Conference

Check All That Apply: The Census and the Multiracial Population

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Abstract

The 2000 census allowed Americans for the first time to describe themselves as belonging to any combination of listed races, and the multiracial population of the United States will now become visible in new ways. The nation's racial demography will no longer be mapped solely in terms of discrete, mutually exclusive categories, and our single box. Anticipating this shift in awareness, the media has already produced many articles that prominently refer to the mixed racial origins of celebrities and to predictions that multiracial ancestry will become a common feature of American society. This session will explore how different definitions of being multiracial and attitudes toward acknowledging mixed-race origins can be expected to affect the 2000 census enumeration of the multiracial population.