'How, sir, does one become a brahman?'

[The brahman]: 'When one is well-born on both the mother's and the father's side, and is of pure descent for seven generations, uncriticised and irreproachable with reference to birth, to such an extent does one become a brahman.'

[The Buddha]: 'Whoever ... has arrived at the destruction of birth, him I call a brahman.

--Sutta Nipata (III.9), in K.R. Norman's The Rhinoceros Horn and other Early Buddhist Poems.

The one-droppers are dismayed at Buddhism's defense of the mixed race, accusing it of reinforcing the unreality of race. Yet the single theme of mixed-race Buddhism is the resistance to the imposition of race and racial categories. The dictum which has been singled out for criticism ("Biologically, mulattos are equally white as black.") actually laid the foundation for an explicit invalidation of absoluteness in race: "Hence, for the mulatto, these [black and white] can only be ideological identities."

In particular, mixed-race Buddhism stresses that black identity is a social construct. Thus it must be the use of the term "unmixed whites" which is taken as evidence of an ignorance of biology. But to an educated person, the term "unmixed whites" would refer to that particular profile of gene frequencies and mutations which constituted the European population at the time Columbus set sail for the New World. It is this genetic profile which the one-drop rule defends as pure by seeking to maintain, and which a mixed-race Buddhism clearly rejects in rejecting the one-drop rule; but which one-drop apologists in opposing mixed-race Buddhism and defending the one-drop rule, clearly also supports.

The reason for using such a term should be obvious: thereby the word white is de-monopolized, giving mulattos an equal claim to it. Mixed-race Buddhism clearly places mulattos within the white race, thus destroying the idea of its purity. On the other hand, it is the one-drop rule which supports the purity of race -- non-African ones by demanding that all the mixed race who possess African ancestry cannot be seen as belonging to the populations from which their other ancestries were drawn; and supports the notion of an African racial essence by forcing a black identity on the mixed race.

One-drop apologists claim that "Biologically there are no clear racial distinctions whatsoever." Certainly mixed-race Buddhism does not emphasize racial difference; but it also does not deny it. There is thus no inconsistency with a statement such as "Biologically, mulattos are equally white as black." Or do these advocates of hypodescent mean that there are no genetic differences between Europeans and Africans? That is patently false. Geneticists actually quantify this difference -- as between the other major races -- as 0.012 percent of all human genetic variation. Small, yes. But not nonexistent.

Logically or not, this boundary is rigidly observed in quoting genetic profiles of individuals. Thus the profile of President Clinton is quoted as being "characteristic of one out of 7.87 trillion Caucasians." Relative to the accuracy in this figure, 0.012 percent is a boundary as wide as an ocean. However, it is also true that the figure of four or so billion (the non-Caucasian population of the world) would have no impact whatsoever on the ridiculously large number of 7.87 trillion. In other words, the margin of error in 1 out of 7.87 trillion will be much greater than 4 billion.

The above quote places the President solidly within the Caucasian race, despite the fact that he has admitted to having Native American ancestry. But this ancestry is not viewed as having an indissoluble essence, as is asserted for African ancestry. Relative to a Caucasian identity, it is merely a matter of degree or proportion of Native American ancestry that is important. With African ancestry it is a matter of kind; the two ancestries are exclusive, in whatever proportions. In other words there is the assumption that Native American traits can be bred out once combined with Caucasian traits. This is genetic reality. On the other hand, the one-drop rule assures us that African ancestry cannot. Like a hard, indivisible kernel, this ancestry, tagged by the one-drop rule becomes impervious to the laws of inheritance. Yet in truth it does obey genetic reality and like all other ancestries can be bred out once combined with any other. But even when it is in fact bred out, the one-drop rule still keeps track, counting the mere memory of blood.

The genetic difference between the races works out to 12 in 100,000 genes or probably more meaningfully to about 1 in every 100,000 of the 3 billion nucleotides (these latter being the more elementary units of the DNA molecule.) Surely the greatest mountain ever made out of this mole hill is the one-drop rule. For this rule would erect upon the smallest fraction of this already infinitesimal fraction the entire superstructure of African culture -- its characters, its behaviors, its sensibilities. And this despite the fact that genetics research has found that African populations are so varied as to validly be seen as constituting not one, as the one-drop rule would have us believe, but many distinct races.

The recent findings of genetics research allow us to construct a new paradigm of race. We have already noted that African populations -- historically thought to be uniform -- are really many distinct racial groups. Conversely, Europeans, who have always thought of themselves as racially exclusive, are quite validly seen as Asian. Their vision of themselves as an exclusive race is as conceptual as the definition of their homeland on the western peninsular of Asia as a separate continent. But old paradigms die hard. And in the one-drop rule, the folk view of African populations as a unified race finds its eternal seed. Geneticists have not risen up to denounce this denial of biological truth. They definitely cannot claim inspiration from their predecessors who, realizing biology's unified principle in evolution, stalwartly defended it against the dogma of Creationism.

