9/19/09

"Psychological confusion is caused by the inability to reconcile different elements in my own personality..."

http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/atlas/censr01-110.pdf

"About 42 percent of those who have checked more than one race on the US Census forms are under age 18."

Your mother is Bengali and your father is Czech. You are presented with a form that asks you to choose one out of the four racial categories listed: Asian; African American/ Black; Caucasian; and Latino/ Hispanic. Which do you choose? Which side of your family do you honor and which one do you brush to the side?

One of EIRIC™'s founding principles is the belief that a well-rounded multiracial child is one that is encouraged to explore, celebrate, and connect the colorful dots that make him a whole person. We have a kindred spirit in Project RACE. We support their mission "for a multiracial classification on all school, employment, state, federal, local, census and medical forms requiring racial data." We wouldn't ask a child to choose between his right and left hand so why are we forcing him to choose one ancestry line over the other?

Your thoughts are invaluable to us.

Where do you stand on this subject? Are you a multiracial individual who has had to choose? How do you self-identify? How does the world identify you? If you have children, how do they self-identify? How does the world identify them? What conversations (if any) have you had with them regarding this topic?


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