How Census Results Could Redefine America's Definition Of Black

Jet, April 2, 2001

This Census data is of major importance to the growing minority population because state lawmakers use race data to reshape congressional, state, and local legislative district boundaries. And the federal government also uses the figures to divvy out more than $185 billion a year for everything from employment and housing laws to civil and voting rights enforcement.

Individual race and population data for each state will be released this week.

Jorge del Pinal, the Census Bureau's chief of special population statistics, notes that how America ultimately chooses to interpret the concept and the implications of a nation that no longer defines itself in such rigid racial terms is the big "question" that will only be answered over time.

"The nation is much more diverse in the year 2000 than it was in 1990," he says, "and that diversity is more complex than we've ever measured before."

RELATED ARTICLE: The Emergence Of A Multiracial Nation

* About 2.4 percent of Americans, 6.8 million people, consider themselves to belong to more than one race

* Mixed-race births now constitute the third largest category of births in the United States

* About 5 percent of Blacks, 6 percent of Hispanics, 14 percent of Asians, and 2.5 percent of Whites identify themselves as multiracial

* Three times more children than adults consider themselves multiracial

* Most multiracial individuals consider themselves part Black and part White