Modern Biologists are more fittingly compared to T. D. Lysenko, who denied that chromosomes and genes played any role in inheritance and held that acquired characteristics can be inherited, thus validating the Soviet credo that all of human nature and society were malleable by willpower. In their willingness to coexist with hypodescent, modern biologists have made their peace with the Free World's own counterpart to Lysenkoism. A clear distortion of science to support the state's credo, the one-drop rule is the principle of laissez faire applied to biology, for superstructure (cultural character in this case, economics in the other) is generated not by intention but by an invisible, inherent demiurge.

To assert an equality of biological inheritance is to correct the total imbalance of the one-drop rule which gives the false impression that the mixed race fall squarely within an "African race," and thus have no claim to their non-African ancestries. Equal amounts of genetic material are contributed by each parent to a common offspring. That is elementary biology. Of course, most of the genetic material of any two parents will be held in common, even when these parents come from widely disparate populations. Nevertheless, genetics research can identify the genetic material that is peculiar to one population and hence can decipher the combination -- through miscegenation -- of this material with that of another population. In a recent study in the Southwest, researchers were able to disprove the claim of the local Hispanic population that its ancestry was purely Spanish. Research not only showed that this population contained genetic material originating in the local Native American population, but that this material had specifically come from the female gender, meaning that Spanish males had almost always taken native females as mates and not native males taking Spanish females as mates.

Population specific genes are not different in any essential way from the mass of shared genes. Hence they cannot have any special affinity for one another; mutations do not show a preference for any particular portion of the gene pool. Thus population specific genes would not congregate in any one location. If they did, they would more often than not be inherited as a unit and thus race would be a very definable and identifiable phenomenon. Either you had it or you didn't. Instead, population specific genes are scattered among the infinitely greater quantity of genes that all populations have in common. And since scientific evidence shows that these are inherited in a 50/50 ratio, the laws of probability would make population specific genes heritable in roughly the same proportion. The fact that phenotype does not always bear this out reflects the properties of dominance and recessiveness of genes.

Population genetics makes the basic assumption that there are population specific genes and then actually goes and finds these. Of course, no educated person would expect to find a genetic feature peculiar to Asians or Hispanics, for example. These are clearly cultural categories and include widely disparate biologically defined populations. But there are genes specific to large segments of the Indian population and likewise to large segments of the Chinese, the two major groups under the umbrella term Asian. Just as there are genes specific to large segments of the American Indian, black and Spanish populations, the three major groups under the umbrella term Hispanic. These gene mutations would have originated in the ancestral populations of each group. Though not every feature would occur in every single individual within a particular population, they would be circulated within this population as a whole. Populations also exhibit different FREQUENCIES of genes held in common with one or more, or with all, human populations.

When population geneticists identify a genetic feature of the African-American population, one would expect that they were using as reference a profile (and sampling) of genetic frequencies and mutations that would have existed no later than the time Columbus encountered the New World; or at least a profile that excluded gene flow -- the acquiring of genetic material through intermarriage -- that would have occurred after this fateful encounter. But this may not be so. In the 1998 Pulitzer prize-winning article for explanatory journalism, the reporter quotes a genetics researcher as surprised to find that there are "African-Americans" who are genetically closer to whites than they are to other "African-Americans." The researcher then explains this by invoking the greater genetic diversity of continental African populations to other singly designated populations like Europeans. But could African-Americans -- a population so ravished by miscegenation -- be meaningfully compared to ancestral African populations? Instead, was the researcher comparing (and confusing) similar things -- European genetic material in mixed and unmixed contexts? I wonder if this researcher would be surprised to find that Hindus in northern India were genetically closer to Europeans than to Hindus in southern India? Certainly the researcher could not be surprised to find that north Indian Hindus were genetically closer to Europeans than to their fellow "Asians" the Chinese! The point being that both "African Americans" and the original populations of the Indian subcontinent have inbred to a great extent with European populations. To then go and find the greater genetic affinity of some members of this population with Europeans is pointless. As for the Caucasian nature of some (continental) African populations: this is not the discovery of contemporary genetics. Old-fashioned Anthropology asserted this (of Ethiopians and Somalis) a long time ago. It seems more plausible that the researcher falsely interpreted the data because of a belief in the one-drop rule.

The practice of placing quotes around the words race and racial, acknowledges that there is some sense in which this notion is valid. And this is in a BIOLOGICAL/GENETIC sense: when it refers to particular gene frequencies and mutations which occur among different human populations. What does not exist is racial essence, or an absolute quality to biological traits. But it never needed modern Western science to debunk this myth. This was done by the Buddha 2500 years ago.

It is this hoax which the one-drop rule now seeks to resurrect. This rule does not locate its identity in genetics. If it did it would abolish itself through simple mathematical proportions. It does not locate its identity in culture: the culture of the one-droppers themselves bears no relation to their identity. Hence they fabricate a fiction, a spiritual entity, to possess which they propose a moral action one does not perform but merely assumes is one's due because of the immoral actions of others.

It is the one-drop rule alone which mythologizes race, creating the fallacious and negative aspect of this notion. The race that remains in biology is innocuous; science employs it daily. Similarly, the race that is defined as culture -- for example, Hispanic -- is harmless. The one-droppers' denial of race is just another guise of the one-drop rule which denies that the mixed race have any claims to a white heritage and consequently that a black identity can exist without any physical or mental traits.

