With which race do you identify? (Mark all that apply)

From the Population Reference Bureau's Questions on Race in the Census (2010)

The blog Sociological Images recently featured a post about the past and present of the US Census, detailing the change from 200 years of enumerators to the past 40 years of mail-in surveys. The ultimate effect of the sudden shift away from sending government workers out to collect a family's personal information with a *knock knock knock* on their door was... an explosion of race.

Not literally an explosion, as race had existed in the United States since its foundation. Rather, certain races suddenly multiplied while others shrank in number, undergoing changes to the racial population on par with a major ethnic cleansing. Only no such occurrence took place. The truth was that the enumerators had classified the US population's race based on sight-- a first impression. But in 1970, people were free to self-identify their race, causing the astronomical changes that augmented the Native American population by 110%, for example. No longer were people just white, black, or brown.

This post got me thinking about first impressions of race today, 40 years after the aforementioned change, and their implementation on the most recent census. A good friend of mine (check out her blog here) is half-Indian, half-Norwegian, giving her a slightly-darker-than-olive-but-lighter-than-black skin tone. I have been approached by countless classmates over the last five years asking me whether she is Puerto Rican, Arab, half-Black, or Mediterranean. This, along with the changes to the census, obviously proves that you can't categorize a person's race and ethnicity merely by sight.

Speaking on a personal level, I was treated as French in France, was assumed to be Italian in Italy (I got babbled at a lot, but they stopped when I responded with a petrified look), have been asked if I am Russian, Irish, German, and more. Sure, they're all predominantly white countries, seeing as I am clearly a white person. I admit, lots of white people look like they can be from anywhere. But if it's so difficult to discern from sight, why am I not afforded the chance to tell the US government with what race I identify? If I were given the chance on a census, I would call myself what I am, Eastern European or Czechoslovakian, over just "white".

Ultimately, since the census has made such important changes as to allow self-identification, why is it that "white" is still a category? Isn't that as culturally insensitive as calling everyone from Central America, Latin America, India, and the Middle East, "brown"? I don't think of myself as being the same as a person from France, England, Russia, Finland, or Greece; I have very different cultural and ethnic roots that help to define my identity within America. Different races of people from the Asian continent have nine categories on the census, which is a fantastic change.Yet why are all of us white people (with subtle but definite differences in appearance) still lumped together? Thoughts? Post them below!