Biracial Families See a Road to Equality Paved With Diversity

They are loathsome things--those standardized IQ, achievement, college entrance, aptitude tests with their soft pencils and skinny answer boxes, their fishy questions and their tedious tyranny over our high school days and our fate thereafter.

And they are worse yet for Roland Hill, age 17.

Before reaching the first question on the tests, he must consider their standardized taunt. The check-box: Black? White? Asian? Other?

“I don’t feel like an Other,” the shy young man says with a shrug, and looks away.

Roland, his 13-year old sister Ronita, mom Rita and dad Ron have gathered over dinner to discuss their life amid the hot sparks and scalding vapors of America’s volcano: Ancestry. Blood lines.

The family tree. Brood stock. Pedigree. Otherwise known, contemporarily--and usually with fear, fever or grave doubt in the voice--as race relations.

Roland and Ronita are the children of one parent who is white and the other black.

In this racially charged city, they are the sunny, eager, smiling yield of the mythical old American melting pot, at the very time when everyone seems so bone-achingly tired of old, fruitless myths.

So, what should America strive for on the road to equality?

In 1992, candidates for President hardly give glance to the issue. Other Americans ponder it, argue it, weep and sometimes fight over it. But finally, a few people, like the Hills, embody the question with their very lives.

Roland’s answer: Not less diversity, but more diversity. “I’m not black. I’m not white.” Don’t regard him as a homogenized blend, please. More an alloy. Put a check-box on the test forms “biracial.”

Complicated, you say. So what?

Does it really matter, such an ethnic distinction as biracial? It does to Roland.

Says Rita, “There is no doubt that having a multicultural society is going to be more difficult, going to ask more of all of us.”

We talk and we eat and we talk, but none of us knows if we make the slightest progress. I ask, can we venerate cultural distinctions without creating cultural contention? Long, painful pause. The sounds of chewing.

Well, the Hill family is practicing assimilation with their very blood and lives, how about that for a goal?

“The melting pot is and always has been a joke,” says Rita.

“Assimilation sounds too much like one side gives up too much,” says Ron.

OK, what about this for a question: What would the society of your dreams look like, because even without asking it’s plain you understand its nightmare.

“I’m not sure what it will look like . . . maybe just one huge fiesta,” says Rita.

I regret the questions. If you fell in love in Missouri 20 years ago when it was a taboo to do so, as Rita and Ron did, and if you are trying to raise an interracial family, earn a living and raise your kids, follow the new NFL season, then why should you bother yourself with abstract utopianism?

Back down to earth.

How about suggesting one productive step the country can take?

Our conversation comes to life.

Teach diversity, the Hill family says.

Rita, a librarian: “You hear over and over again, how we need better science and math teachers so we can compete in the global economy. Well, if your teachers don’t get better history to teach our children, then math and science won’t matter.”

Ron, a county employee who works with troubled youth: “Everybody goes past a teacher. Even before you get kicked out of school, you go past a teacher. . . . That may be your first and best hope for understanding the world around you. . . . “

Ronita, who finished seventh grade by teaching a lesson to her teacher: “I did a report on blacks in early Europe. It’s not something you hear a lot about. . . . I got an A+. . . . “ The teacher liked it so much he told the Hills he was incorporating it in his regular history lesson plan.

Across town, associate professors of social work Lois and Robert Pierce sit in their living room and bring their experience to bear on the subject. They have been married 22 years. When they began dating, Missouri law forbade their marriage because they, too, are a mix of black and white. They also have two high-school age children.

I am thick-headed, and I cannot resist the utopian questions. What should America strive for?

Lois: “I don’t think we know where we’re going, or how we’re going to put this together. But if we keep experimenting maybe we’ll come across something that works. . . . “

She pauses. And then continues: “When I was young they used to talk about America being split-pea soup. All the ingredients go in and you get this blend. Now, they talk more about America as beef stew, you combine the meat and the carrots and the onions. You have a dish, but you still have meat and carrots and onions in there.

“Maybe what we’re creating in this family, and I’ve never thought of it this way, is the gravy. Maybe that’s where we’re going.”

Robert: “Assimilation? No. What we represent is not good for everyone. In no way am I advocating interracial marriage. . . .

“I’m happy being a carrot. But just give me opportunity. As an African-American I have to accept people are afraid of me. When I walk, people cross the street to get out of my way, women put their purses on their shoulders. I have to accept that. But give me access to opportunities. If we do that, we’re headed in the right direction.”