Look in the mirror and what do you see?
When the census form arrives in mailboxes this week, the complex answers to that question will help paint America’s evolving portrait, with repercussions for a decade and beyond.
For most people, the census will be a simple 10-minute process. For others in this nation of Barack Obama, Jessica Alba, Tiger Woods, Halle Berry, Apolo Ohno and Joakim Noah , questions of mixed race and ethnicity will prompt soul-searching over how to categorize themselves among a small but growing minority in the national fabric.
The census is a montage of self-portraits that will detail the ways a nation of nearly 309 million has changed since 2000, including migration, family size and housing patterns. While that data is easier to quantify, critics say a rote list of boxes and checkmarks can’t adequately reflect all the racial and ethnic transformations.
On Chicago’s South Side, the daughter of a black father and white mother will check both. Her brother will check black. Their children will write in “mixed” or “biracial.”
A Brazilian immigrant will mark a box that says Hispanic, though she doesn’t accept the label. A woman from Jordan won’t check Asian, though she is. A man born to a Japanese mother and white father considers himself white only at census time.
Another respondent may check four racial boxes like the multi-ethnic Woods, who invented his own identifier: “cablinasian,” a mix of Caucasian, black, Indian and Asian. Obama jokingly labeled himself a “mutt,” but he won’t find that box on the form.
Some bemoan the absence of a separate “multiracial” box to check. And beyond race and ethnicity, the form won’t account for the principal factor by which many Americans identify themselves: There is no category for sexual orientation, so some gay activists plan to protest by affixing pink stickers on the envelope.
“The lesson is that, like reality, like our lives, census data are messy,” said Jorge Chapa, a University of Illinois professor who has consulted for the Census Bureau. “But the messiness does reflect the growing diversity and our complexity as a people. It’s closer to the truth.”
Over the years, the census form has changed to reflect racial realities. A historic switch for the 2000 census allowed Americans to click more than one category, meaning that the son of a Kenyan father and a white woman from Kansas can now officially be both races. About 6.8 million Americans, 2.4 percent of the population, checked more than one racial box.
A Brookings Institution survey has shown a doubling of mixed-race marriages over the last two decades. A Pew Research Center report last month documented that younger generations were far more tolerant of racial mixing than their elders.
People who mark more than one race box are not counted more than once in the overall population tally. But they would add one additional person to each racial category they choose.
Susan Graham, executive director of California-based Project RACE, which advocates for multiracial families, said a hodgepodge of individual boxes is not sufficient to describe her children. She is white and was married to an African-American, and their children have a singular identity as multiracial American.
“The term ‘multiracial,’ we believe, is important and should be on the form. Words are important,” Graham said.
Researchers have found that people’s self-identities can be fluid: Over the course of their lives, they can more strongly identify with various parts of their ancestry at different times.
Kenneth Prewitt, who directed the 2000 census, said some civil-rights groups have resisted the concept of checking more than one race out of fear that it will dilute their influence.
Prewitt said the “Hispanic” term, one used mainly in the U.S., is especially confusing. The term, which the Census Bureau first used in 1980, describes an ethnicity pertaining to Spain but can include white, black and other races. He would include one catch-all category merging Hispanics with other race identifiers, or eliminate all boxes and have everyone write in their preferred identities.
After all, is someone whose family originally is from Egypt an African-American? Does an Iranian have much in common with a Filipino, both Asian-Americans?
“We’re basically taking a leftover measurement system and forcing it to do tasks that it is ill-equipped to do,” he said.
The Smith-Upton family
Kiela Smith-Upton and Eben Smith are siblings, children of a white mother and a black father. Nevertheless, they will fill out the census form differently.
Smith-Upton, 39, said she will check two boxes — African-American and white. Her brother, 45, who says people often mistake him for Puerto Rican, will identify himself only as African-American.
“At different times in our lives, we both have seen ourselves differently,” said Smith-Upton. “Now I feel very balanced. I am both, and I don’t have to apologize or explain it.”
For their children, who are deciding for themselves, the issue of race is more complicated.
Smith’s two daughters, both very light-skinned, often tell people they are “mixed,” according to their mother, Holly Campbell, 46, who identifies herself as Louisiana Creole. On the census, the girls will check “some other race” and write in “mixed.” Campbell, whose bloodline includes black and French, will check black.
Smith-Upton’s children, whose fathers are African-American, change their views often, their mother said. Ajani, 7, used to say he was white because he identifies with his white grandmother and likes rock music. More recently, he’s told his mom he wants to be identified as African-American.
Anana, 10, was concerned that the census form includes the word “Negro” after the box also listing African American and black. She decided initially to check “white” on the census because she does not identify with “Negro.” Later, she chose to follow the lead of her sister, Alettie, 14, and write in “biracial.”
“It’s not something we sit down and talk about,” said Smith-Upton.
