In the context of the article on land record deeds in Rodgers Forge, it was interesting to read how reporter Libby Solomon chose to describe Sarah Denny's family: her husband black and their children biracial (“Rodgers Forge scrubs racist covenants from land records, becoming first Maryland neighborhood to do so,” May 31).
Whatever race means, African Americans (black people in America) do not constitute a race. If biracial means having ancestors drawn from long-separated populations of the world, then almost all African Americans are biracial. Tangentially, it should be noted that the covenants were not written to distinguish between "pure" black people and those who were not. They erred on the side of one drop.
This is tricky business. When writing about this subject, it helps to keep that in mind. Most writers do not.
Mel Currie, Baltimore