The Clinton administration adopted new racial categories on federal forms, allowing people for the first time to identify themselves as members of more than one of the previously recognized racial categories. This move came as a rejection of a separate "multiracial" category that critics argued would have been less informative to demographers tracking such data. But still unclear is how people exercising the option to check off more than one category will be counted on the census and thus in the drawing of congressional districts.

A parallel drive for a new category for Middle Eastern Americans made little headway because no agreement could be reached on whether the group would include both Arabs and Jews.

[Ed.: Multiple racial identities became a prominent issue when golf champion Tiger Woods refused to identify with a particular racial group. Woods, who is part Thai and black with a little Caucasian and American Indian thrown in, identifies himself playfully as "Cablinasian." A close friend and adviser ascribed quasi-messianic value to his racial mix: "He is the Chosen One.... The world is just getting a taste of his power ... because he's qualified through his ethnicity to accomplish miracles." Some cope with the issue by further fragmenting existing racial categories. At Stanford, students formed a group called the Half-Asian People's Association, one of whose members cited lack of an accurate check box on forms as evidence of "discrimination against people of mixed heritage."]

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