letters to the editor.

DEAR EDITOR,

I read with great interest your article, "Black Like Who?" (Jan/Feb 2001). In my collection of essays, "The Rejected American," I pointed out that it is around the one-drop rule that the biggest amount of winking and nodding has occurred in this country. That's one of the reasons why I love Jean Toomer. He was one of the few writers who dared to look in the mirror and say yes, the obvious is real, which the one-drop rule denied. The writers you interviewed are rightly claiming their full heritage, and it is good to see they are able to tell their stories.

--Fred Beauford Los Angeles, California

As I read the article, "Black Like Who?" (Jan/Feb 2001), I went back and highlighted portions of the text to capture a theme that seemed to run throughout the article. The theme appeared to be that the blacks are making it different for the racially mixed person. I would suggest that the racially mixed individuals must bear some of the responsibility for their social dilemma. I don't know that the young authors give the same recognition and respect to those that they are demanding recognition and respect from. Young authors--stop crying and start giving. Then you shall receive.

--Charles F. Graham Beaumont, Texas

Your article on multiracial black identities hit home. My father was the result of a marriage between a bi-racial minister and his biracial wife--although they didn't identify themselves that way at the time. My father, a jazz musician in the twenties was fair enough to pass for white and had blue eyes, which allowed him to play in "white only" clubs.

I grew up in the 70s when there was no such thing as biracial, you were either black or white. My sister was constantly harassed and told she thought she was better than everybody because she was "light." I stood ready to bare fists when confronted by the kids in high school because they didn't like "piss colored" blacks.

If racism is one of the biggest unresolved issues in America--and I think it is--this "interracism" is an issue we must confront. The first step in doing this is acknowledging that few people in America are just "black" or "white." But that is just the first step. We must erase the stigma attached to racial identity before we can truly "transcend" it.

--Brian Spivey North Bergen, NJ

I saw a copy of BIBR on board a U.S. Airways flight and read the editorial, "Racial Profiling at the Bookstore--and in Our Hearts and Minds" (Nov-Dec 2000). As the author of an autobiography, Restavec: From Haitian Slave Child To Middle-Class American, I returned to a store where I had recently given a successful reading and discovered the remaining five copies buried in the African studies shelf. My book will soon be published, by Edition Seuil, in French. Yet, to find a copy, one must visit Amazon.com--or exhume it from the African studies section. It's a shame that even in this 21st century, books by black authors have to fall victim to racial profiling.

--Jean-Robert Cadet Cincinnati, Ohio

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