As a person of mixed ancestry, I have always been very sensitive to the prevailing attitudes toward people of color. I
remember a time around 1965, when the term race was nearly replaced with the term ancestry on government forms and
applications. For a short time questions about one's ancestry and religion were even deleted from paperwork. During this
time, concerted efforts were made by public officials and media people to use the term "ancestry" instead of "race."
Geneticists had scientific evidence that there is only one race, the human race; there is only one species to which all
people belong: Homo sapiens. This period of conscientious education of the public to eradicate misinformation about "race"
grew out of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and from key decisions from the U.S. Supreme Court. Presidents
Kennedy and Johnson spoke explicitly about the blot on the honor of the U.S. made by centuries of prejudice; even the
U.S. Congress, with the exception of a few senators and congressmen from southern states, joined them in asserting
equality for all human beings.

In 1967 I chose race as my topic for a paper in one of my college honors seminars. I had taken two semesters of
anthropology in my freshman year, and I already knew that "race" had been a hot topic among the physical anthropologists
for decades. I understood that the "one race, human race" theorists like Ashley Montagu had finally assembled
incontrovertible biological proofs which had swept away the nineteenth-century theories of distinct "races." But I wanted to
see exactly how this shift had come about because I knew that many people still were under the influence of
nineteenth-century notions concerning race.

I went to the University of New Mexico library and checked out all the books I could find on the topic of "race." As a person
of mixed ancestry, I could not afford to take my anthropology professor or Ashley Montagu's word for it. Segregationists
implied that liberals had seized power on campuses and that to mollify blacks and other "racial" minorities these liberals had
concocted false data to prove human equality. My parents and the people of the Laguna Pueblo community who raised me
taught me that we are all one family--all the offspring of Mother Earth--and no one is better or worse according to skin
color or origin. My whole life I had believed this, but now I had to test what I had been taught as a child because I had also
been taught that the truth matters more than anything, even more than personal comfort, more than one's own vanity. It
was possible that my parents and the people at home, along with people like Ashley Montagu, had deluded themselves just
as the segregationists had alleged. I was determined to know the truth even if the truth was unpleasant.

I don't remember all the books I read, but I do remember that Carleton Coon was the name of the leading physical
anthropologist whose books and articles argued the "racial superiority" of some "races" over others. I wondered then if Mr.
Coon's vehemence about the superiority of the white race had anything to do with his name, which I knew was a common
slur used against African Americans. Had the other children teased him about his name in the school yard? Was that why
Coon had endured censure by his peers to persist in his "race" research in physical anthropology long after the Nuremberg
trials?

I once read an article whose author stated that racism is the only form of mental illness that is communicable. Clever but
not entirely true. Racism in the U.S. is learned by us beginning at birth.

As a person of mixed ancestry growing up in the United States in the late 1950s, I knew all of the cruel epithets that might
be hurled at others; the knowledge was a sort of solace that I was not alone in my feelings of unease, of not quite
belonging to the group that clearly mattered most in the United States.

Human beings need to feel as if they "belong"; I learned from my father to feel comfortable and happy alone in the mesas
and hills around Laguna. It was not so easy for me to learn where we Marmons belonged, but gradually I understood that
we of mixed ancestry belonged on the outer edge of the circle between the world of the Pueblo and the outside world.
The Laguna people were open and accepted children of mixed ancestry because appearance was secondary to behavior.
For the generation of my great-grandmother and earlier generations, anyone who had not been born in the community was
a stranger, regardless of skin color. Strangers were not judged by their appearances--which could deceive--but by their
behavior. The old-time people took their time to become acquainted with a person before they made a judgment. The
old-time people were very secure in themselves and their identity; and thus they were able to appreciate differences and
to even marvel at personal idiosyncracies so long as no one and nothing was being harmed.

The cosmology of the Pueblo people is all-inclusive; long before the arrival of the Spaniards in the Americas, the Pueblo and
other indigenous communities knew that the Mother Creator had many children in faraway places. The ancient stories
include all people of the Earth, so when the Spaniards marched into Laguna in 1540, the inclination still was to include
rather than to exclude the strangers even though the people had heard frightening stories and rumors about the white
men. My great-grandmother and the people of her generation were always very curious and took delight in learning odd
facts and strange but true stories. The old-time people believed that we must keep learning as much as we can all of our
lives. So the people set out to learn if there was anything at all good in these strangers; because they had never met any
humans who were completely evil. Sure enough, it was true with these strangers too; some of them had evil hearts, but
many were good human beings.

