Dos Lives

Are you challenged when it comes to ‘checking boxes’? If so, you’re not alone. In fact, the Dos Lives team could probably check every box out there and we’ve covered this topic before on both the site and in our weekly podcast. This year’s census will give the nation’s more than 308 million people the opportunity to define their racial makeup as one race or more, according to an article in USA Today. This has been reported before, but USA Today takes a closer look at what this will mean for many multiracial Americans. Below are a few selections from the article:

This month, the Census Bureau will remind Americans that racial classifications remain an integral part of the country’s social and legal fabric while, at the same time, recognizing that racial lines are blurring for a growing number of people such as Harvey. The government will give the nation’s more than 308 million people the opportunity to define their racial makeup as one race or more.

The agency expects the number of people who choose multiple races to be significantly higher than the 2000 Census, when the government first allowed more than one race choice. Responses to this year’s survey will provide for the first time a glimpse at the evolution of racial identification: Those who were children in 2000 and were identified as one race by their parents may respond differently as adults today and select more than one.

“It’s a historic opportunity to see how things have changed or how things have not changed,” says Nicholas Jones, chief of the Census Bureau racial statistics branch. Multiracial Americans are “one of the fastest-growing demographic groups in the country. There’s an increasing number of children born to parents of different races.”