What are the key takeaways from the article?How does the formation of racial identity in the U.S. Census play into American Imperialism?How does Census history impact race, class, and gender in the U.S.?How does it impact how we see ourselves?Do you think the Multiple-Race Response is beneficial? Why or why not?

1 25 Racial Identities in 2000 The Response to the Multiple-Race Response Option REYNOLDS FARLEY The greatest change in the measurement of tain the percentage of married couples in race in the history of the United States oc- which the husband and wife reported dif- curred in the census of 2000. For more than ferent races. As a result, studies of interra- two centuries, the federal statistical system cial marriage have become numerous (Fu had classified each respondent into a single 2001; Gilbertston, Fitzpatrick, and Yang race. That is no longer the case. According to 1996; Heer 1974; Hwang, Saenz, and the new rules, anyone may now identify Aguirre 1995; Model and Fisher 2001; with as many races as he or she desires. . . . Qian 1997; Rosenfield 2001; Sandefur and The efforts to change the one-race-only Mckinnell 1986; Schoen and Thomas classification system came from individuals 1989). Presumably, as the proportion of in- who believed that many Americans shared terracial marriages increases, so too will the multiple racial origins, but information percentage of children who think of them- about the size or growth of this population selves as multiple by race. was seldom presented. Indeed, no reliable Table 25.1 reports data about interracial data existed before the Census Bureau marriage compiled from the 1990 census pretested queries for the census of 2000. and the March 2000 Current Population Although a small number of studies at- Survey. Spouses were classified into one of tempted to estimate changes over time in five mutually exclusive and exhaustive cate- the frequency of interracial marriages gories: Hispanic, non-Hispanic white, non- (Kalmijn 1993, 1998), few data sets lend Hispanic black or African American, themselves to the measurement of rare non-Hispanic Asian or Pacific Islander, and events; until 1967, some states prohibited non-Hispanic American Indian. For these marriages across racial lines, and so there tabulations, Hispanic origin is treated as if are few data on the mixed-race offspring of it were equivalent to a race. interracial unions. However, public-use According to the table, the percentage of files from census data may be used to ascer- married couples in which the races of the Reynolds Farley, "Racial Identities in 2000: The Response to the Multiple-Race Response Option," in The New Race Question: How the Census Counts Multiracial Individuals, edited by Joel Perlmann and Mary C. Waters, pp. 33, 38-40, 44-49, 57-60. Copyright @ 2002 by the Russell Sage Foundation. 228