoman of the committee decided to make some comments. She looked at me and said she had followed my work for many years and wanted to thank me for what I was doing for the multiracial children of California.

I was stunned.

I wasn’t used to public (or private) acknowledgement. I walked out of that room with tears in my eyes. We passed all the committee hearings and the Senate. The bill then went to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger for his signature.

Governor Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill! The official reason was that it was already administratively handled by the State Superintendent of Public Instruction. We knew that the Governor could always veto a bill but we had no indication that he would veto our bill. Had he signed the legislation, it would have given the necessary legal backing to a multiracial classification. We guessed that the education department’s administration change had to be made with the backing of Jack O’Connell’s office in order to get the bill signed. It turned out to be the wrong strategy. We would have to start all over again if we wanted to have another bill in California. Once again, we had failed, but had to somehow find the strength and determination to go on.

We had to make the best out of what we had, so we announced that California’s Department of Education was the first in the country to add “multiracial” to school enrollment forms with the wording: Multiracial students/staff may select two or more races.” Still, it was a devastating defeat in California, and we decided not to work on a new piece of legislation at that time.

Meanwhile, Americans were still focused on Barack Obama’s racial identity. In April, the Associated Press came out with a story “Black or biracial? Census forces some to choose.” They interviewed Ryan for the story, since they wanted to interview a voter in their 20s for the story. It was carried by newspapers across the country.

Kayci Baldwin, our past president of Teen Project RACE started her college education at Harvard. Kayci had a professor at Harvard, Michael Baran, who designed two apps for iPhone/iPads and asked us to help get the word out about “Who Am I? Race Awareness Game” and “Guess My Race.” Our teens and kids had a great time testing the games and giving feedback and attention to them.

It’s every writer’s dream to be contacted by The New York Times and asked to write a piece for them. I was an opinion writer and they wanted my take on the multiracial classification in education. My piece, “Check One’ Didn’t Work” was published on February 13, 2011, two days after Megan’s 23rd birthday. It was part of the Room for Debate section and the comments came fast, furious, positive and negative. This was how the piece read:

‘Check One’ Didn’t Work

Susan Graham is the executive director of Project RACE (Reclassify All Children Equally).

The first time they register for school is when most children see forms with questions about their race and ethnicity. Multiracial children have been made to choose between the races of their parents under the “check one” mandate on forms in our country.

All children are worthy of recognition of their entire heritage. If we teach our children to tell the truth and then stand in the way of them doing that on school forms, we are missing the point. If accurate data are what we want, true identity of our students is what we must collect and reflect.

We are not asking for a piece of the pie, but we need to be reflected on those data pie charts. Tracking the multiracial population is no less important than tracking any other group.

In 1990, my son was listed as White on the U.S. Census, because they assigned the race of the mother and Black at school because his kindergarten teacher picked a race for him on his first day of school based on her “knowledge and observation” of him. At home, he is multiracial.

On the 2000 Census, my son could check more than one race and is called “a person who checks more than one race.” If he were still in school, he could check more than one race, and would be put in the category called “two or more races.” He is still multiracial at home.

The new guidelines are a positive move, but they still do not reflect appropriate, respectful, dignified terminology for children of more than one race. California is out in front of the federal government on this one. They offer this wording on enrollment forms: “If your child is multiracial, you may select two or more races.” It does not disturb any data and recognizes multiracial students for who they truly are. Any school in the country can and should do the same.

Two comments stood out online and I could not help but wonder about the second one.

Comment by John1952

Midwest 16 February 2011

“Susan Graham is an American hero who has done more than anyone else in recent years to underline the notorious “color line” in this country.”

Comment by SS

Brooklyn, NY 17 February 2011

“Susan Graham is many things, but never a hero. Race is a social construct that she perpetuates rather than works to eliminate. Her efforts are deplorable. Just ask her own children that refuse to speak to her or the Black ex-husband she divorced!”

“SS” sounded too much like what Megan might say and I felt immense sorrow for her because she obviously still had so much anger toward me and she wasn’t able to let go of it. It hurt me to the bone to think it may have been her who wrote those words. She may have finally succeeded in publicly showing her hatred of me.

The United States Census issued its “Overview of Race and Hispanic Origin: 2010” in March of 2011 as the initial report on the findings of the 2010 Census. The bottom line was that 2.9 percent of Census respondents indicated two or more races. What we had not expected was the way in which the Census Bureau assigned the numbers. Instead of a total number, each racial designation (White, Black, Asian, American Indian and Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander) counted people as “alone” or “in combination.” It obviously made it easier to re-tabulate the responses into single categories.

We were dealing with Nicholas Jones and Roberto Ramirez at the Census Bureau and neither were happy about having to work with us. We continued to go back and forth with them in order to understand their methodology and explain our position. At one point, I decided I had had enough of their constant refusal to give us straight answers and I almost made the decision to retire. That lasted only one day as some other crisis of awareness of the multiracial community arose almost immediately.

We had to deal with the results of the 2010 Census in 2012. The letter below is more or less a wrap-up of many emails, telephone calls, and hard copy mailings to Nicholas Jones of the Census Bureau:

November 13, 2012

Mr. Nicholas A. Jones

Chief, Racial Statistics Branch

Population Division

U.S. Census Bureau

Washington, DC 20233-8800

Dear Mr. Jones:

You asked me to let you know if I received your letter dated September 17, 2012. I have received one letter with that date, postmarked October 24. Thank you for sending the recap of our telephone conversation, which also included Mr. Roberto Ramirez.

Your letter does include several of the items we covered, but not all. The very important change from an ethnicity to a race for the Hispanic population is a major cause of concern for the multiracial community, and we will look to you for updates. Also, what we are not seeing in 2010 Census reports and ACS data are totals for numbers of multiracial people, particularly with the Fertility and Family Statistics Branch. Although I have emailed my concerns to Dr. Rose Kreider, Chief of that division, all she does is acknowledge those data are not available. I still have no answer about why they are not appearing or if they will ever appear.

Perhaps I can explain it to you this way: when a story appears on the front page of USA Today, and is accompanied by a pie chart that includes every race and ethnicity on the U. S. Census, we want to see the multiracial slice that represents the “multiple-race” population [your terminology]. If journalists and researchers are not given that number from the Racial Statistics Branch, it is your responsibility to include it since you appropriately do not discriminate for other populations.

Page 2.

During the revision of Directive 15 in the 1990s, I was personally informed by OMB staff that we “needed to come up with one word for our population.” That was not an unreasonable request. We polled our Project RACE members, as did AMEA, and the overwhelming terminology was then and is now “multiracial.” It is a respectful and inclusive word used today by journalists, schools, hospitals, in vital medical data, in clinical studies, by businesses and more. I do not understand why you are so hesitant to use it; in fact I received a three-page letter from you in which you never used the term “multiracial” even once. We were asked for a term, we provided it, and it has been ignored for over a decade by OMB and the Census Bureau, yet you are still searching for correct terminology.

You also asked if I would send some of the types of things that Project RACE is working on. A package, identical to the one sent to Katherine Wallman at OMB, will be arriving within a few days. It will contain:

- A hardcopy of this letter.

- An actual K-12 school enrollment form using the term “multiracial” in the race instructions.

- A scholarly paper titled “Perceived Discrimination, Group Identification, and Life

- Satisfaction Among Multiracial People: A test of the Rejection-Identification Model”

- A Medical Racial and Ethnic Background Questionnaire that Project RACE recommends for medical and clinical study usage.

- An academic paper titled “Bone Marrow Donor Matching for Patients of Mixed Race,” which is self-explanatory.

- An “Ethnic Origin Reference Guide, 2006 Census,” provided by the Canadian Statistician, which has responded to our every request promptly and completely.

Mr. Jones, with all due respect, we cannot give you stakeholder feedback if we are not invited to the table. So far, that has not happened. I trust you will include us in further dialogue so we may continue to bring our suggestions and concerns to your attention.

Sincerely,

Susan Graham

Executive Director

Project RACE

Much of the correspondence with Jones and Ramirez was repetitious and technical as we battled back and forth. Most days I felt we were, indeed, fighting a losing battle and wondered if it was time to just stop. I was getting more and more discouraged as time went on. It was time to reassess our options.

The Census Bureau named its members for the Census Bureau National Advisory Committee (NAC) on Race, Ethnic, and Other Populations for 2012-2014. Someone named Eric Hamako was named to apparently represent the multiracial community. I had never heard of him. It was no surprise that the bureau named some obscure academic to the committee. We found background information on him and came to the conclusion that we were on opposite sides of the multiracial issues. What could we do? It was important to be heard by this committee, even though their results would be exactly what the Census Bureau wanted them to be. I began a dialogue with Dr. Linda Marc who was the chair of the racial part that would include or exclude the multiracial population. We also wrote and copied Paul Watanabe, the Chair of the entire committee.

I was fed up with the Census Bureau and desperately needed a break. Ryan took a new job and was moving to Orlando. I wanted to go help him move, but it could be an expensive trip having to stay in a city with high-priced hotels. I complained to a few close friends and the Sistahs. One of the Sistahs, Jen, called me and said, “We’ve got a solution. We want to go to Italy for two weeks. Come to Orlando, stay at our quiet house, drive our car, sit in the hammock in the backyard, do whatever you want to do. And…feed the cats.” It was too good to be true! I called Ryan and he was excited, too, and reminded me that his girlfriend, Cynthia (not her real name), would be with us a lot. No problem, or so I thought at the time.

I knew that Cynthia was a graphic artist who, fresh out of community college, was looking to build up her portfolio. We needed a new Project RACE logo that would be simple, but that we could use with anything. I told Cynthia about the idea, and our technical specifications (colors, size, etc.) and she was more than happy to see what she could come up with.

It turned out to be an awful mistake on my part and an unfortunate experience with long-term consequences. Her ideas and mine were totally different and I had to reject hers. Spending time together became very awkward. Days at Disney World and evenings dining out were most uncomfortable. Ryan and I began going places without Cynthia. She barely said goodbye to me at the airport.

Ryan and I had always been very close, especially when he finished college. Establishing himself in the real work world was interesting, not without its challenges, and it wasn’t unusual for us to talk several times a day. Ryan came out to California several times to visit. When Ryan visited us, I would usually have some kind of small party for him. I wanted him to get to know Sam’s family and our friends and neighbors.

The first time Ryan landed at the airport in Fresno, we were there to pick him up and drive back to our small town, Los Banos. I was driving my Jeep Grand Cherokee and Ryan kept telling me I was going too fast. I laughed and told him this was a California freeway and everyone drove fast. All was well. As we crossed into the city of Los Banos, Ryan said, “Mom! You just passed a cop car! Now you’ll get a ticket!” From the back seat, Sam calmly said, “It’s OK. That’s just Officer Todd.” I explained to Ryan that Todd was Sam’s nephew and was the traffic cop in our little town. My son thought it was the funniest thing he ever heard and he starting calling all his friends back east on his cellphone to tell them about our little one traffic cop town! Todd would end up taking Ryan in the police car with him one night, which was something he always wanted to do. Ryan’s charm was still working and everyone liked him.

Back to the Cynthia days; Ryan called less and less frequently. Sometimes he would complain about her and other times defend her. They were living together and would end up moving in with her parents when times got financially tough. One day Ryan called me and said that he didn’t feel I was supportive enough of him, and Cindy felt the same way. I felt that Cynthia was behind it. He said he needed some space from me. I told him I disagreed, but would have to understand if he needed some time away from me. It would take some time for my son to come back and it broke my heart, but I had to respect his wishes.

CHAPTER 11
Multiracial Pride

“Don’t let other people tell you what you want.”

Pat Riley

“Hating people because of their color is wrong. And it doesn’t matter which color does the hating. It’s just plain wrong.”

Muhammad Ali

The year 2014 started out slowly, but turned out to be another wild and crazy ride. I had an idea that grew out of what other racial and ethnic groups were doing: have a celebration, spread the pride in our heritage. We chose the week of June 12 to June 19, 2014.

We chose that week for several reasons. It would coincide with three national celebrations. Loving Day was June 12, the day of celebration of the landmark Loving v Virginia decision, which legally sanctioned interracial marriage; the Mixed Roots Fest, which had been established in Los Angeles several years ago; and Junteenth Day, which celebrated the abolishment of slavery in 1865 with ratification of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. We began working on Multiracial Heritage Week in earnest. We put out emails to ask our members to support Multiracial Heritage Week by getting recognition from the Governors of the states where they lived. These kinds of requests must come from a state resident. We felt, sadly, that if we went to President Obama, he would not sign a proclamation for the multiracial community, as he had for German-American Day and National Historically Black College and Universities Week. As desperately as we wanted national recognition, if we could get this started in some states, we could continue to expand it in future years.

I drew up a model proclamation, which I then had to personalize for each state with the appropriate multiracial percent of the state population, growth from the 2010 Census, and any special progress we made in that particular state. They were full of words like “whereas” and “therefore.” I was available to each state person to advise them and make sure any potential problems were taken care of.

By April, proclamations started coming in. Most used our exact wording and were signed by the governors. However, some states drove us crazy—like New Jersey, whose Governor, Chris Christie, seemed to want to make this a different kind of political statement. He wrote:

Dear Friends,

On behalf of the State of New Jersey, I am pleased to join Project RACE Teens in celebrating our State and Nation’s diversity.

I take great pride in serving a state as ethnically and culturally rich as New Jersey. In order to foster a better understanding of New Jersey’s diverse population, it is important for communities to commemorate multiculturalism with events such as Junteenth Day. I commend Project RACE Teens’ commitment to strengthen awareness of the various ethnic communities that enhance our State’s character.

Best wishes to all for continued success in your future endeavors.

Sincerely,

Chris Christy

Governor

Huh? He couldn’t even write the word “multiracial”! He skirted around the fact that it’s a celebration of Multiracial Heritage Week. There is really nothing about race in his letter, but he mentions ethnicity and culture. We had to settle for what we got, but it really made me angry to see such ridiculous politics being played when it came to biracial and multiracial teens. Still, we had to try to look at the positives.

We were at least on the desks of some state governors, awaiting signatures, but I was working with scores of people all over the country. Some people left things for the last minute. Our proclamations had deadlines. Don’t people understand deadlines? Why are so few people willing to just do a little work? Why was I still frustrated after all these years of working with volunteers and bureaucrats? I’m the first to admit that patience is not one of my virtues, but when a person commits to doing something, I think they should follow through in the given timeframe.

Having all of these questions, no answers, and few people willing to work for Multiracial Heritage Week, I did something I knew I would regret. My gut told me to beware and I didn’t heed the warning. Our lead New York member (a member since the start of Project RACE), was not able to help us with this. New York has one of the largest numbers of multiracial people and is an important state for us. We have many members in New York, but our database was outdated. One of the biggest problems for non-profits is that people move or change email addresses and don’t update us. I tried several New York members and most of the emails were bounced back or else the person was living out of state at a college. Frustrated, I weighed contacting Ken Tanabe of Loving Day, with the hopes that he would just send a cover letter and sample state proclamation to the Governor’s office. Loving Day is the annual celebration of Loving v. Virginia, which struck down all anti-miscegenation laws remaining in sixteen U. S. States. In the United States, anti-miscegenation laws were U. S. state laws banning interracial marriage, which forbid marriage between Whites and non-Whites.

