Multiracial America is fastest growing group

Dilute racial identity politics?
"The significance of race as we know it in today's legal and government categories will be obsolete in less than 20 years," said William H. Frey, a demographer at Brookings Institution.

"The rise of mixed-race voters will dilute the racial identity politics that have become prevalent in past elections," he said.

Liebler noted a potential dilemma where a white student who is one-eighth Cherokee applies to college and seeks an admissions preference based on race and disadvantaged status. Should the college give the multiracial student the boost, if one-eighth of his family suffered a past racial harm but seven-eighths of his family were the perpetrators?

Big question for legal system
"It's a huge question for our legal system and our policies," she said. "Tomorrow we could have a legal case that challenges whether a multiracial person is a minority."

Census data also show:

• More than half of the multiracial population was younger than 20 years old, a reflection of declining social stigma as interracial marriages became less taboo.

• Interracial marriages increased threefold to 4.3 million since 2000, when Alabama became the last state to lift its unenforceable ban on interracial marriages. (The Supreme Court barred race-based restrictions on marriage in 1967.) About 1 in 13 marriages are mixed race, with the most prevalent being white-Hispanic, white-American Indian and white-Asian.

• Due to declining immigration because of legal restrictions and the lackluster economy, the growth rates of the Hispanic and Asian populations slowed last year to 3.2 percent and 2.5 percent, respectively, compared to multiracial people's 3.4 percent. The black population rose at a rate of about 1 percent; the white population only marginally increased.

No multiracial category on census
Currently, census forms allow U.S. residents to check more than one box for their race. But there is no multiracial category, and survey responses can vary widely depending on whether a person considers Hispanic a race or ethnicity.

"It's all about awareness," said Susan Graham, founder and executive director of California-based Project Race, which advocates for a multiracial classification on government forms. "We want a part of the pie chart."

The 2008 census estimates used local records of births and deaths and tax records of people moving within the U.S. The figures for "white" refer to those whites who are not of Hispanic ethnicity. For purposes of defining interracial marriages, Hispanic is counted as a race.

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