ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, March 1, 1997 TAG: 9703030004
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETSY BIESENBACH
THIS NEWSPAPER ran several news articles (Feb. 16 Horizon section, ``The attraction of magnet schools'') about Roanoke's magnet schools. These schools were set up in predominantly black neighborhoods to attract white students, to even out racial balances and to offer better educational opportunities to all students.
Those are laudable goals. However, the downside is that children who belong to the ``wrong'' racial group needed to achieve that balance are being turned away, regardless of their qualifications or desire to attend.
One article quoted a school official as saying that all applicants are carefully screened before they are allowed into the program. Screened for what? For their academic performance or for their appearance?
The question no one seems to be addressing is: Who decides who is black and who is white? This is a much more complicated issue than it seems. Traditionally in this country, anyone who has any African ancestry at all has been considered black, and that is neither accurate nor fair.
This is obvious in Jasmine Gunn's case, a biracial child who was denied admission to the school of her choice. Because she has African-American features and coloring, she is categorized as black, despite the fact that her mother is white and her father - like the majority of people in this country who are descended from African slaves - probably has some European ancestry, too. This child is at least as ``white'' as she is ``black'' - if not more so - regardless of her appearance.
The laws of inheritance are something of a roulette game. The children of parents with mixed ancestry can have any and all combinations of African and European features. If we continue to use the old-fashioned method of deciding who's what, Roanoke's school officials may someday find themselves in the ridiculous position of turning away a blonde, blue-eyed child, who happens to have an African-American parent, because the child is ``black.''
If this seems farfetched, take a walk downtown or to any shopping mall and you will see plenty of mixed-race couples and their offspring. Many people seem to be choosing their mates for reasons other than their appearance. And we may be in for a veritable population explosion of biracial children.
In the past, according to historian C. Vann Woodward, obviously mixed-race people - particularly those who were very light-skinned - were consigned to a neither/nor kind of existence. They were outcast from both black and white society. This still happens today. A few years ago, a biracial Roanoke teen-ager took his own life, partly because of his confusion about his identity.
In today's climate of growing acceptance of diversity and pride in one's heritage, it's unlikely that this generation of mixed-race children will allow itself to be swept under a rug. Some of these children may choose to identify with the racial group that doesn't necessarily match their appearance. And many of them may decide to lay claim to both their African- and European-American heritage, insisting on being classified as black and white.
This will open up a whole new can of worms. Would the child who is considered ``too black'' to attend a certain school today in the future be considered ``too white'' to qualify for scholarships and other programs intended to benefit minorities?
Maybe the question of who is black and who is white can be settled on a cultural basis: Those who are raised in the African-American culture, with all of its advantages and disadvantages, can qualify as black.
But what about biracial children who are being reared by white relatives, black children adopted by white families, and black families who are completely immersed in the mainstream ``white'' culture? Where would they fit in?
On the other side of the coin, I met a woman who grew up as a member of the only white family in an all-black neighborhood in Washington, D.C. To survive, she had to assimilate. She had the same living conditions as her black friends and the same educational opportunities. She spoke in a black dialect, and her child's father was black. Culturally, she was black. Although her white skin might offer her a few advantages, she would be automatically ineligible for programs designed to benefit someone with her background.
This brings us back to the question of who decides who is what? Doctors? School officials? Sociologists? Geneticists? Maybe the heads of modeling firms, who build their careers on assessing others' looks, could help out. But it seems somehow un-American to judge people solely by their appearance.
Let the families decide? But if the parents choose a category for the child at birth, who is to say that child will agree with that choice when he grows up? Can he then change his racial classification at that point, and change it back later if he wants to? What about the child who feels as though she is taking sides by identifying with one parent's racial group rather than the other parent's? It's a sure prescription for misery.
It seems that we, as a society, have two options. We can set up some sort of agency to establish a system of rating or grading people based either on appearance or inheritance. Then we would decide who gets which benefits according to their degree of whiteness or blackness.
Or maybe we can just forget the whole thing and accept each other as we are. Whatever we do, we need to do it soon. This is a problem that isn't just going to go away.
Betsy Biesenbach is a free-lance writer in Roanoke.
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