Afro-essentialists

The most virulent opposition to the notion that people of mixed race can carve out an identity that is neither black nor white is now coming from Afro-Americans. Mixed-ethnicity children who do not have a black parent are not subject to the same One Drop rule, but for those with a black parent, there is often intense pressure to cleave to the black, and accusations of racial betrayal if the individual chooses not to choose to be only black. Surely it is a significant irony that, one century after Euro-Americans were trying to write mulattos out of existence, the repression is now coming from Afro-essentialists. It seems we are witnessing another instance of the construction of the racial out of the denial of the interracial. (33)... 

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