Similarly, when my great-grandfather, a white man, married into the Anaya family, he was adopted into the community by his
wife's family and clans. There always had been political factions among these families and clans, and by his marriage, my
great-grandfather became a part of the political intrigues at Laguna. Some accounts by anthropologists attempt to portray
my great-grandfather and his brother as instigators or meddlers, but the anthropologists have overestimated their
importance and their tenuous position in the Pueblo. Naturally, the factions into which the Marmon brothers had married
incorporated these new "sons" into their ongoing intrigues and machinations. But the anthropologists who would portray
the Marmon brothers as dictators fool themselves about the power of white men in a pueblo. The minute the Marmon
brothers crossed over the line, they would have been killed.

Indeed, people at Laguna remember my great-grandfather as a gentle, quiet man, while my beloved Grandma A'mooh is
remembered as a stern, formidable woman who ran the show. She was also a Presbyterian. Her family, the Anayas, had kept
cattle and sheep for a long time, and I imagine that way back in the past, an ancestor of hers had been curious about the
odd animals the strangers brought and decided to give them a try.

I was fortunate to be reared by my great-grandmother and others of her generation. They always took an interest in us
children and they were always delighted to answer our questions and to tell us stories about the old days. Although there
were very few children of mixed ancestry in those days, the old folks did not seem to notice. But I could sense a
difference from younger people, the generation that had gone to the First World War. On rare occasions, I could sense an
anger which my appearance stirred in them, although I sensed that the anger was not aimed at me personally. My
appearance reminded them of the outside world where racism was thriving.

I learned about racism firsthand from the Marmon family. My great-grandfather endured the epithet "Squaw Man." Once when
he and two of his young sons (my Grandpa Hank and his brother, Frank) walked through the lobby of Albuquerque's only
hotel to reach the cafe inside, the hotel manager stopped my great-grandfather. He told my great-grandfather that he was
welcome to walk through the lobby, but when he had "Indians" with him, he should use the back door. My great-grandfather
informed him that the "Indians" were his sons and then he left, and never went into the hotel again.

There were branches of the Marmon family which, although Laguna, still felt they were better than the rest of us Marmons
and the rest of the Lagunas as well. Grandpa Hank's sister, Aunt Esther, was beautiful and vain and light-skinned; she
boarded at the Sherman Institute in Riverside, California, where my grandfather and other Indian students were taught
trades. But Aunt Esther did not get along with the other Indian girls; she refused to speak to them or to have anything to
do with them. So she was allowed to attend a Riverside girls school with white girls. My grandfather, who had a broad nose
and face and "looked Indian," told the counselor at Sherman that he wanted to become an automobile designer. He was told
by the school guidance counselor that Indians weren't able to design automobiles; they taught him to be a store clerk.

I learned about racism firsthand when I started school. We were punished if we spoke the Laguna language once we
crossed onto the school grounds. Every fall, all of us were lined up and herded like cattle to the girls' and boys' bathrooms
where our heads were drenched with smelly insecticide regardless of whether we had lice or not. We were vaccinated in
both arms without regard to our individual immunization records.

But what I remember most clearly are the white tourists who used to come to the school yard to take our pictures. They
would give us kids each a nickel, so naturally when we saw tourists get out of their cars with cameras, we all wanted to
get in the picture. Then one day when I was older, in the third grade, white tourists came with cameras. All of my playmates
started to bunch together to fit in the picture, and I was right there with them maneuvering myself into the group when I
saw the tourist look at me with a particular expression. I knew instantly he did not want me to be in the picture; I stayed
close to my playmates hoping that I had misread the man's face. But the tourists motioned for me to move away to one
side, out of his picture. I remember my playmates looked puzzled, but I knew why the man did not want me in his picture: I
looked different from my playmates. I was part white and he didn't want me to spoil his snapshots of "Indians." After that
incident, the arrival of tourists with cameras at our school filled me with anxiety. I would stand back and watch the
expressions on the tourists' faces before trying to join my playmates in the picture. Most times the tourists were kindly
and did not seem to notice my difference, and they would motion for me to join my classmates; but now and then, there
were tourists who looked relieved that I did not try to join in the group picture.

