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TIME: Almanac 1990
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1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
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090489
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09048900.038
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1990-09-22
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NATION, Page 17American NotesRACENo Place For Mankind
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.