—THE MULATTO MILLENNIUM. realize youre ia style,’ the other morning, Ie was own restaurants, modeling clothes, names like Show Me the Miscegena- von! The radio played a steady screatn of Lenny Kr houghe Td died and gone Buc then I realized. Acc official Year of the Mulacto. Pure breeds fones) ate out and hybri stazring in musicals wi is in, America loves us president announced on color of the millennium. Major news mag- atrival as if we were proof of extraterres Thad a hard out the placards through the tangle of dreadlocks ‘Afios. At of the crovid, two brown-skinned women FOR COLORED GIRLS WHO. HAVE CONSIDERED JEW BOYS WHEN THE NE- GRORS-AIN'T ENOUGH. A lean yellow gicl with her hair ia messy Afto-pufis wore a T-shiet with the words JUST HUMAN across the front. What appeared to be a Hasidic Jew walked hand in b se woman in tradi- (OT WAR. I trailed be- sure T wanted to join ing. Way back in the fall of 1993, Time magazine put on its cover Anseric: special issue of Time does ‘The highlighe of this“4 cretcise in eybergenesis was che creation of the woman on our cover, selected as a symbol of the future, maultiethnic face of Ametica,...As onlookers watched the image of ‘our new Eve begin to appear on the computer screen, sev- eral staf members promptly fll in love. Said one: “It se- ally brea my arc thac he dosai eis.” We sympathize with our lovelorn colleagues, but even technology has its limits. This is love that must forever remain unrequited. OF course, anyone could see that women just like the come puter face they had created did exist in Puerto Rico, Latin America, and Spanish Harlem, But the editors at Time re. ‘mained unaware of chis, seeming to prefer their colored folk nary, not real. As read the article, it reminded me of an old ing hey used to have down South during Jim Crow: “If a black man wants to sit at the front of the bus, he use puts on 4 turban.” Maybe the same rule applied here: call yourself mixed and you just might find the world smiles a litle brighter on you, Milatros may not be new. But the mulatto-pride folks area new generation, They wane theit own special category or no caregories at all They'e a full-fledged movernent, complete with their own share of extremists. As I wandered at the edges of the march this morning, one woman gave me a flyer Te wos 2 treatise on biracial superiority, which began, “Ever wonder Why mutts ace always smarter than full-breed dogs?" The reat of her treatise was dence and incomprehensible: something about the sun people and the ice people coming together to create the perfectly temperate being. Another man, a militant dese like Huey 2 Newton, came towed me waving a rifle inhis hand. He told ie that chose who refuse to miscegenate 15 should be shot. I steered clear ofhim, instead burying ty head in a newspaper. T opened to the book review scr and at the top of the bestseller lis were dhtee memeine Kimcbee and Grits by Kyong Washington, Gefilee Fis and Hem Hacks, by Schlomo Jackson, and at che top ofthe lst, and forthe, third Week in a row, Burritos and Borshs, by a cat named ‘Werner, That was it. In a ft of nausea, home. Took off running for Before all of this radical ambiguis, Iwas a black irl. T fear Sree saying this."The political strong arm of the inuliracial Movement, affectionately known as the Mulatto Nation Guse “the MAN.” for those in the know), deere use ‘Yesterday that those wih sefuse co comply with orders to embrace this many heritages will be sent on the frse plane to Rio de Janeiro, Braz where, the MNEs ministr of defense said, “they mighe earn the true meaning of mestizo power” Bur, with all due respect to the multiracial moveinent, I cannot ~ Twas 2 black gist. Not your ordinary blavie i if such ashing exits. Buc rather, a black pil with ¢ Wasp ‘mother and a black-Merican father, and a face thas harkens to tare but by shared history. Not only was I black (and here Igo out on a limb), bue 1 sea Saemny of the people, The mulaeto people, that i. 1 ‘dencty as mixed, not black. thought i wishy-washy, of flagrant assimilation, treason, passing even. Jk 86 my patents who made me this way. In Boston cca 1975, mixed wasnt really an option. The words “A fight, a an act‘ould be heard echoing from. schoolyards during recess, You were either white or black. No checking, “Other” No halvsies. No in-between. Biack people, being the bottom of the social totem pole in Boston, were in- evitably the most accepting of difference; they were the only race 10 come in all colors, and so there I found myself. Sure, 1 seceived some strange reactions froma all quatters when I called myself black. But black people usually got over their initial surprise and welcomed me into the ranks. Ie was white folks who grew the most aacomfortable with the dissonance be- ‘oveen the face they saw and the race they didn't. Upon learn- ing who I was, chey grew paralyzed with fear chat they might hhave “slipped up” in my presence, that is, said something racist, not knowing there was a Negro in thei midst. Often, they had, Let it be clear—my patents’ decision to raise us as black wasnit based on any one-drop rule fiom the days of slavery, and it certainly wasn't based on our appeatance, that crude rea- soning many black-identified mixed people use: if the world sees