WASHINGTON (AP) ? In a sign of a diversifying America, more people aren’t willing to accept the standard racial definitions used by the Census Bureau.
When the 2010 census asked people to classify themselves by race, more than 21.7 million ? at least 1 in 14 ? went beyond the standard labels. Unpublished data from the Census Bureau show they wrote in such terms as “Arab,” ”Haitian,” ”Mexican” and “multiracial.”
The new figures are the broadest tally to date of such write-in responses.
The numbers show most write-in respondents are multiracial Americans or Hispanics who don’t believe they fit within the four government-defined categories of race: white, black, Asian/Pacific Islander or American Indian/Alaska Native.