Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious to the census. Now, so are all the colors in between.

The U.S. Census Bureau released numbers for multiracial people in Alabama for the first time Wednesday. A total of 44,179 people in the state said they were members of more than one race. In Jefferson County, the number was 5,326; in Shelby County, it was 1,027.

For some, the numbers are the end of a battle to have mixed-race people recognized on official counts. For others, the numbers are a measure of how far Alabama has come in breaking down racial barriers. And even one expert says the numbers are a real starting point to begin studying a group of people traditionally considered taboo.

"It's all so new," said Don Bogie, director of the Center for Cultural and Demographic Research at the Auburn University-Montgomery.

But it's not that new to Lou Willie IV, 20. His father, Lou III, is black and a prominent civil rights activist. His mother, Mary, is white. When the son was 4 years old, a little white girl told him the way things work in Alabama: White people and black people shouldn't marry.

"I didn't know what race was then," Willie said. "I didn't know I was half-black. ... I've had people tell me I need to pick one race. That makes me very angry. I don't feel like I'm one or the other, and I don't see where someone gets off telling me that I should choose a heritage."

Willie said his father marked black for both of them on the census form. Willie said he would have marked two boxes, black and white, if he had filled out the form. The option to now mark two boxes is an important step for people like him, Willie said.

"I'm mixed," he said. "I'm comfortable with both races. I can see things from so many different viewpoints. It makes me feel that I am more accepting than your general Alabamian."

Forms allowed people to mark more than one racial box for the first time in the 2000 Census. The largest multiracial category in Alabama was White; American Indian and Alaska Native with 17,566 people. The next largest was White; Black or African American with 6,356. Other large combinations included White; Asian, White; some other race, and Black or African American; American Indian or Alaska Native.

There are no numbers for a White and Hispanic group, since Hispanic is an ethnic, not a racial, category.

Multiracial people make up about one percent of Alabama's population and about 0.8 percent of Jefferson County's population.

Black and white isn't the largest multiracial group, but it's always been the one that has drawn the most attention in Alabama, said Mark Potok, a spokesman for the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit organization that tracks hate organizations.

Until a statewide vote last year, the Alabama Constitution had an unenforced ban on interracial marriages. Multiracial people, if they are members of the black and white group, were always just considered black, Potok said.

That thinking is beginning to change, he said.

Immigration from foreign countries and from other parts of this country are bringing different attitudes to the state, he said. People of different races will begin having children, he said.

"It's a good time to start measuring this," he said. "The solution to racism in the country is racial mixing in this country."

The black/white group has probably just begun to grow in the past 10 years, and many of its members are children or young adults, Bogie said. The larger white/American Indian group has been around the country for decades because that mixing wasn't taboo, he said.

Bogie said the new census numbers will spur demographers to study how multiracial people live in the world: what their jobs are, how much money they make, how much money they spend, what they believe.

But the census numbers may not mean as much as they seem to, said Susan Graham, executive director of Project RACE (Reclassify All Children Equally), a group that lobbied the U.S. government for a multiracial classification. While the Census Bureau recognizes people as multiracial, some other government departments don't yet, she said.

In distributing money and enforcement of civil rights laws, multiracial people are considered black, she said. That is both false and it takes away a label that some multiracial people need to feel grounded, Graham said.

She said her organization will spend the next 10 years convincing the government multiracial people should be considered their own race.

"It's about being able to embrace all of your heritage," she said.