by Amitai Etzioni

About the author: Amitai Etzioni, a professor at George Washington University, is the founder and director of the Communitarian Network.

In 1990, the Census Bureau offered Americans the choice of 16 racial categories. The main groupings were white and black, which 92 percent of the population chose. The remaining categories were Native American, Aleut and Eskimo, 10 variations of Asian and Pacific Islanders, and “Other.” Some 9.8 million Americans, or 4 percent of the total population, chose “Other” rather than one of the established mono-racial categories—compared with fewer than 1 million in 1970.

This number will continue to expand. Since 1970, the number of mixed-race children in the United States has quadrupled to reach the 2 million mark. And there are six times as many intermarriages today as there were in 1960. Indeed, some sociologists predict that, even within a...