Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, May 13, 1993                   TAG: 9305130101
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MELANIE S. HATTER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

RACE CHECK

If your parents are a mixed-race couple you may be inclined to check "other," which may require a written explanation. Or you'll check "black" because that's how society categorizes your skin color.

Charles Byrd, editor of Interracial Classified - a monthly newsletter - wants to "compel the U.S. Census Bureau to establish a multiracial category by the year 2000."

"An affirmation of `interraciality' is not a denial of blackness, nor is it `trying to be white' " Byrd said. "It is simply facing up to and being proud of what is real for the interracial individual."

He says he has about 500 paid subscribers to his newsletter, which costs $20 for 12 issues. About 50 interracial support/advocacy groups exist nationwide.

Calculating how many interracial people there are in the country would be virtually impossible. Some would deny it, others will say history shows that everyone is mixed, and others will have no idea.

But if society were more accepting of multiracial individuals perhaps biracial people won't feel so pressured to conform to one parent's culture and deny the other.

For Interracial Classified, write P.O. Box 185, College Point, N.Y. 11356-0185 or call (718) 961-4581.