American Notes RACE

Mahin Root's father is white; her mother is black. So when the 14-year-old girl tried to register this year as a junior at Page High School in Greensboro, N.C., she faced a problem: a form that asked her to specify her race. Instead of filling in the blank, she left the question unanswered. School officials politely suggested that she make a choice, since the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights requires all public school systems to submit racial data on their students. Mahin, who had attended private schools since moving to Greensboro in 1985, just as politely declined. She and her parents, both born in the U.S., follow the Bahai religious faith. Explained her mother Brenda Mahin: "Our family believes very strongly in the oneness of mankind. There is but one race -- the human race."

That satisfied school officials, who let Mahin enroll, but not the Washington bureaucrats. They advised Greensboro schools attorney William Caffrey that Mahin should be racially classified by using a "rule of reason" or an "eyeball" test. Caffrey did not consider that helpful. Finally he was told that the Education Department is trying to develop a policy on how to count children of interracial marriages. School officials are now waiting for Washington to apply its own rule of reason.