What is your race? Caucasian. White. My parents are broke from China, so Asian. I'm

by rights show. African American and white. Oh that's a really hard question. Hispanic

isn't a race so I can't say Hispanic. I usually just put white and black when I do

applications and categorize under Caribbean. Mixed. Mixed up life. I'm Dominican so I

would just say like I'm not sure what I'm mixed with so I would just say mix. I don't

know it's confusing because I am Jewish but of course my skin is white so on surveys

things like that would probably have to write white. Hispanic descent Dominican I

guess. I feel like whenever somebody asks race it's always a confusing question.

Welcome to the show. I'm Kai Wright. Question number nine on the 2020 census asked you to

identify your race. And this past fall when the Census Bureau released our collective answers

to that question it revealed a tremendous shift in how Americans think about our racial

identities. First off the number of people who identified themselves as multiracial exploded.

But more striking to me at least the census declared that the second largest racial group

in the country today is quote some other race. Now I got to say as someone who has been

writing about race for 25 years that's that blew my mind. What's it mean? What motivated

people to check that box? And frankly should I care? I mean will there be material consequences

for say how we use census numbers as a result of this stat. As this election year heats

up we're all hearing more and more about congressional redistricting based on the 2020 census.

The process is of course wildly consequential and increasingly confrontational. You are

after all allocating power through manipulation of numbers. But redistricting is not the only

way the census doles out resources and power. It influences how public money is spent,

how and where businesses are developed, even how medical research is conducted. And on

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