Racism is a constant factor in the United States; it is always in the picture even if it only forms the background. Now as the
condition of the U.S. economy continues to deteriorate and the people grow restive with the U.S. Congress and the
president, the tactics of party politicians sink deeper in corruption. Racism is now a trump card, to be played again and
again shamelessly, by both major political parties. The U.S. government applications that had used the term "ancestry"
disappeared; the fiction of "the races" has been reestablished. Soon after Nixon's election the changes began, and racism
became a key component once more in the U.S. political arena. The Republican party found the issue of race to be
extremely powerful, so the Democrats, desperate for power, have also begun to pander racism to the U.S. electorate.

Fortunately, the people of the United States are far better human beings than the greedy elected officials who allegedly
represent them in Congress and the White House. The elected officials of both parties presently are trying to whip up
hysteria over immigration policy in the most blatantly racist manner. Politicians and media people talk about the "illegal
aliens" to dehumanize and demonize undocumented immigrants who are for the most part people of color. The "cold war"
with the Communist world is over, and now the military defense contractors need to create a new bogeyman to justify U.S.
defense spending. The U.S.-Mexico border is fast becoming a militarized zone. The Army and Marine units from all over the
U.S. come to southern Arizona to participate in "training exercises" along the border.

When I was growing up, U.S. politicians called Russia an "Iron Curtain" country, which implied terrible shame. As I got older I
learned that there wasn't really a curtain made of iron around the Soviet Union; I was later disappointed to learn that the
wall in Berlin was made of concrete, not iron. Now the U.S. government is building a steel wall twelve feet high which
eventually will span the entire length of the Mexican border. The steel wall already spans four-mile sections of the border
at Mexicali and Naco; and at Nogales, sixty miles south of Tucson, the steel wall is under construction.

Immigration and Naturalization Services, or the Border Patrol, has greatly expanded its manpower and checkpoint stations.
Now when you drive down Interstate 10 toward El Paso, you will find a check station. When you drive north from Las
Cruces up I-25 about ten miles north of Truth or Consequences, all interstate highway traffic is diverted off the highway
into an INS checkpoint. I was detained at that checkpoint in December 1991 on my way from Tucson to Albuquerque for a
book signing of my novel Almanac of the Dead. My companion and I were detained despite the fact that we showed the
Border Patrol our Arizona driver's licenses. Two men from California, both Chicanos, were being detained at the same time,
despite the fact that they too presented an I.D. and spoke English without the thick Texas accents of the Border
Patrolmen. While we were detained, we watched as other vehicles were waved through the checkpoint. The occupants of
those vehicles were white. It was quite clear that my appearance--my skin color--was the reason for the detention.

The Border Patrol exercises a power that no highway patrol or county sheriff possesses: the Border Patrol can detain
anyone they wish for no reason at all. A policeman or sheriff needs to have some shred of probable cause, but not the
Border Patrol. In fact, they stop people with indio-hispanic characteristics, and they target cars in which white people
travel with brown people. Recent reports of illegal immigration by people of Asian ancestry mean that the Border Patrol
now routinely detain anyone who looks Asian. Once you have been stopped at a Border Patrol checkpoint, you are under
the control of the Border Patrol agent; the refusal to obey any order by the Border Patrol agent means you have broken
the law and may be arrested for failure to obey a federal officer. Once the car is stopped, they ask you to step out of the
car; then they ask you to open the trunk. If you ask them why or request a search warrant, they inform you that it will take
them three or four hours to obtain a search warrant. They make it very clear that if you ÒforceÓ them to get a search
warrant they will strip-search your body as well as your car and luggage. On this particular day I was due in Albuquerque,
and I did not have the four hours to spare. So I opened my car trunk, but not without using my right to free speech to tell
them what I thought of them and their police state procedures. "You are not wanted here," I shouted at them, and they
seemed astonished. "Only a few years ago we used to be able to move freely within our own country," I said. "This is our
home. Take all this back where you came from. You are not wanted here."