Race, in its negative aspect, is not a thing but a relationship, specifically between biological traits and culture. If the one-droppers gave any thought to the concepts which they handle so carelessly, they would see that there is nothing offensive in biological and genetic differences by themselves. What gives offense is the idea that genetics and biology are inseparable from culture. Thus, Western civilization and the political and cultural hegemony that Europeans enjoy are seen as an inevitable outcome of their genetic makeup. And the historically disadvantaged political and social condition of Africans is likewise seen as an inevitable result of their genetic makeup and biology. In this view there is no escape from cultural context, this being irrevocably tied to one's birth.

The rejection of race as a biological phenomenon is pointless. Instead, what has to be rejected is the idea that the genetic differences observed between different populations determine culture. No one has yet found any CAUSAL relationship between genetic traits and the complex behavior that creates culture. It is an observable fact that complete cultural assimilation routinely occurs across the widest racial divides. Surely it was this observation which, in the early part of the century, convinced European Anthropologists to abandon the notion that there is a one to one correspondence between biology and culture. This alone can be what science means when it says that it has disproved race.

To quote, as the American Anthropological Association does, that "there is [almost] as much genetic variability between two people from the same racial group as there are between two people from any two different racial groups," is no proof at all against race. The negative aspect of this notion does not deny a largely shared genetic reality. What it does is to give certain traits, HOWEVER FEW THESE ARE, the ability to determine culture -- its quality and quantity, or lack thereof. And science (if one needs any more proof than direct perception) does prove that these few differences exist. Thus mixed-race Buddhism does not deny race. What it denies is what rationality denies, that there is any connection between genetics and culture.

Such a connection, however, is the fundamental assumption of the one-drop rule: that African ancestry (however remote, however undetectable) can never lose a specific cultural character. This is meant as an indictment of mulattos, but surely the one-droppers indict themselves in the bargain. For this rule makes of every one of them a mimic, a caricature of European ways, of its languages, its dress, its education, its cultural forms. How ironic, that in invalidating this rule, mixed-race Buddhism defends the one-droppers themselves from the charge of futility.

Mixed-race Buddhism holds the one-drop rule to be as morally indefensible as slavery. In fact, it was this rule which provided the underpinning for the one-droppers' own enslavement. For it was the purported inability of African ancestry to produce a viable culture which, in the minds of the arch one-droppers, justified slavery within the nurturing arms of European civilization.

Yet the one-droppers call mixed-race Buddhism a tirade. But it is just an eloquent rebuttal of the absoluteness of race.

Faced with the unrelenting force of its arguments, they say the mixed race have over-invested in dissenting from what does not exist. Yet they try with all their might to keep the mixed race yoked to this same unreality! One-droppers were never consistent.

They say mixed-race Buddhism shows a deep attachment to labels. They are of course referring to the word one-dropper which is used with such devastating effect. Yet this "label" rejects racial stereotyping. It defines people by their beliefs and actions, in other words by their character. And this is what they themselves are preaching to the mixed race. They obviously have not thought clearly about anything. Obviously the coming of dharma to the mixed race unnerves them. Yet why should it, when it employs the nonracial language they claim to desire?

But it is quite clear why they are so irate at this fateful marriage. It is because the nonracial language which it employs has exposed the morally untenable behavior and beliefs of those who hide behind a facade of race. They see clearly that this raceless vocabulary will mainstream the mixed race because it is blameless, because it can be taught to the most innocent children and because it can be spoken with the utmost integrity.

The one-droppers take refuge in what is clearly an inauthentic racelessness. Their words claim otherwise, but the logic which holds them together proves that they are apologists for the status quo. They cherish their racial categories so much that now that these are demolished by a mixed-race Buddhism, they cannot help but erect a new one -- this time of a metaphysical Buddhism -- with the hope of invalidating Buddhism's defense of the mixed race.

But an emotional expression, with which the one-droppers charge mixed-race Buddhism, can in no way determine that one is not Buddhist. The only legitimate claim to a Buddhist identity is the commitment to the understanding that there are no essences in persons. This is what differentiates Buddhism from all other systems of thought. Love and charity, and all such good things, because they are equally shared by all faiths, do not make one a Buddhist. But to reject the one-drop rule is to surely take up the mantle of the Buddha.

Clearly mixed-race Buddhism has upset the one-droppers' ideas of what a Buddhist is. But if, as they seem to think, Buddhism is all about accommodation then maybe they can enlist the help of some of those emotionless Buddhists from whom they got their ideas to try and poke holes in this reasoning. Mixed-race Buddhism would be happy to entertain them. Though, as they can clearly see, the investment in this dharma is tremendous. There is no way it can be easily undermined. But their friends could try. They themselves have failed.

It would have been so easy for the one-drop puppets and puppet-masters to have allowed a few to dissent. It would never have skewed anyone's figures or defiled anyone's purity. But they were determined to push this to a crisis. Master and slave, they were resolved to preserve an unholy alliance. Now the floodgates are opened. There is no turning back. This has gone to history. Lines drawn in dharma can never be erased. Let the one-droppers reap their just deserts.

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