The next census will let people check off more than one racial category,
a process destined to reshape ideas about race in America.

Forget Tiger Woods.

Even though he's probably America's best- known multiracial person - a guy who once told Oprah that he is "Cablinasian" because he is part Caucasian, part black, part Indian and part Asian - the golf pro who grew up in Cypress might be too old to be a true example of our racial future.

He is, after all, 23.

Instead, for a peek at what America will look like in the next century, check out the parking lot at Turtle Rock Preschool in Irvine.

There, most school-day mornings, a few dozen toddlers pop out of their parents' luxury cars, minivans and SUVs. The well-groomed parade could be a United Nations meeting in miniature - Asian kids, Hispanic kids, white kids, African-American kids.

And, most of all, multiracial kids.

Well, probably most of all.

Nobody knows for sure.

"I don't know if (multirace kids) is the most common race here or not, to be honest, but they definitely are right up there," said Kristen Bold, the school's assistant director.

Turtle Rock, like most private schools, doesn't ask its customers about race or ethnicity. Even if it did, the school probably wouldn't track multiracial kids. In America, hardly anybody does.

Until now.

The next census, slated to begin in about a year, will include new rules that figure to drastically change many things - the national head count, the growing gap between rich and poor, and, perhaps, our definition of race.

Orange County - as it has, quietly, for the past 30 years - figures to be at the leading edge of America's changing racial identity.

Instead of picking a single race, as previous censuses have required, Americans will be allowed to check off all the race boxes that apply to them.

The result is expected to be a first-time look at the size and nature of a previously uncounted minority - multiracial people.

The new rules aren't perfect.

Census Bureau officials say the option to check off more than one race creates 32,000 possible racial combinations, up from 15 in 1990. (Bureau officials add that most multirace people probably will pick only two racial components, drastically reducing the statistical nightmare.)

Also, some groups oppose the push to recognize multiracialism. They say the new head count might hurt minorities by diminishing equal-opportunity programs and crippling the government's ability to monitor civil-rights laws and voting districts.

Still, some who advocated recognition of multiracialism are at least partly pleased. They wanted a "multirace" box on the census, but, short of that, the new rules are a first step toward broad recognition of the fastest growing segment of America's population.

Demographers, the number-crunching scientists who study population change, also are happy. They say the new strategy should give the country its first glimpse of its true racial composition.

"This census is sort of a landmark event," said Ken Chew, a demographer at University of California, Irvine, who has studied interracial households in California.

"If it's trouble to define what race is, it's trouble squared to define what multirace is," he added, laughing.

For now, Chew and others can only guess at how many Americans will identify themselves as multiracial. Estimates range from 2 percent to 8 percent.

But many demographers do agree on two things:

First, Southern California - and particularly Orange County - figures to be the center of the multiracial boom in the mainland United States.

Second, when counting only younger children, the category of "multiracial" (a group that was technically illegal in many parts of the country until the late 1960s) might be the leading minority group in Orange County.

What it all might mean is anybody's guess. But, ready or not, experts say many traditional ideas of race are about to change forever.

"The racial classifications in this country have, until now, been bipolar - black and white, and, more recently, nonwhite and white," said Margo Anderson, a census expert and professor of urban studies at the University of Wisconsin.

"Now, the questions are these: What's the new melting pot going to include, and what's it going to look like?"

Probably a lot like Nile Koegel.

Koegel, 6, has a white father and a Chinese-American mother. Demographers believe that when the next census figures are tracked, white-Asian kids like Koegel will be the biggest sub-group among younger multiracial children in Orange County.

Demographers list two reasons - immigration and racism - for the prediction.

About 400,000 Asians have moved into Orange County or been born here over the past 29 years, accounting for about 13 percent of the current population. (Hispanic/Latino, an ethnicity that includes people of virtually every race, accounts for about 27 percent of the population. Caucasians are about 58 percent, and African-Americans account for about 2 percent.)

Also, the cultural bias against white and Asian marriages isn't nearly as strong as taboos against mixing of blacks and whites or, to a lesser extent, Hispanics and whites.

"The taboo against race mixing is stronger in some parts of the country than in others, and it's stronger based on the skin-tone differences in the races," said Doug Bachtel, a demographer at the University of Georgia who has studied the population of Atlanta and its surrounding suburbs.

"In Southern California, there's not as much of a bias against an Asian person and a white person having a child as there would be in, say, the Northeast.

"And there's certainly not as strong a bias against that as you'd find against a black-white child in the South," Bachtel added.

Bill Gayk, director of the Center for Demographic Research at California State University, Fullerton, believes the recent trajectory of Orange County's population virtually dictates a huge multiracial population locally, particularly among the toddler set.

In 1970, he notes, Orange County had a population of about 1.4 million. At the time, the county was about 91 percent white. Over the next 25 years about 1 million people came here who didn't identify themselves as white - mostly Asian and people of Hispanic origin.