Tanabe and I had talked before and I held him in high regard for what he had done with Loving Day, but I didn’t trust him. He has some ties to the old AMEA organization and we are trying to keep this just Project RACE for now. What the hell, I finally thought, we’re in a bind, this initiative will benefit Loving Day directly, and without him or someone else coming through for us, we definitely would not get New York’s proclamation.

I left an email message on the Loving Day website for Tanabe. I waited a few hours and didn’t hear from him, so I looked for and found his telephone number. I called, got voicemail, and left a short message. Several hours later, he left a message for me, basically telling me that he couldn’t talk to me, so I should send him an email further explaining what I needed. I wrote him a long email detailing what we were doing, letting him know this was confidential at this point, what we needed from him, and the reassurance that it would not take very much time on his part. He responded with an email telling me that my long email would take a while to read!

Later in the day, I received an email from Ken with more questions, which I politely answered although I felt he was stalling.

I finally got an email response from Ken Tanabe. He said all the “appropriate” things about wanting to help, patting me on the back for all the work I’ve done over the years, etc. Great, except that he said no to my proposition. That was almost expected, but some of his excuses were not. He said that our proclamations for Multiracial Heritage Week could be harmful to their getting proclamations for Loving Day, which was totally untrue. I didn’t see the problem, since it would be more meaningful to multiracial people to have more than one proclamation in a state, and the proclamations would be completely different.

I have been criticized over the years because Project RACE does not do projects with other groups, nationally or locally. Then when I do ask, we get dismissed. I gave myself the standard 24 hours to vent about Ken Tanabe and Loving Day. Then I moved ahead without him.

Moving on, we officially had proclamations for Multiracial Heritage Week going to or on the desks of Governors in 12 states and the Mayor of the District of Columbia. I started working on a press release and our Project RACE Kids and Project RACE Teens in New Jersey started to plan a celebration BBQ. We had some celebrating to do and to show that Multiracial Heritage Week was alive and well.

I had a feeling that although the Census Advisory Committee told us they would notify us of meetings, they held one and we were clueless about the timing. Since they have meetings every six months, they were either past due, or they had a meeting and we didn’t know it. I started an internet search. All I could find was that they had met sometime in March. The two people who supposedly represented the multiracial community reported nothing back to us. I wrote the following email to Geri Green, coordinator of the committee:

Dear Ms. Green,

We believe that governmental advisory board meetings should be public knowledge. Unfortunately, we cannot obtain any information about the Race and Ethnicity Advisory meeting held in March, 2014. Project RACE represents the multiracial community. We are stakeholders. No updates or public records are apparently available about the March meeting. Perhaps we should be suspect of a Census Advisory Committee Meeting for which no information is made public. Is there any way we can request minutes of that meeting or any information at all? Thank you.

Susan Graham

Then, as always with the government, I waited for a response.

On April 18, I wrote this in an email to a friend:

“Got an email with exciting news...we (Project RACE) sponsor bone marrow donor drives for multiracial children with blood diseases. The bone marrow donor has to be a racial and ethnic match for the patient. Our teens and kids did one in NJ last year and found out today that one of our possible donors was called to be tested further for a match! Yes, we help save lives when we can.”

Honestly, that is the bright spot in my work. The worst days are when one of “our kids” dies because a match can’t be found. We needed more good days.

Good Days and Bad Days

On April 26, we got our first, positive concrete response to the “Multiracial Heritage Week” campaign. The Governor of Georgia, Nathan Deal, signed our proclamation on April 24th. We hoped that other states would follow. It’s interesting to me that Georgia has always been the first state advocating for multiracial people. Our most encompassing legislation was passed in Georgia almost 20 years ago and they were with us again. Thank you to the progressive state of Georgia!

May 15 was not a good day. I was angry and frustrated at the bureaucracy in Washington and disappointed at the multiracial people who don’t care about being mislabeled, re-tabulated, and still invisible. Some days I felt as though I was the only one who cared. And then our email accounts got overloaded and crashed, so I had to come down pretty hard on our kids and teens for not cleaning out their email boxes. It was definitely not a stellar day for me or the advocacy.

CHAPTER 12
Multiracial and Still Invisible!

“I don’t need a cloak to become invisible.”

J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter
and the Sorcerer’s Stone

Here is a short piece that I wrote when I was just in the mood to vent.

Multiracial and Still Invisible

by

Susan Graham, Project RACE

The bottom line is that the multiracial community is still getting screwed by the U.S. Department of Education. The Bureau released a report, “Status and Trends in the Education of Racial and Ethnic Groups.” Can you guess what entire group is missing? The multiracial group.

The government did a huge study, crunched their data, and reported that there are no multiracial students. You can see some of the charts below, which show “White,” “Hispanic,” “Black,” “Asian,” and “Other.” Some of their data does not even show “other.” They are systematically “re-tabulating” any counts with multiracial numbers back into five pre-1997 standard categories.

During the 1990s, Project RACE fought this battle. We tried to show other “multiracial organizations” how it would backfire on us if we did not insist on a multiracial umbrella category, a multiracial classification, or truth in tabulation. They wouldn’t listen and, well, it has backfired big time.

Every multiracial person and interracial family should care that we are still invisible. Academics should care and not just do studies about studies. I care. If you care, please comment and sign up for our Project RACE emails and newsletters. We can let the government know we care—if, that is, you want to be counted.

I’ve also been working on my comments for the National Advisory Committee on Race, Ethnicity, and Other Populations. They are only allowing two minutes for each person. Only two minutes! This will be my two minute “speech”:

Meeting Comments

Susan Graham, Project RACE

Only one item concerning the multiracial population was addressed in the handouts from the March meeting: multiracial respondents are not always aware they have the option to select more than one race. I will address solutions for this item in my allotted time, and ask you to also read my written letter to this committee in full, which addresses additional issues.

The instructions for race selection on the AQE and 2010 Census were the same:

Mark (x) one or more boxes.

Project RACE works to ensure that multiracial children and our families have forms that reflect appropriate, respectful, and dignified terminology. Concise and very simple, we do not disturb any data or cause any changes in tabulation. We have had extremely positive feedback for our preferred instructions, which are:

√ Mark one. If you are multiracial, you may select two or more.

In the 1990s, we were advised by OMB to choose one word to describe people who are of more than one race. We agreed on the same word along with other advocates. That word was “Multiracial.” Yes, times change, nomenclature changes, public preferences change, but the preferred term is still Multiracial. It is not “Mark Two or More Races” people, or the “Race in Combination” population.

Some possible changes are being tested in the race category, one of which is to add the Hispanic/Latino option. The instructions could then be:

√ Mark one. If you are multiracial or multiethnic, you may select two or more.

Isn’t America truly becoming multiracial and multiethnic? Why not use accurate and respectful terminology beginning with the 2020 Census? Project RACE urges you to include our model in further testing.

Invisible. I’ve come to dislike the word. But there is so much truth in the fact that the multiracial population is invisible in this country. Other countries just shake their heads or laugh at how we can ignore an entire race of people. For example, South Africa has its “colored” population and South Americans can be “Mestizo.” Yet in this decade, we are still not represented. I happen to live in a community that is largely Mexican, Portuguese, White, and Black. Of course there are multiracial people here. When I made an appointment with our city School Superintendent Steve Tietjen, and asked him to put our preferred wording on the student enrollment forms, he said he agreed, would see that it was done, and had a draft of the new form faxed to me that afternoon.

But when it came to including the option to the entire county, it was not that easy. I made an appointment with the Merced County School Superintendent, Steven Gomes. Gomes was well known in the Portuguese community and we started off talking about that, since I had been giving some advice to a group called the National Organization for Portuguese Americans about dealing with people in Washington. A rumor had been spread that the Census Bureau was going to include Portuguese under the Hispanic category, which brought on a very negative reaction from the community. The rumor turned out not to be true.

Superintendent Gomes is an affable politician. I had approached him at a Portuguese festival about the school enrollment forms and he asked me to make an appointment to sit down and talk about it. When we finally did sit down, I had a hard time keeping him talking about the school forms instead of Portuguese concerns. He did listen to what I had to say and briefly looked over the forms and other information I had brought him, most important was that one of the school districts under his purview had already made the change. He was very friendly, but I walked out of his office thinking this was going nowhere. He told me he would research the issue and get back to me. He never did and I was told he was out of the office every time I called him to follow-up.

I learned many years ago, mostly from the TV and radio show days, that if someone shows me they either don’t care at all about the multiracial community or are completely against what we are trying to do, I do not try to change their minds. It’s futile. It’s better to put my time and energy into talking to other people who might give us more of a chance. I’ve stuck by that formula, as an advocate, and I have never regretted it.

CHAPTER 13
Snubbed Again by the
Census Bureau

“The single most exciting thing you encounter in government is competence, because it’s so rare.”

Daniel Patrick Moynihan

“The census should not be political.”

Blake Farenthold

Multiracial Heritage Week was getting closer in 2014. We had commitments from the states of California, Georgia, Texas, New Jersey, Illinois, Washington, and Washington, D.C. At the very last minute, we found out that Florida was joining us. The New Jersey team was planning a celebration, but found the day before they couldn’t use the school where they were going to have the party and a new location had to be found. One of the team leaders saved the day and found an even better place to have our first Multiracial Heritage Week party.

We invited people to join in the celebration with us on the internet by sending photographs of themselves to be posted on our daily blog.

California was the only state that had to have a “member resolution,” which was accomplished by Assemblyman Adam Gray (D-Merced) and Senator Anthony Cannella (R-Ceres). I was told that someone named Chance Condit from Assemblyman Gray’s office would deliver the framed resolution to me. I immediately wondered if he was related—or rather how he was related—to Gary Condit, the Congressman found having an affair with Chandra Levy, a Jewish woman in Washington who was found dead several years ago, starting a national scandal. Chance and I made arrangements to meet at my home on a Saturday afternoon. Late morning, our dog got sick. As much as I wanted to go with them, my husband took him to the vet while I waited for the resolution to be delivered. Condit arrived and we started to make small talk when he suddenly pointed at the beautifully framed resolution and said, “This is so important. I’m multiracial. Thank you for doing this.” I was really moved by this, and felt all the frustration over Multiracial Heritage Week had been worth it. Then we talked about his history a bit and he told me Gary Condit was his grandfather.

I had a press release ready to go and it was distributed nationally, although we didn’t get much coverage; the press must have thought of it as just another celebration by just another minority group. No matter. We blasted the internet with news about Multiracial Heritage Week. I knew we’d have more time to prepare next year and be smarter about our preparations.

I read the Federal Register items every morning. Usually, there is nothing that involves us, but I stopped cold one day. There was a notice that the Census Bureau National Advisory Committee on Race and Ethnicity (NAC) was calling for nominations to the committee. Year after year, they refused to put a Project RACE member on the committee. In the last go-round in 2013, I nominated Kayci Baldwin Ortiz and I was nominated by Alice Robbin at Indiana University. Neither of us were put on the committee.

I had requested information, including transcripts of the last committee meeting (in March, 2014) from Jeri Green, Chief, Census Advisory Committee in April. She told me they would have the transcripts ready in four weeks and would send them to me immediately. Although I sent another request, I never heard back from Ms. Green.

I began thinking about the committee and the chronic lack of responses from the Census Bureau and thought about going to the top and drafting a letter to the Director of the Bureau. It would be seen as a rather rogue, unusual move, but what did we have to lose at this point? I drafted and sent this letter:

June 19, 2014

John H. Thompson

Director

U.S. Census Bureau

4600 Silver Hill Road

Washington, DC 20233

and via email: john.h.thompson@census.gov

Re: Census Bureau National Advisory Committee on Race and Ethnicity

Dear Director Thompson:

Multiracial people are invisible to the Census Bureau. We remain invisible because of a long history of numerous slights from the bureau. The multiracial population remains as much “customers” of the bureau as any other minority group, yet we are relegated to less than observer status.

The Census Bureau’s mission statement reads: “We honor privacy, protect confidentiality, share our expertise globally, and conduct our work openly.” I have personally been trying for months to obtain transcripts of the March, 2014 meeting of the Census Bureau National Advisory Committee on Race and Ethnicity. I sent an email to Jeri A. Green, Chief, Census Advisory Committee Office two months ago on April 17th requesting copies of transcripts. Ms. Green responded to me that they would be sent to me in approximately four weeks. It is now over three months since the meeting and I still have not received the transcripts.

I have asked Ms. Green for the dates of the next meeting, with no response. We are continually being told that we can have a Project RACE representative give a short statement at any meeting, but then meeting information (date, time, and location) is withheld. If a Freedom of Information Act request is necessary, we have not been apprised of that. We are hindered at every turn by Census Bureau personnel.

We noted that the Federal Register notice today calls for nominations for this committee by July 17th. Requests go to Jeri Green, of course. We have had nominations previously from our non-profit educational organization members and have been overlooked each time. We are stakeholders.

We have also been “overlooked” by the American Community Survey Data Users Group, although we are certainly stakeholders in the ACS. It would not surprise me if we were the only minority population “overlooked.” We have no Washington office. We have no highly paid lobbyists. We do have a stake in the outcomes.

We are now completing the first annual “Multiracial Heritage Week” across the country. It was very successful and we will continue to celebrate multiracial heritage with or without the U.S. Census Bureau.

Director Thompson, with all due respect, we realize we have neither any rights nor any influence with our federal government, yet we risk being undercounted, re-tabulated, referred to as MOOMs (Mark One or More) and worse by our government. Yes, we want to have input and know we could make many contributions to the committee. However, we understand that under the current regime we will not be given the chances that we were given to testify numerous times before Congressional Subcommittees in the 1990s. Times change and leaders change. On behalf of America’s multiracial children, I ask that you be the leader who once again invites us to the table with all of the other included populations. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Susan Graham

Executive Director

Nothing happened, no reply. I re-sent it late in the evening of June20th, putting “SECOND REQUEST” in the subject line, in the hopes that whoever reads and distributes the Director’s emails will happen to check. The next morning, my phone rang at 5:20 a.m. When the phone rings at that hour, I wonder who died. Jeannie Shiffer of the Census Bureau left a message. She was apparently asked by the Director to contact me and address the issues in my letter.

Nothing usually happens as a result of just one person at the U.S. Bureau of the Census. Shiffer and I did a little telephone tagging before we finally were able to speak. She wished to address the transcripts first, but the only problem was that Jeri Green was on vacation that week. I agreed to wait a few more days until she returned. Then Green was apparently still on vacation the next week. Shiffer and I had some back and forth email about this and I wondered why one of Green’s staff couldn’t trace the transcripts.

While waiting for Shiffer to actually do something to help us, I put it aside and concentrated on the nomination for the NAC. I received an email from Alice Robbin asking if I would like her to nominate me again. I thought about it very carefully. It was always a surprise to open an email and see someone wanting to help the cause, because I usually see so much apathy in the multiracial community. Multiracial people seem to care less and less about multiple check-offs, proper tabulation, and respectful terminology. The vast majority of parents or grandparents who contact me just want things changed for their child or grandchildren and then they are gone. It’s the same with multiracial adults. Most days I felt that I was the only one who still understood how far we have to go. I had to remind myself about the people who do “get it.” But I also felt that I was getting too old to carry this on. Twenty-five years should be enough. I want to get back to my writing and have time to enjoy my husband, dog, and hobbies. No, I am no longer the right person for the NAC. It means travel to Washington, doing more research and reading about the Census than I want—I have had enough already. The decision was made to have Alice Robbin and I both nominate Kayci Baldwin Ortiz. Kayci was the third president of Teen Project RACE (the first two were my own children), and did a wonderful job. Now that she had graduated from Harvard with a concentration in race and ethnic studies, she would make a fantastic NAC member and would get the information to us that we need.