Scarcely a year later, my friend and I were driving south from Albuquerque, returning to Tucson after a paperback book
promotion. There are no Border Patrol detention areas on the southbound lanes of I-25, so I settled back and went to
sleep while Gus drove. I awakened when I felt the car slowing to a stop. It was nearly midnight on New Mexico State Road
26, a dark lonely stretch of two-lane highway between Hatch and Deming. When I sat up, I saw the headlights and
emergency flashers of six vehicles--Border Patrol cars and a Border Patrol van blocked both lanes of the road. Gus
stopped the car and rolled down his window to ask what was wrong. But the Border Patrolman and his companion did not
reply; instead the first officer ordered us to "step out of the car." Gus asked why we had to get out of the car. His
question seemed to set them off--two more Border Patrolmen immediately approached the car and one of them asked,
"Are you looking for trouble?" as if he would relish the opportunity.

I will never forget that night beside the highway. There was an awful feeling of menace and of violence straining to break
loose. It was clear that they would be happy to drag us out of the car if we did not comply. So we both got out of the car
and they motioned for us to stand on the shoulder of the road. The night was very dark, and no other traffic had come
down the road since they had stopped us. I thought how easy it would be for the Border Patrolmen to shoot us and leave
our bodies and car beside the road. There were two other Border Patrolmen by the van. The man who had asked if we
were looking for trouble told his partner to "get the dog," and from the back of the white van another Border Patrolman
brought a small female German shepherd on a leash. The dog did not heel well enough to suit him, and I saw the dog's
handler jerk the leash. They opened the doors of our car and pulled the dog's head into the car, but I saw immediately
from the expression in her eyes that the dog hated them, and she would not serve them. When she showed no interest in
the inside of the car, they brought her around back to the trunk near where we were standing. They half-dragged her up
into the trunk, but still she did not indicate stowed-away humans or illegal drugs.

Their mood got uglier; they seemed outraged that the dog could not find any contraband, and they dragged her over to us
and commanded her to sniff our legs and feet. To my relief, the strange anger the INS agents had focused at us now had
shifted to the dog. I no longer felt so strongly that we would be murdered. We exchanged looks--the dog and I. She was
afraid of what they might do, just as I was. The handler jerked the leash violently as she sniffed us, as if to make her
perform better, but the dog refused to accuse us. The dog had an innate dignity, an integrity that did not permit her to
serve those men. I can't forget the expression in her eyes; it was as if she was embarrassed to be associated with them. I
had a small amount of prescription marijuana in my purse that night, but the dog refused to expose me. I am not partial to
dogs, but I can't forget the small German shepherd. She saved us from the strange murderous mood of the Border
Patrolmen that night.

In February of 1993, I was invited by the Women's Studies Department at UCLA to be a distinguished visiting lecturer. After
I had described my run-ins with the Border Patrol, a professor of history at UCLA related her story. It seems she had been
traveling by train from Los Angeles to Albuquerque twice each month to work with an informant. She had noticed that the
Border Patrol officers were there each week to meet the Amtrack trains to scrutinize the passengers, but since she is six
feet tall and of Irish and German ancestry, she was not particularly concerned. Then one day when she stepped off the
train in Albuquerque, two Border Patrolmen accosted her. They wanted to know what she was doing, why she was traveling
between Los Angeles and Albuquerque. This is the sort of police state that has developed in the southwest United States.
No person, no citizen is free to travel without the scrutiny of the Border Patrol. Because Reverend Fife and the sanctuary
movement bring political refugees into the U.S. from Central America, the Border Patrol is suspicious of and detains white
people who appear to be clergy, those who wear ethnic clothing or jewelry, and women who wear very long hair or very
short hair (they could be nuns). Men with beards and men with long hair are also likely to be detained because INS agents
suspect "those sorts" of white people may help political refugees.

In Phoenix the INS agents raid public high schools and drag dark-skinned students away to their vans. In 1992, in El Paso,
Texas, a high school football coach driving a vanload of his players in full uniform was pulled over on the freeway and INS
agents put a cocked revolver to the coach's head through the van window. That incident was one of many similar abuses
by the INS in the El Paso area that finally resulted in a restraining order against the Border Patrol issued by a federal judge
in El Paso.

