SACRAMENTO, CA - "You are all individuals, and I like that in a person," a guitarist told the crowd at a Sacramento establishment. Those who laughed at the line were unaware that it contradicted government policy on the 2000 Census, which emphatically declares that we are not all individuals.

The government now allows people to declare more than one race, which means no less than 63 racial categories, including the five single-race categories of white, black, Asian, Native American, and Pacific Islander, up from four in the 1990 Census. New designations include "Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander." (Residents of Santa Catalina need not apply.)

People may check up to six boxes and those who check "white" plus a minority race will be assigned a minority race. The process has sparked ethnic turf wars and considerable confusion among the counters and counted alike. There is a simple way out of this quagmire that begins with a look back in time.

The debate recalls the 1890 Census, when terms such as "octoroon," "quadroon," and "mulatto" were used to quantify blackness. That type of racial categorization puts the United States in some awkward company. The nations most obsessed with racial categorization included South Africa and Rhodesia during the apartheid era -- both examples of undemocratic minority rule -- and the obvious example of National Socialist Germany, which considered the racial approach "scientific." This is not the sort of company to which a democratic nation aspires, something the grievance elite prefers to ignore.

The backdrop to expanding racial categories is the push for a spoils system based on race and ethnicity. In this outlook, American democratic arrangements constitute institutional discrimination against groups that can produce the credentials of victimhood and therefore claim a right to special treatment. This would include the drawing of electoral districts on racial lines, based on the fallacy that ethnic groups think, act, and vote alike. They don’t, and courts have already nixed racial districts.

Multiple categories work against that sort of politicized, paternalistic approach, which is why the grievance elite strives to lump those claiming mixed heritage into one of the "gang of five" categories, whether they like it or not. Golfer Tiger Woods, for example, has black, Asian, white, and Native American antecedents, yet would be considered black.

Policy based on increasing racial divisions will only increase strife. The only solution is to dispense with these categories entirely. This would make the census-takers’ job easier and is also the right thing to do. The Census, says the Constitution, is an "enumeration," not a vehicle for divisive racial categorization.

All Americans, regardless of origin or color, belong to the human race. With no apology to Al Gore, who has it backwards, they are the pluribus from which we derive the unum. All we need to do is count them, without regard to race. That is the core principle of progressive measures such as the 1964 Civil Rights Act. And when they got a chance to vote on the matter in Proposition 209, Californians rejected racial preferences.

Given the chance, the nation would likely do the same with the regressive racial gerrymandering of the Census. Americans are all individuals, and I like that in a person.

--K. Lloyd Billingsley