ABSTRACT
The challenge for America lies in determining how to move away from the fallacy of race while remaining aggressive in the battle against racism. As an aspect of civil rights compliance monitoring, federal racial classification ironically works against the former goal while serving the latter especially well. From the multiracial advocacy perspective, a separate multiracial check-box would be the most favored choice, because it would grant fully equivalent status to the multiracial category. A brief review of the multiracial proposals will help establish the context of the 1997 alternative. On July 9, 1997, Office of Management and Budget (OMB) published the recommendations of the interagency committee it had commissioned to review possible changes to the standards for classifying federal data on race and ethnicity. OMB's 1997 decision represents perhaps only the beginning of newer and potentially more divisive debates over race and federal racial categorization.
