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The 2010, the U.S. census reignited the question of racial identity among multi-racial residents.  “I can’t fit in a single box on the census form” was the typical refrain among the fastest growing segment of the US population.  According to The New York Times in February, 2011, "when it comes to keeping racial statistics, the nation is in transition, moving, often without uniformity, from the old “mark one box” limit to allowing citizens to check as many boxes as their backgrounds demand." The number of mixed-race Americans was at the time rising rapidly, largely on account of increases in immigration and intermarriage. In 2010, for example, one in seven new marriages was interracial. Yet it is not as simple as counting people as "multi-racial." Politically, the use of a catch-all category was believed by some racial interest groups to marginalize particular minority races. As a result, the Census Bureau created 63 categories of possible racial combinations (a typical bureaucratic solution to a political problem). Regardless of how the U.S. Goverment slices the deck, the reality on the ground is that the United States was finally turning the corner in the beginning of the twenty-first century--having gone from states outlawing miscegenation (the mixing of different racial groups through marriage, cohabitation, sexual relations) as late as the 1960s to the multiracial segment being the fastest growing, such that America would undoubtedly look rather different in even a few generations.  Life is a fluid thing, and the world today will undoubtedly be morphed by life's forces into another world tomorrow. Governmental restrictions in the face of natural forces are ultimately like sandcastles facing a rising tide.

That the multiracial “category” is the fastest growing is, I believe, the natural solution to the racial problems that have plagued North America since the time of the colonies.  Whereas New Spain quickly mixed the Indian, black and caucasian races, the British colonies kept the three distinct.  The United States followed the British tradition until into the second half of the twentieth century. That tradition has resulted in some mistakes in how race is labeled because the tradition held that some races are better than others.
Cheryl Contee, for example, writes in a CNN opinion piece, “When I look in the mirror each morning, my face epitomizes the American melting pot. I can’t ignore the pale skin of my white forebears, the slanted eyes of my Indian relatives nor the full lips and curly hair of my African blood.”  However, because there are many white Africans (e.g., in South Africa), her distinction of “white” and “African” is a false dichotomy.  She is treating two different categories as though they were one.  Better stated, Cheryl has white, black and Indian ancestors, hence she is multi-racial.  Better stated still, “caucasian” should be substited for “white” and “negroid” would be used for “black,” but Americans are not fond of technical terms even in polite conversation.  “White” and “Black” are at least of the same category, namely race, even if the explosion in interracial births will render "white" and "black" obsolete as primary descriptors. Instead, there will be a bell curve with "white" and "black" fading out to the ends. As Cheryl writes, “When I look in the mirror each morning, my face epitomizes the American melting pot.”  Her melting pot constitution is something for her to be proud of, as instantiates the natural (rather than governmental) solution to what has been an intractable  problem.  Her great grandchildren will likely look at old pictures of Blacks and Whites as strange book-ends.
Sources:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/03/30/contee.who.am.i/index.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/10/us/10count.html?pagewanted=2&hpw