We all worked hard. The nomination letters and necessary accompanying material were ready to be sent. The usual practice is to hear back from the Census Bureau almost immediately with a confirmation. We had one day before the window closed on the nominations. The one hitch was that the nominations had to go to Jeri Green. We sent everything, but did not receive any confirmations. I asked Jeannie Shiffer if she could check on this for me and what occurred then was ridiculous. She involved one of her staffers, who contacted one of Green’s staffers, and around and around we went. We were just asking for standard confirmation! The entire process deteriorated until no one knew what was going on. Finally, we received a confirmation from Shiffer’s office acting for Green’s office. Sometimes I don’t understand how they get anything done in Washington and especially at the Census Bureau.

Meanwhile, I was still waiting for word on the transcripts. I sent a “FIFTH REQUEST” and copied everyone Shiffer was copying. In it, I laid out what had been in the original request that we still had not received. It was bureaucracy at its worst; everyone running in circles and nothing being accomplished.

July 28, 2014

I wrote a piece for our Project RACE blog and Facebook page because I was very fed-up with the Census Bureau at this point. I posted it:

Stacking the Deck at the Census Bureau – Part 1

“Stacking the deck” means to arrange things against something or someone. It is based on a way of cheating in a card game by secretly arranging the cards so that you will win. It is also defined as a situation in which any evidence that supports an opposing argument is simply rejected, omitted, or ignored. It’s what the CENSUS BUREAU does best, all the way up to its director.

Try to imagine a friendly card game where each side has an equal chance of winning. Now try to imagine a not so friendly game where one side holds all the cards. That side would be the Census Bureau. The losers would be the multiracial community—or MOOM (Mark One or More) POPULATION, as the bureau folks would say.

How do we know the CENSUS BUREAU stacks the deck? We know because they’ve been doing it to us for many years. We keep hoping that when a new Director comes in, as they do every few years, this practice of theirs will stop—but it doesn’t.

John H. Thompson is the current Director of the Census Bureau and he is no different from those who have come before him. In fact, things are worse. It used to take two or three people to get the answer to a question; now it takes four or five people to answer the simplest of requests. Why is this? I will try to posit a few answers.

1. The CENSUS BUREAU is a huge organization. Their management organization chart of who reports to who is so long and overdone that it is almost laughable. OK, it truly is funny when you see all the layers of people who make up one chart of a government bureaucracy. Here are some of the titles from one of their divisions:
Director

Deputy Director

Policy Coordination Office - Office of Risk Management and Program Evaluation

Associate Director for Administration and Chief Financial Officer

Associate Director for Communications

Associate Director for Field Operations

Associate Director for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer

Associate Director for Demographic Programs

Associate Director for Economic Programs

Associate Director for Research and Methodology

Associate Director for Decennial Census Programs

Assistant Director for Economic Programs

Economic Planning and Coordination Division

Service Sector Statistics Division

Company Statistics Division

Economic Programming Division

Foreign Trade Division

Manufacturing and Construction Division

Governments Division

Customer Liaison and Marketing Services Office

Human Resources Division

Information Systems Support and Review Office

Application Services Division

Chief Technology Office

Assistant Director for Communications

Office of Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs

Center for New Media and Promotion

Public Information Office

Administrative and Customer Services Division

Administrative and Management Systems Division

Finance Division

Budget Division

Equal Employment Opportunity Office

Acquisition Division

Office of Information

Security

Local Area Network

Technology Support Office

Computer Services Division

Telecommunications Office

Field Division

Technologies Management Office

National Processing Center

Regional Offices Population Division

Demographic Statistical Methods Division

Social, Economic, and Housing Statistics Division

Demographic Surveys Division

2020 Research and Planning Office

American Community Survey Office

Associate Director for 2020 Census

Assistant Director for Decennial Census Programs

Decennial Management Division

Decennial Statistical Studies Division

Georgraphy (sic) Division

Decennial Systems and Contracts Management Office

Assistant Director for Research and Methodology

Center for Survey Measurement

Center for Disclosure

Avoidance Research

Center for Administrative Records Research and Applications

Center for Economic Studies

Center for Statistical Research and Methodology

So, let’s say we want information about a question on the race and ethnicity portion of the 2020 Decennial Census. Where would we go in the Census Bureau? Associate Director for Demographic Programs? Associate Director for Decennial Census Programs? Regional Offices Population Division? 2020 Research and Planning Office? The problem is that either they really don’t know what jobs they are supposed to do or they know, but aren’t telling us. First, we would be connected to at least five people who would say the equivalent of “it’s not my job, man.” Then we would get routed to the person who can answer the question and we begin the tedious job of playing “telephone tag.” The person, like so many others in the CENSUS BUREAU, never actually answers their phone. IF you can get an email address for them, just go ahead and try to email them. Chances are pretty good that you will get an automated return reply telling you that this person is out of the office until sometime in March, 2030.

We really need an answer, so, for example, we start to think of creative ways to get to someone in the CENSUS BUREAU who can help us with understanding what the plans are for the multiracial population for the 2020 Census. We remember that the CENSUS BUREAU has a big committee called the National Advisory Committee (NAC) that is responsible for making recommendations on race and ethnicity for the decennial census! Bingo!

We go to our handy favorite internet browser and “Google” the NAC. There it is, useful information right from the CENSUS BUREAU. It reads, “Five separate committees advise the Census Bureau on decennial issues: the African American, American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN), Asian, Hispanic, and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander (NHOPI) Advisory Committees.”

Wait a minute! What about the multiracial population?! Where is our committee? Oops, it seems the NAC of the CENSUS BUREAU forgot us. How can that be? Are we paranoid or has the CENSUS BUREAU rendered us invisible on the committee that is to decide our future? We research a little further and find this:

“The National Advisory Committee provides a continuing channel of communication between the Census Bureau and race and ethnic communities, focusing on: strategies to reduce the undercount, data collection and enumeration strategies, geographic and data products for American Indian and Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders, tabulation of race and ethnic data, data dissemination and outreach/promotion.”

According to that, they have left out White, African-American, and multiracial populations. What the heck is going on at the great big Census Bureau? We get lucky and find the name of the director for the committees and decide to try her. Surely she will get us to the right person if she can’t answer our little questions. We even find an email address! We’re on our way. Back and forth we go. We do find out eventually that some of our questions were answered in the transcripts from the last NAC meeting. We are promised a copy of those transcripts just as soon as they are ready “in about four weeks.” We happily agree to wait. Four weeks go by and nothing. We even get the dreaded “out of the office” emails (see above).

We’ve had to play “stack the deck” with the Census Bureau so many times before this that we are weary. We decide to write to the Director, John Thompson himself. Surely he should know the kinds of roadblocks we run into with his agency. We wrote. No response. We waited and sent the letter again. We know email can get lost, and we did send him a hard copy, but that could have been lost, too. We are now playing “the benefit of the doubt” game.

Then it happens. We get the phone call from the person who has been given the task of answering our questions. She sounds like a person who will actually get answers to our questions! Hallelujah!

It’s now four weeks later and she has proven to be a dud—a public servant dud. We are no further ahead than when we started except that she is now copying five people on her emails to me. This is one way the CENSUS BUREAU stacks the deck against the multiracial population—by including jokers in the shuffle.

July 29, 2014

I have been going back and forth with the Census Bureau for days to try to get Kayci and myself registered for the Virtual NAC meeting on August 13. More emails fly back and forth. I call Kayci only to find out that she will not be able to attend the meeting on-site in Washington. I shoot off a quick email to the Census Bureau people asking if we can submit a comment for the meeting.

July 30, 2014

I needed to get away from the Census Bureau fiascos. I needed to clear my head. Sam and I had been watching old West Wing episodes and I thought that would be a good way to get away from the chaos of Project RACE for a while. Unfortunately, the next episode in our queue was one where the Census Bureau was front and center, as the fictional President Bartlet’s press secretary tried to understand exactly what the bureau does and why. I looked at my husband and said, “I just can’t get away from them,” and we laughed together.

The next day I was once again busy with Census Bureau red tape and personalities. In the late afternoon, I decided to get away from it, take a break, and listen to NPR, which I usually have on in the background, but did not on this day. I settled into my comfortable office chair, found my NPR station on my smartphone and sat back to rest a bit. This comes out of my phone: “We’re talking about the Census Bureau and race as comedy…” No! It can’t be. But it is. I listened on my smartphone to an interview with a comedian who did, indeed, talk about the silliness of the little boxes on the Census forms. When Sam came in, I told him that I think I could be hearing things and was, very honestly, worried about being “persecuted” with things about the Census. What are the chances that the only story I would hear on NPR that day was about the Census Bureau? Sam calmed me down and told me he will set the television to record the nightly news program that the show probably came from. I am not easily appeased. But later, he queued up the show and we watched the interview with the comedian who really did talk about race and the census. I felt relieved that I had not imagined it, but annoyed that it was seen as a laughing matter. Had my mission in life become nothing more than a comedy skit?

CHAPTER 14
The Movie

“Necessity is the mother of taking chances.”

Mark Twain

August 20, 2014

A totally different kind of day! I received an email Monday from a film producer in New York. He wanted to “partner with Project RACE.” I had no idea what that meant. We did one partnership several years ago with a producer of a short movie called “Crossing the River,” about a hate crime against an interracial family. We helped promote the film and everyone was happy.

This producer’s name was Jordan Yale Levine. I questioned whether we wanted to take a chance on being involved in a movie when we knew nothing about the process. Jordon and I exchanged several emails and he sent me the script to read. The story of My First Christmas is about a multiracial teenage girl who has MDS, a form of cancer. She meets a homeless boy and they fall in love. As her health deteriorates, her parents are told that she needs a bone marrow transplant. We know that a donor for a multiracial person is best matched from someone of the same racial and ethnic background. Matches are often impossible to find. Of course, this being a movie, the boy is the perfect donor for the girl. It’s really a lovely little story, but I did have one major problem—the bone marrow donation itself is portrayed as extremely painful (“nurses held him down while he screamed”). The procedure simply is not painful in reality. No, it’s not comfortable, but it’s not even close to the pain they were portraying in the movie script. Also, it could have the reverse effect of scaring people away from becoming donors—exactly what we don’t want to do.

Jordan and I scheduled a conference call with his three co-producers, including the CEO of their production company, Kenny Lofton, a well-known former professional baseball player, and Rudy Luna who wrote the screenplay and would be directing the movie. The call was a little bit crazy, with everyone trying to talk at once, but we made it through. I told them that the pain thing was a deal breaker for me. Project RACE simply can’t be part of sending that message. After a lot of back and forth, they decided to change the script and we had a movie deal! Project RACE would help promote the movie through our online sources and we would receive a percentage of the movie revenue and online crowd-sourcing campaign. In addition, I proposed having them produce a joint PSA (Public Service Announcement) for us, which they agreed to. In all, it seemed like it was a successful joint venture.

I wrote an email to a friend who was a documentary film maker. I thought there might be some mutual benefit to her meeting Jordon. I like to be able to make introductions for people if I can. She told me to count on her to help with whatever I needed to know about film making, which would be invaluable.

Final financing was not yet secured by the film makers, and they were looking for people who might be interested in funding this movie. I put together a list of over 200 famous interracially married or multiracial people who they might be able to approach or find a connection so that the film could be made.

One of the producers was Brenton Earley. During the conference call he told me about his multiracial daughter, Bree, and a video series she was pitching. Brenton and I talked back and forth and we came to an agreement for Project RACE to run the “Be Me by Bree” series about good health, nutrition, and exercise. Having a dad in the business makes for some awfully good video. We ran the entire 14 part series on “Workout Wednesdays” on our Project RACE blog and on our Facebook page. It was very popular and was really a win/win for all of us, which was a nice by-product of the movie.

Jordon told me that they signed Dean Cain for the movie. I pretended I knew who he was, but I was clueless. I wasn’t exactly “up” on current movies and TV. If I wasn’t working on Project RACE or my writing, I was reading, knitting, meditating, or doing something restful or creative. I found out that Dean was Superman on the popular television show, and is a well-known actor. They also signed actor Quinton Aaron. Although I never planned on being in the movie business, I got quite an education in independent film production. The Indiegogo campaign went very well and shooting was scheduled to begin in January, 2015.

I was still searching for a way to get the Project RACE “brand” out to the public. We did have a relatively new logo, which we needed to show on a consistent basis. We now had Medical Mondays, Workout Wednesdays, and Famous Fridays, plus news of the multiracial community on Tuesdays and Thursdays on our blog and Facebook page. We needed to build more of a presence and a way to get to our supporters, especially since we had agreed to get the word out about the Indiegogo campaign for My First Christmas. We decided to try sending out formatted emails, but first we had to cull and update our database, which had never been kept current. One of our Board members offered to work on it. Finally!

Another thing we had to do was design our first emailing. The graphic designer came back with the email piece that was so bad that our entire advisory board went berserk. Also, our webmaster had been giving me the impression that he was no longer as interested in our cause as he once was, and he never had been that good with design. I decided it was time for a new webmaster, and finally found one. She set up our templates, moved the email address database to the service, and designed a much better email. It sounds easy, but it took long hours and many contacts to get this whole thing ready to go. At one point, I was frustrated and told everyone to leave me alone, I was going to take a long, hot shower, and think about whether we were actually ready to launch the email program.

Meanwhile, I was going back and forth regarding putting out a joint press release about My First Christmas and the Indiegogo crowd-funding plan with Yale Productions, FilmPool, and Project RACE.

CHAPTER 15
Hate and Love

“Being defeated is often a temporary condition. Giving up is

what makes it permanent.”

Marlene Savant

I found myself trying to cope with what I described to a friend as “serious Census Bureau burnout.” Our own Project RACE people didn’t seem as concerned as they used to be and frankly, I was finding the whole thing to be more and more of a waste of time with the government. The movie did light a spark, but it also involved getting more people to do more work. I found myself wishing that something would happen to either reignite my passion or get me to accept that the battle was over.

Instead of giving up, I attended a virtual meeting of the National Advisory Committee on Racial, Ethnic, and Other Populations. It was an important meeting for the multiracial population because recommendations were made for future testing for the 2020 Census.

I was able to have a letter to the committee included in the meeting records and was given the opportunity to give a very brief oral statement to the committee.

I was seething during the meeting. Why was I the only person in attendance at the NAC meeting from the multiracial community? I expected Lopez from MASC, Steve Riley, Eric Hamako, or someone else from the multiracial community to be at the meeting. It was open to the public, but apparently not important enough for our own community to attend. I received an email from Kayci Baldwin, who mentioned that she had trouble getting the visual portion of the meeting. However, when I tried to follow-up with her, I got nothing in return. Since when was I on everyone else’s schedule? Dammit! Much of what I had to do was grunt work, but someone had to do it. Running an organization, no matter how small takes a person feel like they must have a little expertise in a lot of areas. There are papers to be filed, a website to run, checks to write, emails and calls to return, grants to write and criticism to listen to.