At about the same time, a Border Patrol agent in Nogales shot an unarmed undocumented immigrant in the back one night
and attempted to hide the body; a few weeks earlier the same Border Patrol agent had shot and wounded another
undocumented immigrant. His fellow agent, perhaps realizing Agent Elmer had gone around the bend, refused to help in the
cover up, so Agent Elmer threatened to kill him. Agent Elmer was arrested and tried for murder, but his southern Arizona
jury empathized with his fear of brown-skinned people; they believed Agent Elmer's story that he feared for his life even
though the victim was shot in the back trying to flee. Agent Elmer was also cleared of the charges of wounding in the other
case. For years, undocumented immigrant women have reported sexual assaults by Border Patrol agents. But it wasn't until
Agent Elmer was tried for murder that another Nogales INS agent was convicted of the rape of a woman he had taken into
custody for detainment. In the city of South Tucson where eighty percent of the respondents were Chicano or Mexicano, a
research project by the University of Wisconsin recently revealed that one out of every five persons living there had been
stopped by INS agents in the past year.

I no longer feel the same about driving from Tucson to Albuquerque via the southern route. For miles before I approach the
INS check stations, I can feel the anxiety pressing hard against my chest. But I feel anger too, a deep, abiding anger at the
U.S. government, and I know that I am not alone in my hatred of these racist immigration policies, which are broadcast every
day, teaching racism, demonizing all people of color, labeling indigenous people from Mexico as "aliens"--creatures not quite
human.

The so-called "civil wars" in El Salvador and Guatemala are actually wars against the indigenous tribal people conducted by
the white and mestizo ruling classes. These are genocidal wars conducted to secure Indian land once and for all. The
Mexican government is buying Black Hawk helicopters in preparation for the eradication of the Zapatistas after the August
elections.

I blame the U.S. government--congressmen and senators and President Clinton. I blame Clinton most of all for playing the
covert racism card marked "Immigration Policy." The elected officials, blinded by greed and ambition, show great disrespect
to the electorate they represent. The people, the ordinary people in the street, evidence only a fraction of the racist
behavior that is exhibited on a daily basis by the elected leaders of the United States and their sluttish handmaidens, the
big television networks.

If we truly had a representative democracy in the United States, I do not think we would see such a shameful level of
racism in this country. But so long as huge amounts of money are necessary in order to run for office, we will not have a
representative democracy. The form of government we have in the United States right now is not representative
democracy but "big capitalism"; big capitalism can't survive for long in the United States unless the people are divided
among themselves into warring factions. Big capitalism wants the people of the U.S. to blame "foreigners" for lost jobs and
declining living standards so the people won't place the blame where it really belongs: with our corrupt U.S. Congress and
president.

As I prepare to drive to New Mexico this week, I feel a prickle of anxiety down my spine. Only a few years ago, I used to
travel the highways between Arizona and New Mexico with a wonderful sensation of absolute freedom as I cruised down
the open road and across the vast desert plateaus in southern Arizona and southern New Mexico. We citizens of the
United States grew up believing this freedom of the open road to be our inalienable right. The freedom of the open road
meant we could travel freely from state to state without special papers or threat of detainment; this was a "right" citizens
of Communist and totalitarian governments did not possess. That wide open highway was what told us we were U.S.
citizens. Indeed, some say, this freedom to travel is an integral part of the American identity.

To deny this right to me, to some of us who because of skin color or other physical characteristics "appear" to fit fictional
profiles of "undesirables," is to begin the inexorable slide into further government-mandated "race policies" that can only
end in madness and genocide. The slaughters in Rwanda and Bosnia did not occur spontaneously--with neighbor butchering
neighbor out of the blue; no, politicians and government officials called down these maelstroms of blood on their people by
unleashing the terrible irrational force which racism is.

Take a drive down Interstate 8 or Interstate 10, along the U.S.-Mexico border. Notice the Border Patrol checkpoints all
vehicles must pass through. When the Border Patrol agent asks you where you are coming from and where you are going,
don't kid around and answer in Spanish--you could be there all afternoon. Look south into Mexico and enjoy the view while
you are still able, before you find yourself behind the twelve-foot steel "curtain" the U.S. Government is building.