When the Florida numbers from the 2000 Census are released this month, the state will get the most detailed snapshot ever of its racially diverse population.

That's because the Census Bureau changed the way races are classified.

In the past, people had to choose only one of five races: white, black, Asian-Pacific Islander, Native American or ``other.''

In 2000, the bureau split Asian and Pacific Islander into separate categories and allowed people to choose more than one race, expanding the number of classifications from five to 63.

Although the change allowed people of mixed race to be more precise when filling out Census forms, there are some, including the NAACP, who fear it may undermine minority influence, by obscuring their numbers, and perhaps cost large, racially mixed areas such as South Florida federal funding.

``In one sense it is good that people can identify with more specific groups,'' said Rep. Chris Smith, D-Fort Lauderdale, a prominent black lawmaker. ``But when you talk about the good of the larger group, then it becomes detrimental because it can dilute the voting bloc of the larger group.''

MANY OPTIONS

Factor in the Hispanic and non-Hispanic ethnic categories and there are now 126 different ways in which people can identify themselves.

Census numbers are applied when distributing money for programs such as Head Start and block grants for community development. The numbers act as a barometer for gauging efforts to close the gaps between whites and minorities in education, healthcare, income and other quality-of-life issues.

Census numbers come into play when voting districts are being redrawn, especially in ensuring that minority political influence isn't diluted through gerrymandering of districts.

The option to choose multiple races resulted from the yearning of interracial families for their children to be able to claim the racial heritage of both their parents.

Golf icon Tiger Woods is a prime example.

He is one of the most recognized black men in American. But in interviews, he refers to himself as ``Cablinasian'' -- a mixture of Caucasian, black, Native American and Asian.

``I think the ability to choose more than one race is healthy,'' said Marvin Dawkins, a sociology professor at the University of Miami. ``There are going to be some stresses and strains, but we have to throw off our myopic views about race and ethnicity and recognize that we are a multiracial society.''

The drive for the multiple-race option began in the wake of the 1990 Census, when Susan Graham -- living at the time in Atlanta and now in Tallahassee -- received her Census form.

Graham, who is white, is married to a black man.

Unsure how to classify their son, Ryan, for the 1990 Census, she called the Census Bureau and asked how to identify him. After being put on hold for a while, she was told to mark him down as white.

``When I asked why, the person on the other end, in a hushed voice, said `The children in these cases take the race of the mother, because we always know who the mother is but not who the father is,'Ê'' Graham said. ``Needless to say, I was shocked.''

SON'S IDENTITIES

A few months later, Graham enrolled Ryan in kindergarten and was presented with the same problem. The school district told her to leave the race question blank. Later, Graham said the district asked Ryan's teacher to determine his race based on observation.

``Well, my husband dropped him off that day, and he's black,'' Graham recalled. ``So now my son was classified as white on the Census form, black at school and multiracial at home.''

So she wrote an article for The Atlanta Journal Constitution. After it was published, she received letters from all over the country, and Project RACE (Reclassify All Children Equally) was born.

The census changes cut to the heart of one of the most emotionally, politically and legally charged issues in U.S. history -- race.

From the marble steps of the U.S. Supreme Court to modest lunch counters in Mississippi; from Asian work camps during WWII to the Trail of Broken Treaties, the United States has struggled to live up to its ideal of equality.

The Census plays a large role in measuring progress toward that ideal.

Opposition to the multiple-race option has come from groups such as the NAACP and the National Asian Pacific Legal Council.

``We opposed the multirace option when it was proposed,'' said Karren Narasaki, the executive director of the Washington-based Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium. ``We felt it was premature because the ramifications, especially for civil rights enforcement, had not been discussed. When people of mixed Asian-white race are discriminated against it's because they're Asian, not mixed Asian-white.''

She said she is concerned that the 100-plus classifications will ``marginalize discussions about race because it's too complicated, even though we know in our day-to-day lives race matters.''

The new racial categories pose a particular problem for those charged with reporting and analyzing the Census numbers. Demographers, planners, policy gurus and others are grappling with how to effectively tabulate the numbers and put them to use.

Newspapers are among the first that have to make sense of the new complexity.

The Associated Press has opted to compare people who identified themselves as all or part of one race in 2000 with those who in earlier years picked that category as their sole race.

MULTIPLE COUNTING

That means if a mixed-race person chose white and black in 2000, The AP would include that person in both the white-only and black-only categories for the purposes of making comparisons with 1990.

The problem with that tactic is that when tallying race, people can be counted up to six times, so the total of the percentages exceeds 100. For example, Tiger Woods would be counted four times, assuming he filled out his Census form the way he describes himself in interviews.

Some media organizations may use a range of numbers to bridge back to 1990. For example, when examining 2000 data, they could use the number of people who chose black only as the low end of the range and add up everyone who chose black in combination with other races as the higher end.

Others, such as The Herald, are still determining how to relay the information.