The migration, over the course of about 30 years, turned Orange County, one of the whitest urban centers in America, into one of the most diverse, Gayk said.

The next jump, he adds, could already be under way.

"You're probably already starting to see the results of all this in the schools and pre-schools," Gayk said.

Nile Koegel isn't paying much attention yet to issues of racism and racial identity. Still in kindergarten, he doesn't yet use the word "race."

"He probably could understand and maybe even identify himself as multiracial if we explained it to him. But it's not really something we've thought much about yet," said Nile's father, Jeff.

"We want him to learn all about his cultures, and to identify himself," Jeff added. "But we want him to learn about a lot of cultures, and to open himself up to all kinds of people.

"He's lucky. His background might make it easier for him to do that."

Ryan Graham isn't "other."

He isn't now and wasn't in 1990, when Graham, then 5, was counted in the last census.

In 1990, as in other national head counts, multiracial people such as Graham faced several unappealing choices. You could ignore part of your heritage and check off the race you most closely resembled. Or you could check off "other," a category with virtually no meaning.

Or you could defy authority and either pick multiple race boxes or pick nothing at all. If you chose that, you could expect a visit from a Census Bureau worker who would "eyeball" you - categorize your race based on their interpretation of your appearance.

"It wasn't a good situation," said Ryan Graham's mother, Susan Graham, who, along with Ryan, now 15, co-founded Project RACE (Reclassify All Children Equally).

"My husband is black. I'm white. And I didn't see any place on the form for my children."

Graham, a Florida-based writer then living in Atlanta, called her local census office to discuss the problem.

"They said I should just list him as my race because I'm the mother. When I asked why, they said it was the only way they could be certain of at least one race . . . they couldn't be certain about the father.

"Needless to say, I was totally insulted," Graham said.

An activist was born.

By the mid-1990s, Graham and her son had gained congressional support for the cause of changing the way multirace people are counted on the census. They even forged an alliance with then House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who wants to eliminate the race categories on the census as a way to limit federal funding of social programs.

Graham doesn't agree with that. She says the census should be changed to include the word "multiracial" in the race category and hopes that Ryan will continue to push Project RACE until that happens.

"It's a separate identity," Graham said.

"Maybe it's not an identity that older people feel comfortable with, but it is an identity that a lot of people my son's age identify with.

"It's who they are."

So what happens when love and statistics meet?

Demographers say babies - lots of multiracial babies.

"Kids - that's who is driving the multiracial change nationally," said Jorge Del Pinal, the Census Bureau's assistant chief for special population statistics.

In 1990, there were 2 million children younger than 18 who reported being "of a different race than one or both parents," according to census figures. Though Del Pinal and other demographers say that doesn't give a true count of multiracial people, the figure does hint at things to come.

"Whatever we find in the next census, the velocity of the multiracial growth, and racial change in general, will pick up considerably in the next century."

Will it mean tolerance?

Maybe.

Young people, regardless of race, already are living increasingly multiracial lives.

A 1995 poll by Teenage Research Unlimited found that children and young adults are virtually colorblind in their choices of entertainment, food and clothing.

White suburban kids, for example, are the biggest consumers of hip-hop and rap music. In the past few years, children of all races consistently recognized Michael Jordan as their favorite sports star, and, recently, multiracial entertainers (Mariah Carey) and athletes (Derek Jeter) have gained popularity.

Three years ago, the clothing company Tommy Hilfiger reported a boom in sales from two seemingly opposite demographic groups; African-American teens and 40-plus Caucasians living in the South.

The youthful push for a multiracial perspective also is touching intellectual lives.

Gallup polls taken throughout the 1990s found that high school students of all races want more information about Muslims, African history, Asian history and Hispanic culture. The same age group has consistently reported a higher tolerance of interracial marriage than older groups.

Multiracial people are hardly new in America. The sexual practices of three centuries of slavery in North America ensured that many African-Americans and whites who have had family in this country for more than a few generations can't trace their genealogy without finding some mixing.

But multiracialism - the notion of recognizing multirace people as a unique group - is new.

The push can trace its roots to a 1967 Supreme Court ruling, Loving v. Virginia, which struck down laws against interracial marriages.

Since 1970, the estimated number of interracial marriages in the United States has jumped from fewer than 100,000 to an estimated 1.5 million. (Though a 1995 study by UCI demographer Chew, which found that about one in eight California households is interracial, indicates that the national estimate on interracial marriages may be low.)

And though previous census rules have prevented an accurate count of multiracial people, demographers estimate there are at least 10 million people in the country who could count themselves as multiracial.

The upturn has come with a general trend toward diversity in America.

The country that in 1950 was 85 percent non-Hispanic white today looks like this: 73 percent white, 12 percent African-American, 11 percent Latino/Hispanic, 3 percent Asian and 1 percent American Indian or Alaska Native.

By 2050, non-Hispanic white people are expected to make up less than half the U.S. population.

"We're heading into new territory, racially speaking," said census expert Anderson. "The multiracial boom is part of a bigger trend."