Racial Identities in 2000: The Response to the Multiple-Race Response Option

Abstract

Chronicles the formation & development of a multiracial movement in the US composed of married interracial couples designed to support each other & their mixed-race children. Ways in which groups such as the Assoc of MultiEthnic Americans (AMEA), together with civil rights activists, lobbied for changes in how racial information was collected & used are described. Their impacts on the dramatic change in the 2000 decennial census, which, for the first time, allowed respondents to select more than one category to designate their racial identification, are analyzed, & new federal policy stemming from the Office of Management & Budget's Directive 15 is reviewed. Newly available (Mar 2002) data from the 2000 census are presented to determine how many people actually utilized the new option in describing their race, & the geographic distribution of the multiple-race population by racial/ethnic group is graphically illustrated. The new enumeration yields 63 distinct races or racial combinations down to the lowest level of census geography -- the city block -- which, when tabulated according to Hispanic ethnicity, produce data for 126 different groups. New methods of analyzing & making use of this multirace data are described. 3 Tables, 6 Figures, 32 References. K. Hyatt Stewart