Meanwhile, I was dreading October 6. The Census Bureau was up to something and we should find out what it was the next day during a webinar. They had been much too friendly and accommodating recently and I just felt they were about to render the multiracial community null and void one more time.

I received two odd emails from Jeri Green who stood in the way of our getting information for the past few years. She apparently took on a new position at the Bureau and let me know that we would now be dealing with Kimberly Collier, an unknown to us. It sounded like Green had been rewarded for not communicating with all of the stakeholders by being elevated to a position that would require her to interact more with us outsiders!

The webinar was for the press and public. The Bureau would be announcing what the plans were for testing in 2015 for the 2020 Census. Four days later, the National Advisory Committee met to announce to the stakeholders what the bureau had already announced to the press and public. So much for the important work of the Census Advisory Committee. I fully expected them to dismiss our suggestions for testing the multiracial question. My apprehension had more to do with what they had now decided to call multiracial people—it changed constantly.

Meanwhile, I was being attacked on a website called “The Multiracial Activist.” It’s very strange when you see yourself being fired at on the internet. This banter was started after a piece I wrote about the academics was posted and obviously read. The banter went like this:

Thomas Lopez: What a spiteful person Susan Graham has become.

George Winkel: Graham only speaks truth to power.

Thomas Lopez: By “truth” you must mean someone that lashes out when she has proven herself to be unable to play well with others and thus no one wants to play with her.

A.D. Powell: Gratuitous character assassination on your part, Thomas. Why not invite Project RACE to one of your “academic” conferences for a debate?

Thomas Lopez: Gratuitous character assassination on Susan’s part. If she had something positive to contribute without trampling over everyone in her path perhaps she would get invited. Of course I haven’t organized any conferences in a while so it’s not really my decision to make.

Zachary Boston: Susan Graham is not spiteful. I agree. If these folks are going to support our Multiracial Movement, then let us alone.

There were “likes” on various comments by other people like Steve Riley. It’s very odd to watch your own character assassination, yet it did let me know what my “enemies” were up to. I just wished they would spend more time helping the multiracial movement and less time spewing hate about me. I knew that much of the forces against me were the work of just a few people, but they did influence followers every so often. It made me very sad to see how the once strong multiracial movement had become so fragmented.

October 6, 2014

I had an hour to wait before the Census Bureau Webinar. Showered, dressed, and sitting alone at my computer, I once again realized this was the day of reckoning with the Bureau. Everything I had worked for in the past 25 years could totally come to an end, just by the Census Bureau saying they would not use our suggested wording to test the 2020 Census. I didn’t feel nervous, but I was certainly not looking forward to this. I got more coffee and petted the dog. He looked up at me and sighed. I knew he was reflecting my most inner feelings.

The Census Bureau jury was in and we lost. They couldn’t even utter the word “multiracial.” Nicholas Jones looked smug as he explained in the webinar that there would be some monumental questions being tested, a “MENA” (Middle Eastern and North African) category would be added to accommodate all of the MENA people in the United States, Hispanic would be added as part of a combination question—in essence doing away with “ethnicity”—and multiracial people still would not exist.

It was exactly what I expected with one exception. I fully expected the 2020 Census would not have the term “race” on it at all. Instead, they would substitute a word like “origin,” or “ancestry.” They would then take the credit for doing away with race in the United States. That didn’t happen, although there was still time.

I was oddly serene. The days of getting angry and firing off a letter cc’d to at least ten people were over. I sat quietly by myself and made a decision about Project RACE. I decided that Project RACE would end with the results from the 2020 U.S. Census, which usually takes between one to two years after Census Day. The Census Bureau would win. I was at peace with this decision. I felt I’d devoted my life to a good cause and that part would be over, with a definitive time table, in as respectful a way as I could make it until the end. Perhaps knowing that there was an end date would allow me to do what needed to be done until then.

The other possibility is that someone else takes over Project RACE. I think it would be tough to find someone who has the knowledge that I do, only because I have lived the history of it, but we’ll just have to wait and see. The multiracial population needs representation. It’s not just about the decennial census; it’s more about racial identity, so key and so important to individuals regardless of how they identify.

October 9, 2014

I was scheduled to have dental surgery and asked Kayci Ortiz and Kelly Baldwin to fill in listening to The National Advisory Committee on Racial, Ethnic, and Other Populations (NAC) for the next two days. As I was getting myself ready for the day, the oral surgeon’s office called at 8 a.m. The doctor was sick and they had to change my surgery day. There was nothing I could do but reschedule. But it did mean that I could watch the webinar myself.

The Thursday meeting was terrible. See “National Fallout” below for my recap of the proceedings. The sound quality was terrible, and I wrote to my contact at the Bureau Thursday evening, asking for speakers to speak directly into their microphones. I also wrote a little something to amuse myself and people at the Census Bureau who really do take themselves much too seriously.

This was how the Chair opened the meeting on Friday (I’m paraphrasing), “We have stakeholders from Project RACE watching and listening to us. They have asked the speakers to speak louder and more succinctly unless it will take 60 days with a Federal Register notice, a majority vote of the working group, the formal blessings of the Director, or an act of Congress. We don’t need to take any of those actions, and ask that you speak into the microphones.” I swear I heard laughter. It was a fun moment for me in the otherwise totally abysmal two days. Here is my report on the meeting:

National Fallout

A biologist, a chemist, and a statistician are out hunting. The biologist shoots at a deer and misses five feet to the left, the chemist takes a shot and misses five feet to the right, and the statistician yells, “We got ‘em!”

I spent the better part of last week watching a webcast of The National Advisory Committee on Racial, Ethnic, and Other Populations (NAC). It reminded me of the little scenario above, because the results in no way added up to the goal or the end result. OK, I’m not sure they actually had a goal, but they should have. Instead they spent more time talking about what they wanted to do without actually doing anything.

I do know one thing for sure: the United States Census Bureau has proven that the multiracial community does not exist. We have no representation on the committee, but all of the other populations are represented very well. They even added some new communities, such as the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) group and people with a brand new acronym, MENA (Middle Eastern and North African).

I think I heard the term “multiracial” uttered twice. “Mixed” was said once or twice. Two days of approximately 50 people in one room talking about race and ethnicity and not thinking to wonder what our group could contribute, including what they call us?

The speakers all followed the same format; one person would tell everyone what they were going to tell them. Another person would then read to the group whatever was on a slide in their slide deck. Someone would let the room know when they were finished saying what they had to say and then it was time for questions. They devised some kind of scheme for where to place their name cards, but apparently that didn’t work so they had to change it. There was actually a discussion about which way the tables should be placed. The sound quality was terrible. Once again, it was our government at its worst.

Everyone cared about their own special interest group, which bogged down each discussion. Well, that’s not exactly right. The person representing the LGBT group wanted more attention paid to counting homeless Americans, but no one responded to that suggestion. One person called herself a “race and gender scholar.” Believe me, the place was full of them and they spent most of the time telling each other what a great job they were doing and thanking the Census Bureau folks.

The star of the show was clearly Nicholas Jones, whose real title is “Chief, Racial Statistical Branch, Population Division, U.S. Census Bureau.” He makes the decisions about race. You’ll just have to trust me on this. He proudly proclaimed that he and his staff have met with the Arab, Asian, Latino, Afro-Latino, and Civil Rights groups in pre–preparation for the 2020 Census. Can you think of a stakeholder group Jones did not meet with? Score yourself a point if you picked the multiracial group.

In thinking about this situation, I came to the conclusion that the government does not understand or believe that the multiracial population is a community. No, we’re not a community that usually agrees on all of the same basic principles, but we are a community nevertheless. The Census Bureau has taken the community out of the multiracial population and our community, for the most part, let it happen. As much as Project RACE has tried to stay on the radar, by monitoring the Federal Register daily, emailing our concerns to the various committees, nominating people to the NAC, and much more, we have missed the advisory committee boat. It’s just kind of floating out there wondering where it’s going.

There was a great deal of talk about “equity and balance” with all groups. Sorry, if it didn’t give me a warm fuzzy feeling, but we were not at the table to revel in it with the others. Yet, I did get a lot of information. I learned about the concerns of communities that were invited to the table. I also saw how full of themselves the government employees and academics really are. It was hardly wasted time. But as a United States citizen and taxpayer, I couldn’t help but wonder how much this ostentatious meeting of self-professed brilliant people who never did come to any good outcomes from this meeting cost.

Well into the final hours, everyone did agree that they all wanted to be on the Race and Ethnicity Working Group. Oh yeah, that’s where the action is. Who wants to deal with Administrative Records Modeling or figuring out how to optimize response to the Census, or designing the mailer when you can be discussing race and ethnicity? Then it happened. Someone realized that there was no longer a Race and Ethnicity Working Group! Its Chairperson had rotated off the Committee and no one really thought about extending this important group. That prompted a long discussion about whether they should even have such a group.

Ann Morning, an academic who has written a few things here and there about the multiracial population, announced her feeling: it’s too much work. Yes, a working group is supposed to W-O-R-K. Did Ann Morning represent the multiracial community? No.

Someone did come up with the idea of a subcommittee (strike that, they can’t be called subcommittees) for the AIAN (American Indian Alaskan Native) category because they have some “name problems” much like the multiracial population. But then someone brought up the question of what should be done with “dissenters.” I swear, someone else said they didn’t like the term “dissenters,” because it’s just too damn negative. Perhaps Firing Squad would work better?

I honestly questioned the need for the whole lot of them. The real crux of the issues is what Nicholas Jones presented in a webinar four days before this meeting! Let’s face it, friends, Nicholas Jones worked everything out to his satisfaction long before he even got to these meetings. He was not the kind of guy you would seek out to tell him he’s wrong.

I admit I did learn a lot from this meeting, mostly from the ideas of the participants from the other special interest stakeholder groups. Oh, and mark your calendars now—the next NAC meeting will be March 26 and 27, 2015. You won’t want to miss the show.

I wrote an email to Kayci Ortiz and Kelly Baldwin last evening asking them if they had seen any of the webcast and if they had any feedback on the NAC meetings. I heard back from Kayci that she had the flu and had not been able to listen to the meeting. Kelly finally answered my email and said she never received information on how to listen to the meeting from the Census Bureau. I would have sent it to her, had she told me earlier. I was on my own, as usual. I felt my decision about the future of Project RACE was the right one and I will carry this organization through the next census, even if I have to do everything on my own. The truth is that I was tired of asking people to do things only to have them tell me later why they had not been able to do what they had promised. Most of the time, it was easier and more productive just to do it myself. But still, I felt my experiences could help teach future advocates a thing or two and decided to write a piece on dealing with the federal government.

Dealing with the Federal Government

Have you ever tried to deal with the federal government? There are no good ways for us (the public) to have input into whatever it is that they (the federal government) want to do. They think the way for us to speak our minds is through something you’ve probably seldom heard of called the Federal Register.

The Federal Register is a publication put out by OUR government to elicit input from the public. It is not easily found, nor is it easily decipherable. It’s a feel good mechanism for federal agencies. They do offer a 109 page booklet called “Federal Register Document Drafting Handbook.” They also offer a very long tutorial. I could not find the answers to any questions I had in their booklet, in the tutorial, or on their website.

Make no mistake; the Federal Register exists only to allow federal agencies to make it look like they gave the public a chance to reply. They don’t really want nor need our input.

I read applicable portions of the Federal Register every day. It’s boring and complex. I read it because occasionally a notice appears that may have implications for the multiracial community. The government knows we are here and watching, yet they do not notify us when something is going on that may affect us. I bet I’m the only person in the multiracial community who reads it every day and responds when it matters.

There is no real accountability in the federal government. The notices are packed with government jargon and intentionally made difficult for us to get to the real issues. I came across a Federal Register notice several weeks ago that could have implications for Census Bureau testing, which does involve us. I had a question about it and emailed the person specifically designated in the notice “for further information.” The email came back to me as “undeliverable.” I called her. I have yet to receive a return call. Welcome to the public trying to deal with the federal government through their Federal Register.

I spent several days trying to get more information so that I could make a public comment on behalf of the multiracial community. I made no progress. I did email the Federal Register people and I think their convoluted answer said they had no answers. They added, “Our goal is to make it easy for you to communicate with the government.” How ironic.

So the Federal Register people sit on their well-paid duffs and say they are soliciting comments from the public. When you figure out how to do that, please let me know.

November 13, 2014

This morning I woke up thinking about Project RACE, as usual. I posted to the website blog and to the Facebook site with an article about a study that came out about most Americans thinking that President Obama should be multiracial on the Census, even though he self-identified as Black. I also sent the article to five people at the Census Bureau, including the director.

I had breakfast with my husband, worked out at the gym, came home and made vegetable lasagna in the crock pot to cook all day. I was thinking about Project RACE most of the time, and wondering how to increase our visibility. I checked my email. I read an email from one of my dearest, oldest friends who is a school system psychologist:

<<I am working with the cutest little girl who happens to be biracial. The family recently moved to our school district because it was more racially diverse than their previous district. I told the mom about Project RACE and she already knew about it- I was so excited!! >>

The email gave me goose bumps! Every so often I get the feeling that we are really helping people in the community. I had to live for these moments regardless of how few and far between they were.

November 25, 2014

It was Thanksgiving Week and I was looking forward to pretty much taking the week off with the occasional blog or Facebook post. Monday night when I checked my email for the last time before going to bed, I saw this headline in a story in The Wall Street Journal, “Proposal for NYC Forms: Option to Identify as Multiracial.” The article did not say specifically what New York City Council Members were proposing. Was it a multiple check-off, or were they actually proposing a true “Multiracial” category? I tried to sleep.

After breakfast and a quick workout, I called the office of NY Councilwoman Margaret Chin, who I found out was the lead sponsor of the bill. I couldn’t get past the woman who answered the phone. I left my name, phone number and why I was calling, but didn’t expect to hear back. The bill was to be introduced that day. No luck.

I emailed the Councilwoman’s staff and sent a request through their website form, telling them who we were, who I was and that we just wanted to help, and that we were concerned about tabulation, among other things. I waited again. Finally, I got a response from Chin’s Chief of Staff, who wrote this:

Thank you for your feedback. You may note there is both an Introduction for the city forms and a Resolution for those forms at the State and Federal government that are not under our authority. There are forms at all levels of government (including FBI fingerprinting) that still do not allow people of multiracial descent (like myself) to identify as multiracial by checking multiple boxes.

The conversation for how this would be executed is one that would likely take place during implementation if the bill is passed. However, generally, groups we’ve talked to in New York seem to favor allowing individuals to check multiple boxes as well as having an “other” option for people who feel their identification are not covered in any of the boxes.

A political interpretation of this is: “We are in New York. You are in California. We will work with our “groups” in New York, but we’re not going to work with you. Thanks, anyway.” I replied with a bit of an edge, but wishing them the best of luck in their endeavor. I am angry that those on the east coast find us on the west coast so completely off of their radar. Project RACE was, from the start, positioned to represent the multiracial community nationally, but sometimes, as with this case, the local government will only work with local advocates.

So much seemed to be happening suddenly in the multiracial community, including the New York resolution. Three new books came out: The next day a new book was announced: Diversity Explosion: How New Racial Demographics are Remaking America by William H. Frey, demographer at the Brookings Institution (Brookings Institution Press, November 2014). Frey, who is a numbers guy, delved into the multiracial explosion, although his book is mostly demographic information with academic interpretation. Frey has been researching this subject for decades although then was the time chosen to release his book because the interest was there.

