Breaking The Chains
by James Landrith
[email protected]

Special to TLE

Once again, California is in the midst of a firestorm with regard to that favorite of American controversies — race.

As a man who can check more than one "racial" classification box, an "interracially" married husband and father of two "multiracial" children, I can say without reservation say that "racial" classifications, born by the early government of this nation to further the hideous enterprise of slavery, are an evil aberration.

They eat at the soul of a person. They force people to abandon the sanctity of the individual in favor of group-think, leaving in its wake an unhealthy "us vs. them" mindset based solely on arbitrary, government created boxes.

The alternative to abandoning this historically wretched practice, is to keep "boxing in" our children based on a completely unscientific program of government enforced mental segregation, modeled on the desires of slavers and subjugation of human beings for profit.

Contrary to the lies being spread by those in favor of these classifications, they were not created for the purpose of tracking discrimination or unscientific methods of eyeball classifying for medical purposes. Their origins lay in much more horrendous designs. Through their support of slavery era racial classification schemes, opponents of Proposition 54 are continuing the work of those who engaged in the disgusting trafficking of human beings for profit. Do not be deceived; these classifications were not created for civil rights purposes. Their continued existence is a disturbing reminder of a period in American history that shames her still today.

Many despicable individuals have used these classification schemes over the years in their campaigns of racial intolerance and terror. One of the worst being Walter Plecker of Virginia who used racial classifications to persecute and disenfranchise multiracial individuals all over the state for years. Plecker even attempted to spread his disgusting campaign of terror into other states via letters and intimidation. Without these classifications, his campaign of harassment and intimidation would not have been possible. These categories, used to enforce slavery laws, disgusting anti-miscegenation laws, the one-drop rule, and the internment of Americans of Japanese descent were not created for the greater good of humanity.

As someone who can check more than one box on government forms that collect racial data, I am forever aware of their origins. I can't escape the thought that these boxes were used to segregate and persecute some of my own ancestors. Those opposed to scrapping the boxes are lying when they assert otherwise. This last vestige of our evil slavery heritage must die a necessary death. It is time to break with the past and let this evil go.

Racism isn�t ingrained or instinctive. It is learned. As such, it can be unlearned, and better yet, never taught via these classifications, which are forced on the very youngest of our citizens at the time they are most vulnerable to such programming — elementary school. The proponents of such unscientific classification schemes reduce a person to the status of a mere serf at the mercy of a myriad different special interests who have no real interest in the person's well-being, only in how including that individual in their number increases their ability to manipulate social and political will.

It is an offense to free will and justice to force such a mindset on children via the State. Those who witnessed the recent efforts to reform Census classifications to reflect the changing demographics due to the rise in interracial marriage and multiracial births since the 1967 Loving v. Virginia decision, know exactly to what I am speaking.

The world has changed and is continuing to change, contrary to the wishes of those who want to maintain these slavery relic classifications. Proposition 54 will succeed and it will spread to other states until it eventually achieves critical mass forcing a much needed change on the national level. Further, it will awaken those arrogant elites who live to force the one-drop rule and other racialist designs on their fellow Americans, be they white supremacists on the right or racialist ethnicity advocacy groups on the left. The paradigm has shifted and it is time to shed this last vestige of American slavery.

If we truly wish to defeat racism we must first deal with the race- think born of such classification schemes. In order to further that goal, we must abandon yet another vestige of our pitiful slavery heritage — racial classifications.

James Landrith is founder, editor, and publisher of The Multiracial Activist and The Abolitionist Examiner and publishes a daily libertarian political weblog. He receives e-mail at: [email protected]

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