After three years of careful study and heated argument, a Clinton administration task force has come up with a new way to count Americans by race. Instead of requiring everyone to choose one race on census and other government forms, the task force proposes allowing everyone to check off as many categories as he or she feels appropriate.
In reaching that recommendation, the task force rejected calls from the growing cohort of multiracial children and families to create a new "multiracial" category. It also rejected protests from civil rights activists who want to leave the current system alone.
Unfortunately, it could not even consider what ought to be the ultimate goal: to eliminate the category of race from government forms altogether.
Recent census forms have presented four basic choices: American Indian or Alaskan Native, Asian or Pacific Islander, black or white. Thanks to intermarriage and the continued bubbling of the American melting pot, however, an increasing number of mixed-race Americans do not fit into any one category.
Proponents of a multiracial designation complain that such Americans are forced on government forms to choose just one race, as if the rest of their family heritage counts for nothing.
Yet, as the task force correctly noted, there is no general agreement as to what "multiracial" means. Some people confuse race with ethnicity and even, in some cases, with religion. Under the circumstances, letting people choose more than one of the four existing categories seemed the more prudent course.
It is regrettable that the task force could not have taken the truly bold step of getting rid of government racial classifications altogether. Mexico took that step decades ago when its leaders determined that racial classifications had outlived their usefulness.
Unfortunately, they have not outlived their uses here. A wide range of federal assistance and civil rights programs are pegged to accurate racial counts. (Interestingly, owing to recent Supreme Court decisions, legislative redistricting, the census' original raison d'etre, ought to be largely uninfluenced by racial counts.)
Since neither the president nor Congress has shown much interest in carrying on this controversy on much longer, the task force recommendations appear headed for approval later this year, in time for the 2000 census. Eventually, perhaps, Americans may attain the ultimate ideal of equal opportunity and colorblindness under the law.