COLLEGE PARK, Maryland - The crop of students moving through the University of Maryland and other American colleges right now includes the largest group of mixed-race people ever to come of age in the United States.

They are only the vanguard: the country is in the midst of a demographic shift driven by immigration and intermarriage.

One in seven new marriages is between spouses of different races or ethnicities, according to data from 2008 and 2009, and multiethnic Americans are one of the country’s fastest-growing groups. According to census data released on March 24, the multiracial population has increased almost 50 percent in America, to 4.2 million, since 2000 . The number of people of all ages who identified themselves as both white and black soared by 134 percent since 2000 to 1.8 million people.

Many young adults of mixed backgrounds are rejecting the color lines that have defined Americans for generations . Ask Michelle Lopez-Mullins, a 20-year-old student at the University of Maryland , how she marks her race on forms like the census, and she says, “It depends on the day, and it depends on the options.”

They are also using the strength in their growing numbers to affirm roots that were once portrayed as tragic or pitiable.

“I think it’s really important to acknowledge who you are and everything that makes you that,” said Laura Wood, 19 , another student. “If someone tries to call me black I say, ‘yes ? and white.’ ”

Optimists say the blending of the races is a step toward transcending race . Pessimists say it will come at the expense of the number and influence of other minority groups, particularly African-Americans.

And some sociologists say that grouping all multiracial people together overlooks differences in circumstances between someone who is, say, black and Latino, and someone who is Asian and white.

Along those lines, it is telling that the rates of intermarriage are lowest between blacks and whites, indicative of the enduring economic and social distance between them.

Professor Rainier Spencer, the author of “Reproducing Race: The Paradox of Generation Mix,” says he believes that there is too much “emotional investment” in the notion of multiracialism as a panacea for the nation’s divisions. “The mixed-race identity is not a transcendence of race, it’s a new tribe,” he said. “A new Balkanization of race.”

But for many , that is not the point. They are asserting their freedom to choose.

“All society is trying to tear you apart and make you pick a side,” Ms. Wood said. “I want us to have a say.”

Americans have mostly thought of themselves in singular racial terms.

Witness President Obama’s answer to the race question on the 2010 census: Although his mother was white , Mr. Obama checked only one box, black. He could have checked both races.

Only starting with the 2000 census were Americans allowed to mark more than one race.

The multiracial option came after years of complaints and lobbying, mostly by the white mothers of biracial children .

In 2000, seven million people - about 2.4 percent of the population - reported being more than one race.

According to estimates from the Census Bureau, the mixed-race population has grown by roughly 35 percent since 2000.

The faces of mixed-race America are not just on college campuses. They are in politics, business and sports. And the ethnically ambiguous are especially ubiquitous in movies, television shows and advertising. There are news, social networking and dating Web sites focusing on the mixed-race audience, and even consumer products like shampoo.

There are mixed-race film festivals and conferences. At Maryland, the Multiracial and Biracial Student Association offers peer support and activism .

Such a club would not have existed a generation ago - when the question at the center of a game played at the club, “What Are You?,” would have been a provocation rather than an icebreaker.

“It’s kind of a taking-back in a way, taking the reins,” said Ms. Lopez- Mullins, who is Chinese and Peruvian on one side, and white and American Indian on the other. “We don’t always have to let it get us down,” she added, referring to the question multiracial people have heard for generations.

“The No. 1 reason why we exist is to give people who feel like they don’t want to choose a side, that don’t want to label themselves based on other people’s interpretations of who they are, to give them a place, that safe space,” she said of the club.


By SUSAN SAULNY