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DENVER, COLORADO, April 17, 2002: When it comes to race and how to define it, the subject has become controversial in America. The 2000 census form allowed Americans to choose from 126 racial and ethnic categories and they could pick more than one. Results of the census showed that around 7 million Americans consider themselves to be a blend of two or more races. Scientists, biologists, and anthropologists think that the concept of race no longer has validity. However, the average person on the street still identifies people according to race. A multiracial advocacy group called Project Race in Tallahassee, Florida, has been lobbying state governments to add “multiracial” as a category on government, school and medical forms. So far six states have adopted the new category. Evelyn Hu-DeHart, chair of the ethnic studies department at the University of Colorado at Boulder says, “Some young people are claiming race when they don’t have to. In the bad old days, you would do your best to ‘pass’ as white because (being another race) was such a stigma.” Now according to Hu DeHart, young people want to claim race because they want to identify with a deeper heritage and culture. Nina Roberts, a Ph. D. student at Colorado State University, whose father is white and whose mother is a blend of three other races, agrees that, “Environment, far more than genetics, defines race and the result is a learned culture.” So the definition of race becomes further blurred as the U.S. census 2000 found that people now define their own race in terms of what they believe and practice. However, when comparing the census of 2000 with the one done in 1790, we see how far the American people have come. Back then the population was divided into three groups — free whites, slaves and all other free persons (e.g., the American Indians).

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