Interracial Family Organization

The Census is Coming!

// March 15th, 2010 // written by Laura Stillman

AUTHOR BIO:

Laura Stillman is the wife of Keenon Stillman. They have been high school sweethearts/BFFs/roomates/boyfriend-girlfriend/husband-wife over the last 26 years. Between them, there are seven biracial (black/white) children ranging in age from young teens to mid-twenties. She is one of the co-founders of the Interracial Family Organization. She works full time as an Administrator and Director of Clinical Services at a Home Care agency and has a personal blog at I Am the Glue, where she blogs about balancing work and parenting, raising an autisic child, managing a large family, wrestling teenagers to the ground, and keeping a healthy relationship with her husband in the middle of the chaos.

 

The year 2000 was the first time that multiracial people were allowed to choose more than one box to mark as their race on the census forms. This month the census will begin again.  Soon we will see if changes have been made in America when it comes to how many people are more than one race and how they personally identify themselves racially.

 

The newspaper, USA Today, came out with an in depth article covering the census, the increase of biracial/multiracial Americans and the rise of interracial marriage :  Multiracial no longer boxed in by the Census   Sadly, the comments below the article about “mutts” and “Heinz 57 humans” remind us we have not come up with a vaccination for ignorance.

However, the voices of multiracial people are being heard more often now. They are not a few isolated individuals. They are saying that they will identify themselves exactly as who they are. They no longer need to follow the rules that others have imposed on them. They are becoming the rule makers.

Please take the time to fill out the 2010 census. When it comes to identifying the race(s) of the individuals in your home, say exactly all that apply. Let’s get an accurate picture of America.

If we, as the human race, want to ever start down a path where intolerance, prejudice, racism, bigotry, judgment, and hypocrisy are grounds for sitting in the penalty box of life, we first have to understand that “different” is what we are suppose to be and that no one is pure anything, except purely full of poo.

The composition of America is ever-changing. Now, it is up to us to make America recognize those changes.

Census 2010: Fill it in. Send it back!