At about the same time, two new books with related titles were reviewed by The New York Times. They are Who We Be: The Colorization of America (St. Martin’s Press, October, 2014) by Jeff Chang and The Invisible History of the Human Race: How DNA and History Shape our Identities and our Futures by Christine Kenneally (Viking Adult, October, 2014). I ordered all the books on my Kindle/iPad and looked forward to a long winter of reading and writing.

CHAPTER 16
It Gets Personal—Again

“All human beings have three lives: public, private, and secret.”

Gabriel García Márquez

November 30, 2014

Facebook entry: This is too weird. I wrote the first paragraph (below) last night to post on the Project RACE blog tomorrow. I just wrote the second paragraph.

It’s Time to Have the Talk

Ferguson and New York, two Black men, White police, you know the story by now. My son is multiracial and when he got his driver’s license, it was the time for the talk. His father and I sat down with him and explained, “Driving while Black,” and how he could be seen as Black by the police. We told him about the importance of always having his identification on him, how to put both hands on the wheel and not reach for anything if stopped by a police officer, and the need to be respectful to any officer of the law. He listened intently, assured us that he “got it” and then said, “But I’ll call it driving while multiracial.” Have the talk with your sons today.

Then, ironically, I got stopped by a police officer today for not coming to a complete stop at a stop sign. She was right. She was a Latino cop and I’m White. Still, I had my hands on the steering wheel, where she could see them. After she checked out my driver’s license, insurance, and auto registration, she gave me a warning and let me go. She didn’t have to tell me twice, even though I wanted to see her description of me on the warning ticket. Under “Other Description,” she had written “WFA,” which I assume means White Female Adult. Yeah, have that talk with your sons today.

December 10, 2014

A Sistah died. She was the first to go and it just seems all wrong. The rest of us were in shock and reeling in sadness. Deborah Atherton was, by far, the sweetest woman I have ever met. I never heard her say a bad word about anyone. She was always the wise one in the Sistahs group. She never got involved in little spats that would come up from time to time, and she always had a way of looking at the positive. She had cancer when she was younger and it had come back full force. A bone marrow/cord blood transplant could not save her and she passed at Sloan-Kettering Hospital in New York. I kept remembering when she took a fall and broke her upper arm. I had gone through a similar break and I called her to tell her what I found helped (tube bras and slings) and despite the seriousness of her fall, we laughed about starting a website so that people who had been through things like falls and breaks could get counsel from other people just like them about how to handle the day in and day out of life’s activities. It felt like yet another of life’s transitions. I’ll miss my Sistah.

December 29, 2014

It is my birthday and all I can think about is my son, who has called me on my birthday in past years, but I believed we were too estranged for me to hear from him. I took the day off, my husband wrote a beautiful poem for me, and even Sonny gave me extra doggie snuggles. I had sent both Ryan and Megan emails about a year earlier, letting them know that Sam and I had our wills updated and our attorney needed their contact information. Neither one of them had ever answered that email. I thought about my children every day and missed them. But there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it, since they had chosen to ignore me.

I still found myself getting down over not hearing from Ryan. At 3 p.m., I decided that the best thing for me to do was to write a letter to him, whether I would ever even send it to him was questionable, but it would get my bottled up feelings out. I told Sam I needed some alone time in my office and closed my door. I didn’t write for very long. The phone rang at 3:15 and it was Ryan.

“Happy Birthday!” he said. I was so surprised that it was him that I didn’t say anything. “It’s Ryan, your son.” We talked for about two hours. He told me about his new job, health issues, his girlfriend, and more. He said it had taken him 30 years to grow up, but he finally had, and wanted a relationship with me again. I told him that Sam had been diagnosed with basal cell carcinoma on his face and surgery would be tomorrow. I also let him know he and I could have a relationship again, and I would be less judgmental. Then I started to cry. The floodgates opened, as they say, and I couldn’t stop. I told Ryan about how scared I was for Sam, who had been my best friend for 20 years, and he was totally sympathetic. We talked about Project RACE. He gave me all of his contact information before we hung up. Then we reluctantly ended the call and I went into Sam’s office, curled up in a ball on his lap and cried for a few more hours.

The next morning, we had to be up very early to go to the surgeon’s office, about an hour away. My eyes were swollen and hurting. My husband had a Mohs procedure with two “passes” and they were able to clear all the cancer out.

The next surprise was that Ryan called that afternoon to see how Sam’s surgery had gone, which I thought was a very caring gesture. We talked for another two hours, mostly about what was going on in his life and about old friends. My son really had matured and I was very proud of him and all he had accomplished. He would eventually be diagnosed with epilepsy, and I am so proud of him for becoming an active advocate with the Epilepsy Foundation. Once an advocate, always an advocate! I also knew instinctively that I would never hear from my daughter again. I also knew she was a survivor and just did not need her mother in her life.

CHAPTER 17
Chatter

“If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.”

Anatole France

There has been an increase in internet “chatter” lately by the academics and other people who don’t like Project RACE and me. I feel like a fly on the window sill sometimes, reading what’s being written without participating in the actual discussions. There is so much misinformation and vitriol that it would take all my time just to defend my position so that I wouldn’t get any actual work done. It would be similar to working for the government.

I have always been accused of being a White woman trying to understand how a multiracial person feels. That’s not true: I am a White mother trying to explain from my point of view, how women like me can successfully raise multiracial children. I decided to have my Ancestry Composition analyzed by a company called “23 and Me.” If you aren’t familiar with this process, they send you a specialized kit with a vessel, which you fill with spit and send back. Several weeks later, you receive your ancestry composition. Mine was ready in February, 2015. This was the breakdown:

99.7% European

96.2% Ashkenazi-Northern European

0.4% Finnish

0.1% Scandinavian

0.1% Broadly Northern European

0.2% Middle Eastern & North African

0.2% North African

0.1% East Asian & Native American and a few other minor factors.

Wait a minute! Was I multiracial?! Theoretically, I could claim to be. The proof was there, but I had always self-identified as White. We had always joked about Tiger Woods. My son Ryan could have been Tiger’s twin during the time of Woods’ heyday, so much that everyone has called Ryan “Tiger” ever since. We could never understand how Ryan got almond-shaped eyes like Tiger Woods, whose mother was a short Thai woman. I’m a tall White woman, but our sons looked exactly alike. Perhaps it had something to do with that small percentage of Asian DNA in our family tree. For Ryan’s 32nd birthday, I bought him his ancestry composition from a different company than the one that did mine, and his results came back clearly multiracial with White slightly more than Black.

One thing that’s been bantered about is that the detractors don’t think the organizations are doing anything. They could just read the Project RACE blog and know differently, but they prefer not to. Two of the players are Steven Riley, a Black man who is a self-proclaimed academic and a self-proclaimed sort of archivist or librarian for academics, and Thomas Lopez, a man who has been a president of Multiracial Americans of Southern California (MASC), an organization that supposedly represents multiracial people and interracial families in Southern California. MASC has been around for many years, as a regional group. They have a lot of get-togethers for their members. Ironically, I have neither met nor talked with either Riley or Lopez. They have openly and vehemently opposed my work, although they rarely seem to know what I’m doing.

A person started a post on a Facebook page called, “The Multiracial Activist,” that mushroomed into a sizeable discussion. He said that there are no activist multiracial groups and that someone should start one. A few people pointed out that while most of the groups that were active in the 1990s are defunct, Project RACE has survived, and most of the individuals gave up any possibility of change long ago, and I was still hanging in there. Nice. Then it really turned ugly.

Talk turned to someone (anyone!) starting an organization and remarks were made about how easy that would be. I had to laugh. By the time anyone could organize anything, it would be too late to affect the 2020 Census anyway. It takes time, money, commitment, volunteers, bookkeeping, future funding, getting set up as a non-profit, which takes tons of paperwork for the IRS alone to make that determination, not to mention the savvy for organizing, the connections for getting things done in Washington, and just plain hard work 24/7. It’s not easy. It is a thankless, non-stop bit of heartache each and every day.

The biggest laugh I got was when someone said anyone could just start an organization and go talk to people at OMB. As if it’s easy. It took me four months to even find out who was currently in charge of race and ethnicity! Remember, the bureaucrats are always moving, getting new and interesting titles, and they don’t really even want to talk to us.

A new name popped up in the discussion, or rather an old name in the multiracial advocacy world who I had not heard about in many, many years. George Winkel was the only one making sense in the debate, but some of his information was a bit outdated. I contacted him and told him that I agreed with him and would like to stay in touch with him now that he was public once again.

I got back a wonderfully warm message from George and it seemed he was happy to hear from me. What a nice surprise! He complimented me on the work Project RACE has done over time and I felt one of those good feelings that don’t happen often. I would continue to monitor the discussions and hope for the best. As I told George, I would very much welcome someone starting a new multiracial organization and hoped they were very successful so I could retire!

In personal Project RACE email, it was a somewhat typical week, as I described to a friend. One was from a woman in Texas who went to a private clinic and was given a form. She wrote in “multiracial.” She found out that they changed her answer to “patient refused to answer” because they have no way for their computers to take “multiracial.” I’ve been explaining to her in back and forth email how to handle this.

The second one was from a woman in South Florida who was working for Obamacare and was now confused about why she couldn’t specify her Hispanic ancestry on forms. She called me one night and I spent over an hour on the phone talking to her about racial and ethnic identity. She was having an identity crisis and I was able to help her.

The third email was from an attorney in Atlanta who helped us 20 years ago and now wants to know if he could help again. 20 years. If I’ve helped just one person in 20 years, it’s been worth it. However, it was time to get back to work!

I was contacted by the organization “Be the Match.” They have the largest bone marrow donor registry in the country and I have always been happy to work with them on a donor drive. They had one coming up in April in San Jose and wanted Project RACE represented there as a partner to “Be the Match.” Of course, we would love to, but I would have to see what I could put together. I called a friend who lived in San Jose first to see if she could help me with the Project RACE display table. She had plans for that day and could not help, but I was welcome to stay at her house. I contacted other Project RACE members in the San Jose area and none would be available that day. I really didn’t want to miss this opportunity, so I had an idea. What if Ryan could come in, visit, go to San Jose with me, and then go back? I knew it was a longshot, but I called him and asked him what he thought. It just so happened that he would be starting a new job right after a trip to California, and ending his other job right before the date he needed to be here! Everything just fell into place and I was going to see my son for the first time in years.

April 14, 2015

Ryan’s plane from Florida was due in at about noon. I figured it would be pretty safe to leave for the airport in Fresno at 10 a.m. Ryan called at about 8 a.m. and said there was a delay, something about a light bulb on the plane, and it was causing a bit of a setback in Dallas, where he had a change of planes. He said he would keep me posted and we hung up. I continued to put on my makeup and get ready. Another call, another delay. I could tell he was beginning to get agitated, as does anyone experiencing flight delays. I waited. Finally, his plane was set to arrive—two and a half hours late.

I turned on the GPS and got ready to hit the road. Sam reminded me that we follow the Clinton exit, and to trust the GPS to get me there. I had not driven to the airport in years and had little recollection of it. An hour into the drive, I realized that the GPS voice was leading me a different way and not exiting off at Clinton. I had that momentary scary feeling in the pit of my stomach as I was forced to make a decision: take the Clinton exit, or pass by it and take instructions from the GPS lady. I missed the Clinton exit at about the same time that I decided to put my fate into the GPS lady’s hands.

I should explain that I have never completely trusted the “GPS lady.” Not her fault, since she is programmed to find the quickest route, which is not necessarily the easiest one. The Clinton route would have been one street all the way to the airport, but instead, we hit spaghetti junction. GPS lady had me going from the farthest right lane to the farthest left lane with possibly one second to spare. It was just sheer luck that I didn’t get killed doing it.

Finally! Car parked, safely in Baggage Claim, I settled in and took out my iPad to rest and get in a little reading time before Ryan’s plane landed. I finally stopped hyperventilating and started feeling relaxed and ready to welcome my son. DING! DING! DING! Bells began blasting and the lights went on and off, on and off. What the? A very calm woman’s voice came over the airport speaker system, “A fire alarm has been activated. You must proceed to the nearest exit and EVACUATE the building.” The few of us in Baggage Claim looked at each other and left the building. We began to talk and assess the situation. We did not hear sirens nor did we smell smoke. But we also noticed that airline personnel were not evacuating. Always the one to lead and get in trouble, I took charge and went back inside. Nothing was going to stop me from seeing my son!

I turned and saw Ryan walking straight toward me. Only a mother could know how I felt. Too many years had passed, and we needed to make up for lost time. Sure, we did fun things and the Be the Match 5K and donor drive and 5k run were very successful, but mostly, we talked. My son and I could always talk for hours and the older we got; the more we had to talk about. The funniest part of the trip was when Ryan called his girlfriend on Tango so they could see each other while talking. Ryan and I posed for her and this is what she said: “Ryan! You look just like your Mom! The only thing you got from your father is Black!”

I had been pretty sick with allergies and was hit by watery eyes, stuffy nose, plugged ears, and what morphed into a very bad cough. The “Be the Match” event took place in a park, which kept my allergies at an all-time high. As soon as it was over, we quickly packed up and got out of there. We went to my friend’s house to drop our luggage and then headed to a very pricey shopping area called “Santana.” Every car was more expensive than the one before it; each woman looked like she belonged on 5th Avenue in New York; the children’s outfits probably cost more than Ryan’s plane ticket; and I’m sure so did the dogs’ custom made everything. People watching was fun and we ate in a lovely French restaurant.

We finally wore ourselves out and headed back. I was getting sicker by the minute and would have been happy to roll into a nice, warm bed. Not wanting to put a damper on the festivities, we decided to take a drive to Palo Alto. My friend gave us a quick tour of multimillion dollar homes, Stanford University, and some points of interest. I had no way of knowing that very soon, life would take me to Stanford on an ongoing basis. Everyone was feeling tired, so we stopped for coffee and watched the passing parade of rich folk. It was a lovely afternoon for everyone.

Back to the condo and I slipped into a nightshirt and announced that I was in for the night. They could go out, stay in, whatever. I craved a bowl of soup. They ordered from a Chinese restaurant and went out to pick it up along with a blow-up mattress on loan from a friend. I was almost asleep on the sofa when they came back. Everything seemed perfect until we found out the next morning that Ryan’s air mattress had completely deflated after two hours and he had slept on the hardwood floor!

I was misty eyed when we dropped Ryan at the airport, but we both felt it had been a wonderful, but quick trip. The friend and I went out to breakfast and then I headed back home, realizing just how sick I was. It turned into bronchitis and hung around for another two weeks. When I was feeling bad, physically, I brought up an image in my head of Ryan, and me, and instantly felt better.

April 29, 2015

Sam and I celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary. I can’t believe we’ve been married for ten years. This is one marriage that will work.

We got our first 2015 Multiracial Heritage Week proclamation today from the state of Tennessee. We also got another grant from the K&F Baxter Family Foundation. All is well, there are no Project RACE fires to put out, and everything is under control. I’m finally going to rest.

May 24, 2015

I received an email from a “pop star” who wants to inquire about doing something—anything to help us with Multiracial Heritage Week. She is multiracial, lives in Washington DC, and has a cute video out that tells the story of a young girl—supposedly her—growing up and being bullied because she is multiracial. I do some background checking and it appears she is legitimate, is with a viable record label, and her music is distributed by Sony. I think the video is cute and catchy. Over the next month, people voiced their opinions, which were very strongly for and against. You just can’t get a consistent response when it comes to people’s taste in music!

