
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 11, 1993                   TAG: 9308110015
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

CENSUS SCRUTINIZED

Susan Graham says the U.S. Census needs a new category to describe her children's race.

Their mother is white, their father is black and that makes Ryan, 8, and Megan, 5, "multiracial," said Graham of Roswell, Ga., an Atlanta suburb.

"More and more parents all over our country are instilling pride in our multiracial children," she said. "Can we succeed if our children leave home only to be denied an equal place in our society?"

Her request is just one of many being heard by the House subcommittee that oversees the census as it wrestles with the increasingly complex question of how to identify Americans.

The discussion has pitted the American ideal - that race shouldn't matter - against the reality of a history in which it has made a big difference in how people live, work and see their roles in the community.

The nation's rich racial and ethnic diversity strains the limited racial categories - black, white, Asian and Pacific Islanders and American Indian or Alaskan native - into which the Census attempts to place all Americans.

For example:

Hawaiians don't want to be lumped in the next census, as they were in 1990, with Asian or Pacific Islanders.

"As a result, there is the misperception that Native Hawaiians, who number well over 200,000, somehow `immigrated' to the United States like other Asians and Pacific Island groups," Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, complained at one hearing.

Akaka wants Hawaiians put in the same category as American Indians and Alaska natives. American Indians disagree, testified Rachel Joseph, interim executive director of the National Congress of American Indians.

"The differences in status, relationships with the federal government, history, culture and circumstances are too great for this `one-size-fits-all' treatment," she said.

There have been complaints from Arab-Americans, classified as "white" by the Census.

"We believe that this designation is inadequate and that the race choices in general have become less clear and less meaningful and have placed our community at a disadvantage as we approach the turn of a new century," testified Helen Samhan, deputy director of the Arab American Institute.

by CNB