ABSTRACT
In the 2000 U.S. Census individuals were given the historic option of “selecting
one or more race categories to indicate their racial identities” (U.S. Census 2004).
Of the 217 million people who chose “white alone” or in combination with another
race, 211 million white respondents chose only white as their racial identity. Put another way, about 2.5 percent or 5.5 million individuals marked white and some other race to signify a multiracial identity, while 97.5 percent of this population
responded they were white only (U.S. Census 2004). Based on the U.S. Census, few whites defi ne themselves as occupying more than one racial identity. However,
if you are one of the approximately 60 million Americans who claimed to be of
Irish or Italian ancestry in the 2000 Census or one of the near majority of Latinos
who self-identifi ed as white in the census, your ability to claim white as a single
identity, and not have that assertion contested, is a relatively new phenomenon.