me as black, I must be black. IF had heen based on ap- pearance, my sister would have been black, my brother Mexi- can, and me Jewish, Instead, my parents’ decision arose out of the rising black power movement, which made identifying as black not a pseudoscientific rule but a conscious choice. You told us allalong that we had to call ourcelves black because of this so-called one drop. Now that we dont have to anymore, we choose 40, Beeause black is Beautiful. Beeause black is not a burden, but a privilege Some might say my parcnts went too far in cheir struggle to instill a black identity in us, I remember my father schooling sme and my siblings on our racial identicy. He would hold his own version of the Inquisition, grilling us over a. greasy Unoleum kitchen table while a single, brighs lightbulb swung ovethead. He would ask: “Do you have any black friends?” “How many?” “Who?” “What are theit names?” And we, his obedient children, his soldiers in the battle for negtitude, would rate off che names of the black kids we called friends. (When we, tying co turn the tables, asked my father why his girlfriends were white, he would.aunch into one of his famously circular diatribes, which left us spinning with confusion. 1 only remember that his reasoning involved demographics and the slim chances of him meeting a black woman in the Brookline Public Library on a Monday after- noon.) But something must have sunk in, because my sister and 1 grew up with a disdain for chose who identified as mulatto rather than black. Not all mulattos borkered me back then, Ie was a very particular breed that got under my skin: the kind ‘who answered, meekly, “Everything,” co chat incessant ques- tion “What are you?" Populist author Jim Hightower wrote a bool called Theres Noehing in the Middle of the Road but Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadiillos, That's what mulattos tepresented. fo me back then: yellow stripes and dead armadillos. Some= thing to be avoided. I veered away feom groups of theim—chil- then, like myself, who had been born of intettacial minglings after dark, Instead, [surrounded myself with bodies datker ‘han myself, hoping the color might rub off on me. Lused to spy on white:people, blend into their crowd, let them think was one of them, and chen listen a they talked in smug disdain about black folks. It wasn’t something I had to search out. And most white people, I found, no matter how much they preach MLK's dream, are just as obsessed withup for me, and F listened, may skin ‘my stomach owisting in anger, as they re glee, as their faces went from eggs a crimson, to The Colo! report back to headquarters, where my friends and holler about how I was an undercover Negro. ‘k, they would ‘But you're different. lat was somewhere I iddy mid- OF being swallowed the arctic belly of never wanted to return, Thete was danger in dle stance, A danger of disappe: whole by the great white ast and didn't plan on returning ing as an investiga Hollywood, I even made would mean sure carcer ddeath—luckily i¢ was never published. Tt was an exp who is passing in Hollywood. I called it “And You Thought Was Just a Tanz —HALEAND HALE 9 Black Folts You May Not Have Known Are Black Mariah Catey Johnny Depp « Beales Michael Jackson Bacon Quivers Black Folks Who May Not Know They Are Black Matiah Carey Michael Jackson Kevin Bacon Carly Simon Robi Slash Eh ld Schwarzenegger Pat Black Folks You Kinda Wish Weren't Black OJ. Simpson, int have gone ove MUN. posse. But I put decent research and was proud of my results. Ie was neatly | news weekly, but the editors alked at the 6, for fear theyre thanking their lucky stars now that Esse ‘out. In this age of fluid 4 doesn't pay to be blacker chan thou, Just the lished in a local Her night, Iwas taken in for questioning by some als. They wanted to |Past." I tried to explain to eh why Uhad done it; denied my in as clear terms a5 possible maleicied to explain to them that in ive, blatant, dangerous, palpable. The ¢ ial was simply not an ade- quate response to racism. In my mind, there were only two choices—black or white, Those choices were not simply ab- stractions. had real consequences and meaning in my everyday world, Bue the MLN. uy it, They kept me at the nall white room with a bright light, Ta the comer, there was a video monitor showing Grover and a gang of todd jing chat old Sesame Sereet song over and over again: “One of these things is not like the other / one of che same...” One of the agents, a big guy with a blond Afro and orange-tinted glasses, kept shouting at me, hi across my face, “But why black? 