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The same holds true for Bill Miller, the oft-described “Native American singer-songwriter,” who is half German-American. Artistically, Mr. Miller cleaves to the Mohican “side” of himself, but he might just as well don leiderhosen and play polka. Alas the “One-drop rule” is still alive. As long as a person has one drop of blood that is anything other than Caucasian, that person loses the “privilege” of being known as white.
Thus we have Frederick Douglass, the son of a white plantation owner, taught in schools as a “black abolitionist.” Halle Berry is a “black actress.” And Tiger Woods — a combination of Thai, African, European and Native American roots — is a “black golfer.”
Much of the problem lies in the racial paucity of our language. We lack the proper terms for those of mixed ethnicity. Words like “mulatto” and “half-breed” are pejorative and unacceptable. Yet something is not quite right about using singe-race designations for biracial and multiracial people.
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