Amani Ghouleh
Amani Ghouleh could logically check three racial boxes on her census form — but she doesn’t like any of them. She’s Arab-American, and no box directly accounts for that.
“I know about the form. I have already studied the form. I am still confused. I scratch my head,” said Ghouleh, 37, who was born in Jordan and arrived in the U.S. in 1993.
On other forms, the woman with light-brown hair and light eyes checks “white.” In her home country, that’s how she sees herself.
“The correct specification for me is white, but (Arab-Americans) are a minority in the United States,” she said.
Jordan is technically part of Asia but she wouldn’t think of marking “Asian-American.”
“It’s part of Asia, but when you say ‘Asia,’ you think of somewhere like China,” said the newspaper editor from Oak Lawn with deep ties in the community.
Finally, Ghouleh gets to the “Some Other Race” category. She sees it as an unsatisfying catch-all but plans to check it because it is the only place she can write in the additional detail of “Arab-American.”
“Right now, there’s no way to feel like you’re counted. We’re hoping that by next time, Arab-Americans will have a box,” she said.
The Millers
Rachel Miller, 26, plans to “queer the census” this year.
She and her girlfriend have persuaded Miller’s parents, with whom the couple live, to seal the household’s census envelope with a hot pink sticker that reads “everyone should be counted.”
The stickers are provided by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in an attempt to get the Census Bureau to add a question about sexual orientation on the form.
The Miller family plans to check both lesbian and “straight ally” on its sticker . It took some convincing, Miller said, because her mother was “skeptical about affixing anything to an official federal document.” But Miller, who has been in a five-year relationship with Lindsey O’Brien, says the GLBT community needs a “real picture of what we look like and where we are.”
Without a sexual orientation question on the census, there is no way of knowing what percentage of the population identifies as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.
“The census captures broad demographics but not complexities,” Miller said. “It’s the one picture we have of the nation’s makeup and we are invisible.”
While the Census Bureau is weighing potential changes to the relationship and marital status categories on the form, it has yet to consider adding sexual orientation, said Martin O’Connell, the bureau’s chief of fertility and family statistics.
“The census doesn’t really adapt quickly. It is a clunky, slow instrument in identifying the way we organize our lives,” said Jaime Grant, the policy institute director at the task force. “This isn’t something they can twiddle their thumbs and hand-wring about.”
Brandon Lee
In every aspect of his life, Brandon Lee, 22, is Asian-American. But when it comes to the census this year, he plans, for the first time, to acknowledge his white side as well.
Lee, whose mother is Japanese and whose father is white, said it is difficult for him to identify personally with being white. But he will check that box as well this year.
“The ability to check multiple boxes is incredibly important,” said Lee, a community organizer in Chicago. “Even if I don’t personally identify with both sides of my family, I still feel it is part of who I am.”
Lee said it is important to track the numbers of multiracial people in America because so much is at stake.
“That statistic is going to continue to rise,” he said. “And I would like to be counted in that number.”
The Dantzlers
Geraldine Dantzler, 74, grew up during a time when her neighborhood helped define her race as much as her skin color. So for years, while living on Chicago’s Near South Side, she checked “black” on the census form.
This year, however, she will claim what she believes is her true identity — American Indian.
In recent years, Dantzler began to explore her family tree and learned that she is a mixture of several ethnic groups. She said her ex-husband is “Negro,” the term she prefers over African-American or black.
“I identify more with Negroes because I grew up around them, but I don’t look Negro at all,” said Dantzler, whose father was Cherokee and black and whose mother was Cheyenne, white and black. “Most people look at me and say I’m white. But I feel very proud being Indian.”
Dantzler’s son, James Alexander, 50, said he will check three boxes — black, American Indian and white. His sister, Vynessa Alexander-Williams, 52, said she will check black.
“I have always considered myself black, regardless of the fact that my mother is white,” said Alexander-Williams. “It does not matter your lineage, if you have a black parent, you are black.”
Mariana Sgarbi
Mariana Sgarbi, an immigrant from Brazil, hits her first roadblock on Question 8, where the census form asks if she is of Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin, interchangeable terms for many Americans.
She wonders: Is one out of three good enough?
“When I look in the dictionary, Brazilians are not Hispanic. We were not colonized by the Spanish, we don’t speak Spanish, we don’t have the Spanish culture at all.”
“Now Latino? I definitely think we are. I consider myself Latina but not Hispanic,” she said.
So she will check the box and write in an additional detail: “Brazilian.” The form itself doesn’t include Brazilian as an example of Latino, as it does with Mexican, Cuban and Puerto Rican.
Then, when it comes to race on Question 9, Sgarbi will check “white,” although many Americans consider Latinos a racial minority. Her bloodlines are entirely from Portugal, as far as she knows, which makes her little different than someone from France or Italy in her mind.
Sgarbi thinks the U.S. is now moving closer to Brazilian society, which she says is more used to interracial families.
“We are a people who mix a lot,” Sgarbi said.