1 sntify as white if you were gonna we thing? Isn't that reverse racism?” curaism should be about confronting rac not about plates of ethnic food. over gang was beginning to have its desired effect. I ing to sing along, despite myself. " ‘One of these the other..."” But I clenched may eyes to explain to the man, I told him that mixture felt to me like a smol fandamental issue of racism, lled of falafel), “Class analysis isnt quite as sexy asa grinning mulatto con golf course.” He even admitted to me racials, * him burning cross, he dis could never be reduced to cute food analogies (Wasp cooking, F've come to realize over the years, aloost anything because it has no flavor). My ence, I argued, was difficult not because thi ig» buc rather because things were so pai as well as the absurdity of race, were obvioi they pethaps weren't to those whose r was a given, Racism, I told him, is a Madonna, it changes its image every sans burning crosses and blatant ¢ When I was finished with my monologue, He told me I was imagining things. He told ime there was no such thing as “new racism.” He to ‘was gone, locking the door pletely empry except for a and a camera pointed at that long, agonizinand birch hhas been smudged the word scribbled in. T told the woman at the DMV— auburn eomrows, va fortable with that term “quadroon.” I told her as politely as I could, that ie re “quadroor :" she said, puffing on a Marlboro and flip through her latest issue of Vibe magazine. who they lee use ‘ion mixtures, you know. Otherwi far too confusing.” Then she had me which T barely read, still reeling from my ie video monitor. It said something about allowi se days, there ate M.N. folks’in Congréss and the ¢ House. They've got their own category o together as multi words for snow. In South Afi ig apartheid, they had. fourteen different types of coloreds. But we've decided on this HALEAND HALE B ‘one word, “multiracial,” to describe, in effect, a whole nation of diverse people who have absolutely no relation, cultural or otherwise, ta one ‘Variations on a‘Theme of a Mulatto Standard Mulatto: whi skin that is described as caramel tan in the raised in isola her, black father. Half-nappy hais, or she arrives home for Christmas vaca oncy, there's some black kid at the door.”) African American: The most common form of m North America, this breed is not often described as ive American. May come in any skin tone, background, Often believe themselves to b ical distance from the"original mixture, which was most often achieved through rape. Jewlatto: The second most prevalent for: North American continent, this breed is mac sling of Jews and blacks who met down South during in the commin- registering voters-DANZY SENNA r be more likely to 1 her kind, such as New York City (Greenwich Village) or Northern fornia (Berkeley). Have strong pride i fauna of Brown University. Famous Jewlattos: Lenny Kravitz and Lisa Bonet (and we can’t forget Zoe, their love Mestio: A taore complicated mixture, where either the black (white parent claims a thied race in their background (. Native American or Latino) and therefore confuses the chi ‘mestizo is likely to be mistaken for some other, to- cthnicity (Kalian, Arab, Mexican, Jewish, East In- Anierican, Puerto in fact will be of that tomally Gelasto: A mixture of Italian American and African American, this breed often lives in either a strictly Ie the father is white (. hood Usually identifies strongly with one side of the family over the other, but some- MALE AND MALE 25 s between the two sides of his cultures, and at this poin “ies the coop” and begins to practice Asian rel Gultural Mulatzo: Any American botn pos 7. See Wiggers ly rate breed of “blue-blood” mu age back to the Mayflower If femal entitled to membership in the Daughters of the Am: Revolution, Blulattos have been spotted in Caml cone and is cither a poet or a painter who disdains her ‘Wasp heritage. The father of th is almost always the Unlike the Jewlacto, the parents of the Bi divorced or separat remarties another blue-blood wom: ware: The Blulatto may seem cal be dangerous when angry approaching. es, but is raised to mother who as- before they were born, and raised Negrasto: May be any of identify as black. Negr similated into black them to understand “ to be removed from‘chance that they have a white lover hidden somewhere in their past, present, or furure. displayed for large ture of Asian, American Indian, Black, and Caucasian (thus the strange name). A show skills, the Cablinasian wil be, and can switch at answer to the name Black. A found only in Cal Mexican and Korean). Ni please contact the Benett joever the crowd wants him to Fa dime, Does not, however, wsin to other rare exotic mixes ino and Black; Samoan Promotions Bureau. Tomatto: A mixed or black person who behaves in a ‘Tom-ish” fashion. The Tomatto may be found in posit Power, being touted as a symbol of divers ues are mixed. If we are ever to see a first black president, he will most likely be a Tomatto, Fauclatto: 8 person impersonating a mulatto. Can be blacks or other hericage, but for inexplicable rea be of mixed heritage. See Jemirogui ‘Ho-latto: A female of mixed racial heri i, indeed, he strange hhave been cach of at lease mistaken for each of them, at different life. But somehow, none of them feel tight. Maybe that makes me a Postlato, ‘There are plans next weele ro paint the White House rain~ bow colored. And just last month, two established magazines, 1 checks on the census "ve learned to flaunt my mixedness rere the guests: (most of them white) ool about my flavorful background. T've found it's being a fetishized object, an exotic bird s racial landscape, And when they start taki > pure breeds, in that tke me squirm before the millennium, I let them know that I'm nothing to be aftaid of, Sometimes I feel ry old self (the angry black gic! ‘out, but most of the time I dont feel chicken with a bright, white smile,