We began emailing back and forth over the next few weeks and finally came to an agreement. Project RACE would promote her and her video during Multiracial Heritage Week. It would be a win/win for us. She would get free promotion and we would get a little fun and educational video to display on our social media sites: the website, blog, Facebook pages, Twitter, etc. It was all good. I told her we just need a short agreement in writing, nothing fancy, and she offered to have her attorney draw something up.

The attorney sent me the very short agreement. I emailed it to our lawyers and they didn’t respond. OK. I took a deep breath. I’m not a lawyer, but I realized I had to call her attorney. It’s getting closer to Multiracial Heritage Week. I called her lawyer and we had a good chat. He told me that he would like to partner with us to have to have a small party. I explained to him that it is a great idea, but Project RACE is a poor non-profit and can’t pay. NO PROBLEM! He offered to set it all up and pay for it. We just needed to get people to come. I told him that I needed something like a “hold harmless” clause that says Project RACE shall not be held responsible should they do any harm to anyone. Then I waited and waited and waited. Finally, Sunday night before the start of Multiracial Heritage Week, I let the pop star know that I had not received the agreement and could not proceed without it. I would move her video placement from Tuesday to Friday with the intent of running it through the weekend, which would benefit the “star.”

I had some serious talks with Diane (the name has been changed), our Project RACE lead Washington volunteer. She was all for it and started contacting people to be at the party. I rushed to pick up brand new t-shirts from the printer and paid the freight to send them quickly to her. The lawyer let me know that it would be a very nice luncheon on the rooftop of an office building in a prime location in DC. Fantastic! Diane and I got to work night and day with five days to get as many people as we could by Saturday, June 13.

Surprise! I got an email on Tuesday from the attorney telling me he’s very sorry, but there was a “problem with the venue” and the party had to be canceled. NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!! We exchanged some rather nasty emails and broke off contact. I pulled the video.

We were back to square one. I had an idea to see if we could be a part of a bone marrow donor drive with “Be the Match,” the donor registry and the organization we partnered with for the San Jose 5K run. Diane and I started tracking it down. I called my contact at “Be the Match” (who had RSVP’d that she would be at the party...make that the non-party). Bending the rules for us just a bit, they invited us to be at a 5k run on Saturday in Leesburg, Virginia or at AfrAm, a huge African American festival in Baltimore in a few weeks. Instead of a party, we had a chance to try to save lives of multiracial blood cancer patients. Diane started to hesitate.

By noon on Thursday, I had not received a definitive answer from Diane. I emailed her and told her I had to know. About an hour later, I got an email from Diane telling me she could not make the bone marrow donor drive on Saturday, but would it be OK if her husband wore the t-shirt to LGBT day? EXCUSE ME?! What about us and saving multiracial kids?!

That night, she sent me an email telling me that she actually sits for two dogs, and one of them has lymphoma, so she has to go say goodbye to him on Saturday. I love my little dog and am very sympathetic to sick animals, but using this as an excuse not to do the bone marrow donor drive that could save the lives of multiracial children just pissed me off!

I’m afraid it was over and done. We had to just eat the $75 in costs. Couldn’t I just get a break?!

May 26, 2015

If I ever wondered just how far the Census Bureau would go, today was that day. I took the dog out to walk to the mailbox to check the mail, one of our usually quick daily “trips.” I was confused by the seriousness of the envelope on the top and wrote this for our blog:

The Census Bureau did WHAT?!

Today I received a very serious looking government envelope from the United States Department of Commerce marked “OFFICIAL BUSINESS.” It came to my home address, not to Project RACE. This is personal.

Apparently, the Census Bureau has chosen me to complete a very important national survey called the American Community Survey (ACS). Think of it as an annual census, but only for about three million people. I am one of the chosen few.

This is particularly ironic and even funny because I have been trying to make some headway with the ACS folks for 25 years. They won’t answer my questions about race and ethnicity on their surveys. They refuse. Yet, legally, I must answer the ACS or something terrible, including being fined or jailed, can happen to me if I don’t answer.

I think it is only fair that they must answer my questions, too. If they don’t, they should at the very least lose their jobs. This just doesn’t seem equitable and like a fair business practice. It sounds like the Census Bureau at work as usual and no, it’s not right. But, as usual, I’ll play fair even though they won’t. -Susan Graham

Chapter 18
The Fall

“So go ahead. Fall down. The world looks different from the ground.”

Oprah Winfrey

February 13, 2016 at 5 a.m. I woke up early with my head full of things I needed to attend to and went into my home office. As I walked out to start some coffee, my foot caught on a Wii platform in the corner. Down I went on the hardwood floor. The crash woke Sam up and by the time he got to me, I realized I had broken my left shoulder. I just looked at him and said, “Call 911 for an ambulance.” I had broken the right shoulder ten years before and thought I knew what I was in for again. The ambulance attendants were required to take me to the nearest hospital. Our small, local hospital is not somewhere you wanted to go if you were hurt. The emergency room physician thought I had only dislocated the shoulder and tried to slide it back into place—a terribly painful procedure when the bone is actually broken, as mine was.

The next few weeks were a blur; a painkiller induced fog. I was transferred by ambulance to a hospital in Fresno, California and assigned an orthopaedic surgeon who also thought dislocation was the problem until they tried twice to relocate the socket while shooting me continuously with massive painkilling drugs. The room was packed with medical people and Sam asked to stay during the procedure. He said later that it was one of the worst things he’d ever seen. It didn’t work. The surgeon wanted to operate, but at a different hospital. I was sent home (on painkillers) only to return for the surgery in a few days. Home again. The surgery didn’t work and I was passing out every time I tried to stand up. Back to the emergency room where they “guessed” that somehow in all of this and having been on several very strong diuretics, my potassium had completely depleted and they admitted me once again to intravenously be given massive doses of potassium—and more painkillers.

I finally went home to recuperate, unable to use my left arm at all and yes, on painkillers. I had let the Project RACE Board of Directors and Advisory Board know about what was going on whenever I could and to this day appreciate their taking over as best they could. Multiracial Heritage Week 2016 was coming up quickly and we just could not do it the way we wanted with my recuperating. We had decided to make the dates for Multiracial Heritage Week the same every year for continuity and settled on June 7th to June 14th. I was not getting better despite going to physical therapy three days a week and made the decision to leave the Fresno and Clovis doctors behind and go to Stanford Medical Center—over a two hour drive, but worth the many, many trips. Now, more than an entire year later, I have seen over 30 doctors at Stanford. My shoulder suffered nerve damage and the nerves must regenerate before the incredible orthopaedic physicians can do another surgery. At least that is the plan. Through testing every six months, we were hopeful that the nerves would regenerate in a few months, which did not happen. In 2017, I would have to have surgery on the axillary nerve so the surgeon could “release” it and hopefully lessen the pain.

The potassium problem had been resolved. I have type 2 diabetes, which threw my endocrine system out of whack with all the physical problems, but that is now resolved.

Sam and I hired a caregiver who stayed with me and helped from the beginning of this entire mess. Kim is wonderful, caring, intelligent, and goes the extra mile for me every week. I can’t drive yet, so she takes me to my doctor appointments. They know us well at Stanford. I simply could not have made it through this without her. We are down to two hours a day, when she comes to my home and takes care of whatever needs doing. Sam helps me shower and get dressed before he goes to work every morning and Kim gets here a few hours later. The pup and I are never alone for more than four hours and I have become pretty adept at adapting to living without the use of one arm. The trips to Stanford have lessened, but I recently had to have two eye surgeries. Again, Project RACE volunteers came to the rescue, thank goodness!

During this time, it was an election year—the election year of a lifetime. Donald Trump against Hillary Clinton. Early in the campaigns, my husband and I were watching election coverage on TV one night and he laughed and said, “Donald Trump doesn’t have a chance.” I looked at him and said, “Don’t be surprised at anything that happens in politics, Trump could win.” Sam thought I was crazy until Trump did win and then he apologized to me for his doubts. I wondered through the entire election year about what would happen to the multiracial population numbers depending on who won. After all, President Bill Clinton, the Liberal Democratic had done nothing to help us. President Barack Obama, the multiracial President had actually hurt us. We stayed unaffiliated with Trump, Clinton, Sanders, and anyone else running.

Meanwhile, I continued to monitor the Census Bureau and OMB. The bureau had mostly (we think), publicly aired webcasts of their NAC meetings, so I was able to participate via internet and phone. It was actually perfect for my physical needs as I would not have been able to travel.

Very few people associated with Project RACE have known about my medical problems. I’ve had to let my fiction and editorial writing go, obviously, but am getting back to it all. I am still dependent on painkillers to help me get through the day and night, but am looking forward to a time when another surgery will take care of that. Yes, the non-profit has suffered along with my suffering, but it’s a strong organization and is recovering just fine.

When Good Things Happen

For my very tough exterior, the spiteful, hurtful things that come out of my mouth on a regular basis and a temper that is just too far-ranging, I am a real marshmallow inside. People who know me well, know this. They also know I’m a crier. I can still bring on a full-throttle cry when I think of Bambi’s mother being killed. Yeah, I am a total sucker for a good read and words put me over the edge. Sam will walk into my office, find me in total tears and calmly just say, “What happened now?” But in many ways and at appropriate times, it’s a great release, a way to get all the junk out.

Something good finally happened. It was an ordinary e-mail. Scholastic Choices (The Current Health & Life-Skills Magazine for Teens) had called me about a wide-ranging story they were working on about multiracial teens. I tried to lead them to do the story on one of our teens, Lexi Brock, who lived in Georgia. I felt that adorable, vivacious, awesome Lexi would make for a perfect article all on her own. But they were just looking to do a general story on some general kids. I pushed for a while and then gave up, giving them her contact information and asking them to keep in touch with me. A few weeks later, I heard from them. They were so bowled over by Lexi that they were doing a feature story on her! She was over the moon and so was I. I didn’t cry this time, but I was happy. We emailed back and forth with the writer, editor, and fact-checker, just to make sure everything was correct, and then the email came with the galley proofs. I started reading it and burst into tears. First, the writing was gorgeous—the kind of writing that you can only hope will get across true emotions. The story, titled, “What Are You?” was about this young, smart, beautiful girl living in an interracial household in the rural south with pain and suffering from her own neighbors, friends, and townspeople, was enough to make anyone shed a tear. I was in full-court crying mode when Sam came home from work, walked into my office, dropped his things, and said, “Are you OK? What in the world happened?!” It took a while for me to finally get it out that I was crying over galley proofs! I’d have to remember to buy stock in Kleenex™.

We would have to wait several months for the issue to come out in April and we went back and forth between the editors about when we could release information about the issue. March 20 was the pre-launch publicity date. We all understood that we could not release any information about the article until then. On the evening of February 27, my husband and I watched the Oscars in their entirety, which means we saw the boondoggle at the end when the wrong winner for best picture was announced and finally went to “Moonlight.” My favorite. Very happy and rather full of myself for picking the correct winner, I told Sam that I’d be in bed as soon as I checked my messages. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary and then I saw it. Lexi had posted the galleys on her Facebook page. She had 53 likes and she was telling people she would send them the galleys. Nooooooooooooo! I think I may have screamed as I quickly calculated that it would be about 12:30 a.m. in Georgia. She would probably be sound asleep. I quickly emailed her in the off chance that she would get it and ordered her to take the post down immediately. Then I called her cellphone with the same message. No answer. I was livid and could hardly sleep until I finally received her email the next morning indicating that she had taken it down. All I could hope for was that the editors didn’t find out. About two hours later, I received an email from the editor reminding us not to share the galleys until March 20. I’ll never know if it was a friendly reminder or if they had seen the proofs on Lexi’s page. It did cause a bit of friction between Lexi and me, but we worked it out. Here are some highlights of the article that brought me to tears:

- Lexi, 18, grew up hearing that question (“What are you?”) again and again in her small Georgia town. Now she will proudly tell you she’s multiracial—and what that means to her.

- Imagine sitting down at a restaurant with your family and the couple at the next table ask to move. You aren’t sure why, but you’re no longer hungry.

- Now think about going to church on Sunday, but all of a sudden you can’t, because no church will welcome your family through its doors.

- My parents tried to shield me from these prejudices growing up, but the truth is, it’s impossible to shelter someone from who they are. My dad is Black and my mom is White, making me multiracial, and I’ve always felt like an outsider: not White enough for the White kids, not Black enough for the Black kids. At school, I’ve actually heard, “You can’t date her; she’s mixed”—as if having tan skin affects my character.

- Three things Lexi wants you to know: One: Words can hurt. Do not call people outdated, offensive terms like mixed breed, mutt, or Oreo. Two: Don’t stereotype. Three: Insults aren’t jokes.

We were free to publicize the story on March 22 and we promoted the hell out of it! The feedback was incredible and it really seemed to touch people’s hearts. I made sure to get a copy to my “friends” at the Census Bureau. By pure coincidence, March 22 turned out to be a day of intense emotions. I spoke with my son Ryan because I knew he and his White fiancé were planning a trip for a funeral in Alabama and leaving early the next morning. I’m a mother and I had a job to do. I called him and said, “Ryan, be careful. You’re an interracial couple and you’ll be driving through Alabama. Just be on your best behavior.” He reassured me that he would be and that he would call me as soon as they got back. I told him I love him, hung up the phone and started to cry. It felt like 1950, not 2017 and I had to remind my child that life hadn’t changed all that much.

“Data provide the facts needed to make policy. If the facts are wrong, the policies are wrong.”

Susan Graham

Living in the early days of Donald Trump as President of the United States was not easy. “Fake news,” tweets at all hour of the night and day by Trump, lies, the threat of healthcare cuts, confirmation hearings, Putin of Russia and nuclear threats from North Korea were coming every day at every hour. People were afraid. Government employees seemed terrified of losing their jobs---maybe for the first time in their lives. We didn’t have a prayer of getting changes we wanted for the 2020 Census. There were so many holes in the testing for it and too late to change it. Nicholas Jones, the Director of Race and Ethnicity called on me to meet with the “multiracial community leaders” for a meeting. Testing had already been done without our input and Census Bureau recommendations had been made to OMB. There was nothing to talk about and I told him so, plus it would not be possible for me to travel alone given my physical limitations. He no doubt called on other people to meet with him and I’m sure they gladly went. With NAC meetings coming up, I’m sure it would mean something for him to say he met with the multiracial community leaders. So much for the 2020 census.

Plans for Multiracial Heritage Week have not been going well. People are just not signing up to help. They are apathetic. Everyone keeps telling me it’s not my fault. I’ve done everything right, but I internalize it all. The Census Bureau people are ignoring me because I told them I am not setting up a meeting for them. It’s not my job. Over 27 years of working my ass off and for what? It’s April 4, 2017. It seems I can’t do anything right and then, suddenly, there it is in my email box; an email with the subject line “Thank you.” I almost don’t open it, thinking it must be spam, and yet something makes me. It reads: “I just wanted to tell you that I am so grateful for your work! My father was born in Cape Verde and the majority of people are mixed. I have finally accepted my mixed identity and found it rather difficult to find an advocacy group. But I found you two years ago and never thanked you.” That’s it. Very simple and yet I smile for the first time in days. Yes, we should be thanked. Yes, we have done what is right for multiracial people. Yes, I’ve done what I was meant to do. And yes, I can honestly smile and say, “You’re welcome.”

