Those are Justice Scalia’s words from the Adarand decision, which I was reminded of by William Perry Pendley of the Mountain States Legal Foundation, Adarand’s lawyer, in response to my post urging citizens to enter “American” as their race.

The most common response from readers was that you should put “human” as your race, or even “100 yard dash.” The problem is that those responses will be written off as cutesy, like answering “frequent” when asked about your sex, and won’t be reported by the Census Bureau. “American,” on the other hand, is clearly a political protest against government race laws, and is included when the Bureau reports the results, or was in 2000. In fact, the number of people answering “American” grew from 12.4 million in the 1990 census to 20.2 million in 2000, “the largest numerical growth of any ancestry group,” according to Wikipedia.

Similarly, several readers suggested “native American,” logically pointing out that they are, after all, native-born Americans. But that (like “Mixed”) will simply be entered as an ethnic category rather than a political statement.

And independent of me, someone already started a Facebook group “My Race: American” — join up.