Directive 15 states that when a single question is used to report data, in effect Hispanic trumps race. If a person is both Hispanic and White, they are counted as Hispanic, and the category white does not include Hispanics. I think it will be very important for OMB to very clearly lay out all of the combinations of responses possible to the question and how each one will be classified if this approach is the one suggested. I think the biggest possible impact of this change of allowing more than one race to be reported will be between data sets that are based on self identification and those based on observer identification. Self identification will allow people to report more than one race.
Some data however is collected through observation.
This is particularly true of the American black population, many of whomhave distant white ancestors, but who would never identify as anything other than black. I would therefore suggest that attention be paidto the federal agencies that now collect data based on observer idenification, and to the kinds of instructions about this issue that would be given to such observers. The implications of two different modes of data collection would have to be discussed further however. This issue of the disjuncture between self identification and observer identification might call for further research or at least increased vigilance in reconciling these two methods. Finally, if people are instructed to mark one or more races on the census and other self identification forms, the instructions to respondents will be extremely important.