Decisions

It’s not hard to make decisions when you know
what your values are.

Roy E. Disney

I have been stressing over a speech that I’m supposed to give at The Reagan Library in Simi Valley in June at a roundtable meeting. Ward Connerly is the convener and I have received almost nothing from his office about arrangements. I finally decide to write to him about my concerns—an almost two page detailed letter. Connerly writes me back not addressing my concerns at all but telling me that my attendance is “essential.” Dammit! If I’m so essential, he should be supplying me with more information. It’s less than eight weeks away and I know nothing. I decide that I will not attend. Too many details need to be taken care of for me to travel with my disabled arm. I can’t even dress myself and need handicapped accommodations, which are usually hard to get. This is not going to work. I’ve made a decision and I’m relieved. A few days later I get an email from Connerly’s office addressed to the people attending the roundtable: “To the Reaganites.” I’m hardly a Reaganite. I’ve made the right decision.

Meanwhile, my contact at the Census Bureau, Nicholas Jones, is not answering my email or returning my phone calls. He missed an important conference call. I’m pissed. I write to the director of the bureau explaining my frustration. It’s sent after hours in Washington on a Friday. I’m very surprised to get a response from Jones’ supervisor telling me she spoke to Jones and he will be in touch with me on Monday to set up another conference call. It’s a start, although I somewhat doubt I will hear from him on Monday. I’m surprised when I do hear from him. We set up a conference call for a few days later, which is a good, positive phone call. I would think that things were looking up, but I’m way too jaded to think this is good news.

The Spring meeting of the National Advisory Council on Race and Ethnicity (NAC) is scheduled for April 27 and 28.

With Multiracial Heritage Week plans pretty much in place, I was able to finally rest a bit—or so I thought. Kelly Baldwin was going to have a few of her son’s friends over for an envelope stuffing party to get all the letters mailed out. She changed the date a few times and I kept reminding her that everything had to be in the mail by May 1. She worked on them the last weekend in April. About a week later, I checked with Ryan to be certain he checked his snail mail for the documents to send to the Governor in Florida. He told me Kelly had emailed everything and he couldn’t even open one of the attachments. I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach and I couldn’t breathe. I asked him to send me the email and when he did I held my breath and then found that I couldn’t open the attachment either. I was shocked. I wrote to Kelly and asked why she had not followed the very specific instructions I had sent to everyone. I’ll never know exactly what went wrong. Multiracial Heritage Week was ruined and there was little could be done. There were so many things to be angry about on so many levels. Many of our members, especially the younger ones, only have cellphones. They do not have printers. That was the main reason why I had specifically said we needed to print the letters and snail mail them to people so they could just sign the letter and sample proclamation, address an envelope and mail them to their governor. Very few of the governors would accept them online. It could have been so simple and effective. Instead, MHW would be a failure. It was too late to mail the letters out. Kelly Baldwin told me that “envelope stuffing” now meant emailing. I was frustrated and disappointed.

Nothing would save MHW, but I had to try to come up with a plan to salvage what we could. With the help of Kim, my assistant in living every day, we put together an event for MHW at our local library. We would give each child who came to the Saturday reading program, a pack of Crayola® Multicultural Skin Tones of the World crayons. Each one comes with eight crayons with different shades of skin tones. We had done this before while lobbying in Georgia years ago. Each child would also be given a white paper plate to draw their own faces using the crayons. I arranged for our mayor to be there and present us with a proclamation. We invited the local media. I also suggested to Kelly, Makensie and Lexi that they have similar events so that we could put a collage together of photos from the MHW events. It would seem successful even if it wasn’t.

June 27, 2017

It was time, once again, to go through nerve testing at Stanford. It’s a grueling and painful test, but I was full of guarded hope going in that this will be the time for the go-ahead for surgery. I’m just plain wrong. The nerves have not regenerated. I almost cry when we go to see the surgeon for his opinion of the tests. Although he concurs with the doctor who did the testing, he wants to call in yet another expert, a top nerve specialist. I meet with her and wait for her findings. My hope slips more and more each day while I wait for her assessment. The nerve specialist suggests that she surgically manipulate my axillary nerve to try to decompress it. It’s a long shot, but I decide to go ahead with it. I undergo the surgery and begin the long journey through physical therapy.

November 2, 2017

On November 2nd and 3rd, I attended the NAC fall meeting by webcast. John Thompson, the Director of the Census Bureau has left the government and a man named Enrique Lamas has taken his place. Lamas is unknown to us, and I listen carefully to what he has to say. It’s all bureaucratic gobbledygook; just more of the same rhetoric we have gotten over the years. I am once again outraged at the lack of representation by the multiracial community both on the NAC committee and in the audience. On November 6, I write a long letter to Dr. Lamas, sharing my concerns and doubts, but encouraging him to have some dialogue with us. I never hear back from him.

The OMB decision on the racial and ethnic categories used by the Census Bureau and other government agencies is due out by December 5th. Everyone is expecting it except me. I tell people that they need to understand there are political ramifications and I don’t believe the Trump administration is not going to influence OMB’s decision. I expect a delay. Meanwhile, the administration has “banned” seven words from usage in budget documents, including “diversity.” Enough said?

Chapter 19
The Win and the Weddings

“Even paranoids have real enemies.”

Golda Meir

A new year—2018, and I thought my work had taken a rest. I was wrong. In December, a man named Al from Hawaii had been attacking me on Facebook. He discounted everything Project RACE had ever done for the multiracial community and blasted me personally. He was full of vitriol and clearly had it in for me. I responded to his direct attacks as best I could and then pulled out of it for the holidays. Al continued his tirade against me and finally settled down. Then just a few days into the new year, I received a notification that someone had responded to the altercation. I thought to myself that it could not possibly be good news and reluctantly went to read the comment. This is what a man named Dean Chapman had to say,

“Susan Graham: Al has the propensity to make himself appear more knowledgeable about issues here on the mainland than he actually has. He becomes very insulting, exposing his lack of actual knowledge. He has done the same with me, as he has done to you on this thread. Thank you for your grass roots work you have done for this movement. It’s an honor to dialogue with you.”

I answered, “Dean Chapman, thank you for your comments. I’m looking forward to continued communication with you.”

Then on January 4, I read a piece written by my old friend Ward Connerly of the American Civil Rights Institute and Mike Gonzalez, of the Heritage Foundation in The Washington Post. The title was “It’s time the Census Bureau stops dividing America.” They wrote extensively about “mixed-race” people. I went ballistic. Ward Connerly and I had emailed about his dislike of being a “hyphenated American,” with his example of “African-American.” Then he chose to use not only a hyphenated term, but the absolutely wrong terminology for the multiracial population. I wrote what I thought was an extremely thoughtful email outlining my issues with his opinion piece. I included that “mixed” means the opposite of “pure” and I, for one, do not wish to separate people in terms of pure and mixed, and that I was certain he agreed with me on this. I also wrote that they could have chosen to point out what absurd terminology the Census Bureau uses for our community: “two or more races” people. I asked for respect for the term “multiracial.” I waited, not really knowing what to expect from these two men.

My answer came back on January 8th. They apologized and said they would not use “mixed-race” again. I felt much better, although I knew some damage had been done by publication of these two experts using the wrong terminology. I had to let it go.

January 26, 2018 - BREAKING NEWS!

Project RACE received an email from the Census Bureau today with the subject: UPDATE ON 2020 CENSUS QUESTIONS ON RACE AND ETHNICITY. The Office of Management and Budget was supposed to issue their guidelines for the 2020 Census prior to 2018 and they did not. A variety of changes were proposed. Therefore, the bureau will utilize the following for the 2018 Census Test in Providence County, Rhode Island and most likely follow through with them on the 2020 Census:

- A separate category for ethnicity and race will remain the same. A combined format will not be utilized. The two-question format remains.

- Multiple Hispanic ethnicities such as Mexican and Puerto Rican will be collected with a write-in area.

- Examples of races will be expanded for the White, Black, and American Indian or Alaska Native racial categories.

- The term “Negro” will be removed.

- A separate “Middle Eastern or North American” (MENA) category will not be utilized.

- The OMB standards state that respondents should be offered the option of reporting more than one race.

- The term “multiracial” will not be used.

- When the two questions are collected separately, ethnicity should be collected first.

- An individual’s responses to the race and ethnicity questions are based upon self-identification.

A sample of the Census questionnaire for the race and ethnicity questions can be viewed at this link:

https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial/2020/program-management/memo-series/2020-memo-2018_02_questionnaire.pdf

The Trump administration also announced today that they requested a question about citizenship status on the census, which is controversial. It is under legal review. The Census Bureau must decide by March 31 if it will include the question.

Important Update

I posted and emailed an important Project RACE update on April 4, 2018 in a Q and A format. It brought an unusually high response and many positive comments, so I am including it here.

PROJECT RACE UPDATE – April, 2018

I have been asked some questions about Project RACE recently, so an update is in order. I have chosen to do this in a question and answer format. Please feel free to send your comments to me at SusanGraham@projectrace.com

Q. Why doesn’t Project RACE use the terms “mixed” or “mulatto”?

A. The term “mulatto” is outdated and offensive; the literal meaning is small mule. We don’t like to use “mixed” because it is the opposite of “pure,” and we don’t want to go there. Also, “mixed” lends itself to “mixed up,” “mixed nuts,” etc. We’ve all seen those headlines. Project RACE advocates for multiracial and biracial because they are respectable, properly descriptive terms. We applaud organizations like the Brookings Institute and Pew Research for using the term “multiracial.”

Q. It’s acceptable to use the term “mixed race” or “mixed” in the UK, so why not here?

A. This is an easy one. This is the United States, not England. It reminds me of a discussion I had with a group of writers who were coming up with company writing guidelines. The subject came up of how to use a period or comma with quotation marks. I stated that in the US, periods and commas go inside of the quotation marks. Someone said, “But in the UK, they go outside!” I said, “That’s absolutely true, but you are writing for an American audience.” Case closed.

Q. What is going on at the federal level?

A. Things are in a holding pattern since the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) opted to keep things as they are on the Standards for the Classification of Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity, which is sometimes referred to as the Standard for Maintaining, Collecting, and Presenting Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity. It is not called “Directive 15.” The Census Bureau has made their recommendations to Congress.

Q. What is the “citizenship” question and why should we be concerned about it?

A. The current administration has decided that everyone who gets a census questionnaire should be asked if they are a United States citizen. Project RACE is against this because adding a citizenship question could result in reduced response rates and inaccurate answers on the 2020 Census, according to the experts and demographers, including several former directors of the census. We can assume that a sizeable number of immigrants and other people who are multiracial will not answer the census because of the question. This could reduce the numbers of the multiracial population and other minority groups. In other words, the push to add the question will likely risk a significant undercount of immigrant, minority (including multiracial), and low-income populations.

Q. Is it true that the recommendation to make Hispanic people a race has been turned down?

A. Yes. People can choose to be Hispanic as an ethnicity, but not a race. They can choose to be a race or races from white, black, Asian/Pacific Islander, Native American/Alaska Native, or “some other race.” You can check as many races as you want.

Q. Is Project RACE in favor of a Hispanic racial category and a MENA (Middle Eastern North African) classification?

A. Yes, Project RACE has made the Census Bureau and OMB very aware of our favoring both of these categories.

Q. A group called MASC is recommending that people contact their congressional representatives in the House of Representatives. What’s that about and is Project RACE also recommending this?

A. MASC (Multiracial Americans of Southern California) and Project RACE (Reclassify All Children Equally) are two very distinctly different organizations. MASC is a local, Southern California group and Project RACE is a national organization with representation in 48 states. We at Project RACE do not agree with the apparent “Urgent Call to Action” by MASC to make changes to Directive 15, which has not existed for the past 20 years (see above).

The deadline for comments has passed. Congressional representatives are unlikely to make any change in the Hispanic question, which is what MASC is going after, because of any local multiracial group. If any change is made, it will be because of lobbying by the national Hispanic and Latino organizations, like MALDEF and UnidosUS (formerly the Council of La Raza), which is as it should be. Cutting and pasting canned phrases to OMB or Congressional Representatives is an ineffective action for this type of situation.

MASC has also suddenly stated that (surprise!) the Census Bureau does not make public policy. That should not be a surprise to anyone who has done any work in this area. However, the Census Bureau is responsible for national testing of census questions as well as recommendations on wording, which Project RACE has been involved with since 1990. They may not set public policy, but they do influence it.

Q. Are Project RACE and MASC at odds?

A. MASC has publicly called Project RACE ineffective and something about being an organization that only holds a public party once a year.

Project RACE is the national advocacy organization for the multiracial community. Our primary focus is advocacy and public policy change. We work for the multiracial population in Washington, DC and in 48 states. We work with national diversity personnel at national corporations and organizations to utilize appropriate terminology for the multiracial community. We don’t just blow our own horn, we work very hard to let the community know what is going on with others communities as they relate to ours, in other words, we get the word out via our blog, emailings, our web site, social media, etc. We promote and coordinate bone marrow donor drives. We hold national Multiracial Heritage Week every year from June 7 to 14 to honor the multiracial community. Yes, people are welcome to participate with parties or in any other positive way.

MASC is mostly a social organization for a limited area of the multiracial community. There is a definite need for social organizations and we commend them for what they provide. We appreciate their work. We communicate and work with local multiracial organizations around the country and have no idea why the Board of MASC has chosen to become so hostile towards our work and our community. Their hostility does not influence our work in any way.

Q. Shouldn’t all organizations or groups that represent a community all be in agreement?

A. No. Historically, we can look at the NAACP and Urban League, both of which represented the black community although they did not agree on many issues. MALDEF and UnidosUS do not always agree. The two national Portuguese organizations have different policy statements. There are many more examples. Although we all represent communities, we all primarily represent our members.

Q. Is Project RACE an organization for academics?

A. No, our membership exists primarily of multiracial adults, parents and grandparents of multiracial children, and multiracial teens. We do have academics on our advisory board and fully cooperate and communicate with the fine academics who do important work on behalf of the multiracial community.

Q. Is Project RACE doing some kind of partnership with the U.S. Census Bureau?

A. The Census Bureau has formally asked Project RACE to be their partner in the national 2020 Decennial Census program and we have accepted the invitation. What this means is that we will help people understand the importance of filling out the census questionnaire and to check as many races as they want. The goal is to get as many multiracial people as possible to be active in the 2020 Census.

Q. Does Project RACE charge membership fees?

A. Project RACE never charges fees, as do some other multiracial organizations. We are an all-volunteer organization, unlike some others. We feel that anyone anywhere who wants to be a member of Project RACE should be able to, regardless of location or ability to pay. However, we do welcome donations, which are tax-deductible, since we are a 501(c)(3) corporation!

The Weddings

May 19, 2018

5 a.m. EST

Jacksonville, Florida

My husband, Sam, and I are in Jacksonville, Florida for the wedding of my son, Ryan Graham, to Shelby Kight, which is tomorrow, May 20th. But first we are watching the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, a biracial American woman. I am relaxing and watching history being made. So much has been written and said about the fact that Meghan will bring the history of biracial and multiracial people to the British monarchy. No one really knows what to expect from her wedding dress to the images and changes she will bring to royalty. The world is waiting to see.

