A Sunday New York Times story looked at Hispanics resistance to our conventional racial classifications, since many consider themselves neither white nor black nor Indian, and thus select some other race on census forms. Might this phenomenon create an opportunity to change our whole government race system in such a way as to promote its eventual demise? Eliminating race from the census altogether would require, for starters, a change to the Voting Rights Act, which isn t going to happen soon. So how about, instead of asking what race you are, government forms from now on ask only whether or not you are black? A yes/no question that would not require a change in the Voting Rights Act but would, in one swoop, eliminate all the other government-sanctioned race/ethnic categories and reinforce the original, limited, rationale for affirmative action, which was temporary compensation for slavery, not permanent diversity management. This would also reflect the real social divide in our history, which has not been between white and non-white but rather between black and non-black. I, and most other conservatives, would obviously prefer a high wall of separation between race and state, but this could be a step in that direction, and one that is achievable in real time.