Mixed race census designation

Hello,

I'm interested in people's opinions on the new option to declare oneself of mixed race in the US census. This has been of personal interest for a long time, because my father's second marriage was to an African American woman and I have half-sisters who don't really identify fully as either black or white. But more recently I've learned that my own whiteness has an asterisk, since I descend from four families who were classified as "free mulatto" in colonial records but white thereafter.

It's probably better for American society as a whole if the "white" proportion shrinks, so in light of my new genealogical information I intend to claim mixed racial heritage in 2010. But I understand that this new designation had some resistance from African Americans who saw it as threatening, perhaps because it would shrink the number who call themselves A-A. I will do my part to counter that by leaving the "white" population, but understand the demographic-political objection.

What's your opinion?

This article contains a summary of the arguments pro and con:

http://interracialvoice.com/zack.html

CYD

For me, the most compelling argument AGAINST adding a mixed race category is economic, i.e., reducing the number of people who previously identified themselves as African American could reduce federal spending for important social programs.

That said, as a multiracial, born-and-bred citizen of these United States, I embrace my entire heritage: black, white, Jewish, European, Native American. Therefore, I applaud that the census may finally be adding a category that I can identify with.

If you want to get technical about it, based on the discovery of Lucy back in 1974, we're ALL black anyways. I look forward to the day when we can do away with all racial categorization in the United States.

The census has changed many times in the way it counts people.

The current system allows an individual to choose as many ancestries as they like, and if one of those ancestries checked off is African-American, then that person is counted as a black person from the standpoint of all Federal programs. By checking off multiple ancestries, we all get a clearer idea of the heritage of our country. If we create a blanket multiracial category, it reduces the amount of information we have about ourselves, and would reduce the number of black people for the purpose of estimating dollars for various programs. There is no point to it of practical value.