In the 2000 Census, Americans will, for the first time, be able to define themselves as "mixed-race."

The census is only one of the many forms that query people about race. Between college applications and standardized tests, by the time students arrive at Harvard, they have been asked to specify a race on more than a few occasions.

For those who identify with more than one category, such a choice is not that simple.

It is a problem that multiracial students at Harvard face in their daily lives. All agree the question of race poses complex questions of identity and that they do not have a common solution, or even definition, of the problem.

Professor of Afro-American Studies and Philosophy K. Anthony Appiah, whose mother is British and father is Ghanaian, says awareness of the mixed-race problem is increasing.

Immigrants, he says, have different ways of thinking about race when they come to the United States, explaining that people from Africa talk about race differently than people from the Caribbean.

And mixed-race students have not missed the growing dialogue about their race.

Maya Sen '00 says the presence of multiracial people in the U.S. is "such a growing phenomenon."