She is a beautiful bride, but hardly the world’s first multiracial woman to marry a monoracial man. Meghan is biracial, her mother is Black and her father is White. Prince Harry is White. I find it sad that Meghan’s mother is the only one from her family seemingly at the wedding. She has been welcomed by the British family, but clearly sits by herself—off to herself. The wedding has many wonderful surprises that encompass Meghan Markle’s Black side of the family, from a fiery speech by a black minister to a wonderful choir singing a historic black song. You may have seen or read enough and so I won’t go into the entire wedding as it is making history.

It is a good day for the multiracial community. One huge change is that the press and commentators, I notice, have suddenly dropped the term “mixed-race” and are using “biracial”! True progress and my heart swells at the newly used terminology. We have made a difference.

As I watch the wedding, I think about Ryan’s wedding the next day. If you remember from the beginning of this book, Ryan was the reason for starting Project RACE. He was the catalyst, the little boy activist who testified before congress numerous times. Now he was on the eve of getting married to a White woman in what will be an interracial marriage. I could not be a happier mother of the groom. Now I can say that their wedding was beautiful and I am happy to have a wonderful new daughter-in-law and grandson. Their life together will be so much easier thanks in part to the work of Project RACE and the people who believe in interracial families.

An announcement from Associated Press Stylebook!

May 30, 2018

Thank you AP Stylebook!

The terms biracial and multiracial are now acceptable:

“Acceptable, when clearly relevant, to describe people with more than one racial heritage. Usually more useful when describing large, diverse groups of people than individuals. Avoid mixed-race, which can carry negative connotations, unless a story subject prefers the term. Be specific if possible, and then use biracial for people of two heritages or multiracial for those of two or more on subsequent references if needed.”

It came from an unexpected source, but this is very, very big. It’s what we’ve been saying for 28 years. We won!

CHAPTER 20
The Toll of Lifelong
Work as an Advocate

“If you’re afraid to defend your convictions because you might get your ass kicked for it, you’re not really fit to advocate for them.”

James Carlos Blake

A friend died. He was a good man. He had been an emergency room doctor until he retired not long ago. He saved lives. He saved lives. I’ve been thinking a lot about that and about him today.

My work as an advocate probably never saved a life, but it was worth it, regardless. Many people just didn’t like what I was doing and thought race should be something you just didn’t talk about. Many other people just hated me and the fact that I am relentless in the pursuit of fairness in civil rights for all people, including those who are multiracial.

One person alone cannot start a movement, take it to a conclusion, and end it. Not me, not you, not anyone. It’s taken hundreds of thousands of people to shake up the status quo of identity for multiracial people. I was a catalyst, and I feel very grateful that I was in the right place at the right time to make a difference for children like mine. Also, I am expecting my first multiracial grandchild in February! I was, in many ways, just the glue that held this movement together for so many years.

I was never afraid to defend my convictions, and I did get my ass kicked for it, but I could not have lived with myself if I had not taken action. I hope my story helps other advocates and peaceful activists, whatever your cause and beliefs, to stand up and demand changes for the betterment of our society. Will you make enemies? Of course—I did. Will you do everything right? Of course not. I didn’t. Will you pay a price for giving up some personal relationships? I hope not, but I did. In doing what I thought (and still believe) was the right thing for my children. I lost them, sometimes for just awhile and sometimes probably forever.

I often have to look back to see how far we’ve come.

Yes, I am White, which you know from reading this book. The rest of the story is that I was raised by a Black woman named Hazel Davis, who was my mother’s “help” in the 1950s, 60s, and beyond that. I remember the day my father said that Hazel should come live with us. I said, “But she has a family of her own. What about her husband and kids?” My father said, “It’s not the same. She’s part of our family. We’ll give her a room and a place where she can be close to us.”

“What kind of room? Can Hazel share my room?!”

“No,” said my father, “We’ll make a room for her in the basement.”

“But Daddy,” I asked, “How is she family if she lives in our basement?”

My father never answered that question and Hazel did not move in with us. However, many of the Black “maids” of our neighbors did leave their family homes and moved into the homes of the people they worked for—in the basement. No, being raised by a Black woman did not make me Black or multiracial, but I think it gave me a different perspective than had I not been raised by Hazel.

Such was life in the 1950s. I also found out much, much later in my life, that my White father murdered a Black man back then, which is another story for another time.

I didn’t understand racism as a child. I didn’t see any difference in people. When I was in junior high school—now called middle school—our district was required to enlarge and accept Black students from “The Township.” Our parents were troubled by this, but like most of my friends, I had no idea why. The Black kids became our friends.

Then we all went to high school and things changed. I lived in suburban Detroit during the 1968 riots, one mile from where the crowds were gathering and life became separate; different. I still didn’t know exactly why. A Black boy, who was my friend all through junior high, withdrew from me and acted as if we were never friends. I didn’t understand it. I missed his friendship. The cafeteria was somehow split overnight and where you sat became a sea of who you looked like. He didn’t sit with me anymore. Somewhere along the line I understood why his parents and my parents would never be friends, but that shouldn’t have affected our friendship. I suppose I was totally naïve.

In my 20s, I dated men of varied racial and ethnic backgrounds. I only saw them as people I liked, who treated me well, and who I related to intellectually, and had fun with on many different levels. I was raised in a time when none of us knew what was to come.

When I married, color didn’t matter to me. No, I won’t say I didn’t notice color—we all do—but how could you not care for, not love someone else because of his or her race? How could a mother look at her multiracial children and not want equal treatment for them? How could I not want my children to have the option of embracing their entire heritage?

I have seen how perceptions change over time and how many things have gotten better, not worse. Were my relationships a result of being partially raised by a Black woman? Were they because of my teenage friendships? Did Martin Luther King, Jr. and President John F. Kennedy have profound effects on me? I don’t really know.

When I became the mother of multiracial children, I encountered racism. When I began Project RACE, I experienced horrible, profound racism, sometimes from groups that had fought their own racism. That “White privileged” woman the academics and detractors of the multiracial movement accused me of being was not who I was, but it had the sting of racism all over it because of the color of my skin.

I don’t think a colorblind society will prevail over a racist one any time soon. There is too much history. I watched President Obama give his sixth State of the Union address. I have to say I’m disappointed in our nation and our world. Ferguson, Missouri, New York, Jerusalem, Los Angeles, Paris, racism is everywhere and I’m still wondering why we can’t get over it.

I do believe the only way to overcome racism is if we are more and more alike instead of more and more different. Will we like people who are more like us? Perhaps being multiracial will be the norm one day and as a result racism will be eradicated. Maybe the one drop rule will give way to a no drop rule and we will all recognize that we are alike, and yes, equal. Suppose we just accept each other as fellow human beings.

This is my best advice for advocates: Some people are just programmed to disagree with you. You can’t afford the time and energy it would take to change them. Move on. Leave them wondering where you went.

I hope I have not been jaded by the government into thinking of people as just part of a group, with all group members. However, I also wonder if the government bureaucracy helped me in a positive way by forcing me to take action or hindered me with the reality that no one could overcome that enormous bureaucracy. I only know that I had to try, as naive as I was.

Years ago, when Ramona Douglass asked me if I would die for the multiracial classification and I told her no, I would not, she accused me of not completely giving myself “to the cause.” I thought she was wrong then and I still do. Yes, this has been a civil rights battle, but while a battle for identity is not the same as the repercussions of slavery, the right to vote, or when your homeland is threatened, it’s still an important fight. The right to choose how you wish to identify racially, ethnically, and culturally is huge, and we went a very long way toward that right.

I still feel a twinge when I read articles or hear people say that the U.S. Census bureau gave people the right to check more than one race with the 2000 Census. They gave us nothing. We had to fight them for it and they reluctantly came along, screaming and fighting the entire way and I hope people understand that from reading this book.

We have had many glorious victories in the past 28 years, including being able to check more than one race; stopping third party identification of people’s races by using self-identification; the use of the term “multiracial” by forward thinking states, school districts, medical facilities, and the media; acknowledgement of historical and present day multiracial role models; saving lives by enlarging the pool of bone marrow donors, and progress, albeit slowly, with the federal government, even with a multiracial President, and the establishment of Multiracial Heritage Week.

The fight is not over, and it will move forward with or without me. It will not be over while the government is still re-tabulating multiracial people into only one category in the name of civil rights enforcement. It will not be over while the government is calling multiracial people “Check two or more,” “MOOMS,” (Mark One or More) “TOMR’s” (Two or More Races) and “combination people.” It will not be over until people are allowed to embrace their entire heritage. It will never end if children are forced to choose between the races of their parents when they go to school. The fight is not over. This is far from a post-racial society.

I will give you one more example that the fight is not over. I submitted the following statement at the 2018 National Advisory Committee on Race (NAC) and gave a two-minute summation by phone at the meeting.

Comments for the Fall, 2018 NAC Meeting

Susan Graham for Project RACE
(Reclassify All Children Equally)

The Casey Foundation’s 2018 KIDS COUNT® Data Book warns that the 2020 census is mired in challenges that could shortchange the official census count by at least 1 million kids younger than age 5. This discrepancy would also put hundreds of millions of federal dollars at risk and, in doing so, underfund programs that are critical for family stability and opportunity; essential programs like housing, food, education, and healthcare.

As we all know, the Casey Foundation gets its numbers from the Census Bureau. Federal dollars seem to be the focus, but can we put the money aside for the moment? Yes, it’s important to be counted for the money, redistricting and civil rights enforcement, but it’s also critical to focus on identity. It’s crucial to see your race(s) or the races of your children on news stories, pie charts, forms, data reports, and anywhere other races are included. Also, you can’t keep accurate records if you don’t have an accurate representation of someone, including their racial identity.

Let me give you some reminders about identity. First, when a multiracial person is asked about their identity it sounds like this: What are you? In his book The Lies that Bind, Kwame Appiah makes these observations, “In sum, identities come, first with labels and ideas about why and to whom they should be applied. Second, your identity shapes your thoughts about how you should behave; and third, it affects the way other people treat you. Finally, all these dimensions of identity are contestable, always up for dispute: who’s in, what they’re like, how they should behave and be treated.”

One example from the 2018 KIDS COUNT Data Book is this:

In 2017, 81 percent of African-American,

79 percent of American Indian, 78 percent

of Latino and 60 percent of multiracial

fourth-graders were not proficient in reading,

compared with 54 percent of white and 44

percent of Asian and Pacific Islander students.

They used the appropriate, preferable, and respectful term “multiracial.” The Census Bureau now calls us “Two or More Races” people. The Casey Foundation counted and published the multiracial numbers. Not all entities do. Why is this important? Just as it’s important to see the African-American, American Indian, Asian, White, and Latino students, it’s crucial that multiracial families and individuals see themselves included in data. Proper racial nomenclature is critical, this has been proven over and over again every time a group, any group, changes its label.

The multiracial community has been invisible to this committee, the Census Bureau, and the government for far too long. We know it and you know it. We can only assume that you are not eager to have people check two or more races because it would benefit your groups to have our numbers. We are not willing to choose single race over multiracial just so your groups can benefit monetarily. Those days are over.

Now we are looking at the 2020 Census and how we can all shore up our numbers. We must all answer this question: how does filling out the race boxes on the census impact our groups? For the multiracial population, it’s really not a matter of money. No one is going to give dollars to feed little multiracial children based on the boxes they check. However, we need to accurately report growth in our numbers and demonstrate that the multiracial population is an important one. WE ARE ASKING TO BE INCLUDED WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT, TALK ABOUT, AND WRITE ABOUT RACES IN AMERICA.

This is a time of suspicion, particularly between minorities and government. We can only get past that for the 2020 Census by showing trust. Project RACE has proven that we are a trusted entity for the multiracial population, but this committee, the bureau, and government need to show us that we can trust you. We are open to working with you to ensure that there is not an undercount of the multiracial community. We sincerely hope that you are finally ready to say the same.

The multiracial population is, perhaps, the largest of the hard-to-count groups by virtue of the fact that few care if we are counted as multiracial except us. In a recent webinar, census consultant Terri Ann Lowenthal was asked if people have to respond to every question, including race, when filling out their census form online. She answered that they do not. They can “hit submit and it will be accepted.” We would hate to see interracial families and multiracial individuals skip the race question. We need your help to ensure that this does not happen. Thank you.

Susan Graham

President

Project RACE

People often ask me if I would do it all over again and my answer is “Yes.” I took the good and the bad. My personal history has included everything from being called an American Hero to being outed as a traitor to mono-racial and multiracial populations. I did what my heart told me was right for my children and those like them who only wanted to be able to include both their mother’s and father’s ancestry in their identity. Yet, in standing up for my beliefs, I encountered personal racism, public humiliation, victimization, and the loss of one of my children.

I have been criticized by some people who have said we are just continuing to perpetuate racial strife by adding more racial categories, which is absolutely not true. The way to end racism is not to refuse to fill out forms that require racial identification. The end to racism just might be attained as more and more people declare themselves truly multiracial and the same as their sisters and brothers in the broadest, most honest, and also the most personal terms. Think about it.

Ten Reasons Why White Mothers Can Raise Multiracial Children:

by Susan Graham

1. We conceived or adopted our children and we knew exactly what we were doing.

2. We are fully capable of raising our children as equals with their other monoracial or multiracial siblings.

3. We do not have to be the same color as our child to give them the history and knowledge of their other ancestry or ancestries.

4. We know how to say, “No thank you; my child does not need you to tell her what she is.”

5. We know and respect how President Obama chose to self-identify (as Black). He could have identified as multiracial, but that wasn’t his choice. Do not “Barack Obama” my multiracial children.

6. We can say without laughing, “Yes, I’m the mom. Want to set up a play date for our kids?”

7. We can say, “I learned how to do my child’s hair” or “I found it was easier to have someone else do my daughter’s hair.”

8. We will stand up for our children’s right to be included on forms that require racial and ethnic identity.

9. We fully understand the question, “What are they?” We can choose to answer any way we like and can explain one more time that the thing called the one-drop rule is not a law.

10. We can happily live without you if you’ve programmed your family to be uncomfortable around our family.

Acknowledgements

First and foremost I would like to thank my husband, Sam Pereira, who has stood by me for almost 25 years. He has been my spouse, muse, poet, editor, and so much more.

I thank and appreciate the multiracial community for giving me input, both positive and negative since the inception of Project RACE in 1990. We’ve come a long way. The people who stuck by me caused me to keep going through the worst of the adversity, especially the entire Baldwin Family. The naysayers have made me think and sometimes shift my ways. I tried to learn from online discussions with perfect strangers and came away carrying different viewpoints with me. Even the politicians who thwarted us gave us reason to rethink our wording or immediate stance.

Authors usually thank their agents in the first few sentences. I did not have an agent to acknowledge, but I am most thankful for Jose Ramirez at Pedernales Publishing for guiding me through the process. Many thought that racial self-identification was too sensitive a subject to publish, but I was determined, which is obviously one of my traits. I did not write Born Biracial: How One Mother Took on Race in America to make money. I did it to get the story out and I appreciate your reading it.

This book was years in the making and went through many versions. Thank you to all of my readers and editors. The Project RACE Advisory Board members have kept a check on me all these years, as have the leaders of our divisions. I have met so many good people on this journey that it would be impossible for me to acknowledge each of you. Please know that I thank you all.