Ai-Ling Jamila Malone does not fit into a box.

Her mother is Chinese and her father is African American, and there's no such thing as "choosing sides" when checking those little race boxes on college applications and other forms.

"I personally check both boxes," said the 21-year-old University of California, Berkeley graduate, who has a simple analogy for people who seem to think she needs to somehow "claim" one racial identity or the other.

Think of your sister, Malone said. In addition to being a sister, she's also a daughter.

"People ask, do you feel more like a daughter or more like a sister?" Malone explained. "You say, no, it's always both. It's really not that hard a concept to understand."

But it is a concept that, for the most part, has long been problematic when collecting and reporting racial data at schools and universities. Students like Malone are typically recorded as being of one race, despite the boxes they choose.

A new proposal from the U.S. Department of Education would change that, and would provide a new mechanism for schools to collect and report racial data from those who are of several different heritages.

For the first time, students would be able to check more than one race box. Universities would report data on those students under a new category called "two or more races." The proposal also changes the way information on Latino students is collected.

While multiracial advocates have long called for a change to the single-box approach, the proposal, announced Aug. 7, has received mixed reviews.

"I think they're moving in the right direction, but they don't grasp the entire solution," said Susan Graham, executive director of the Los Banos-based Project RACE, a nonprofit that advocates for a "multiracial" classification on employment, educational and other forms.

Graham said the "two or more races" box is problematic because it doesn't allow a way to capture true ethnicities. She favors a "multiracial" category that includes a variety of subgroups in which people could check a number of racial categories.

A "two-or-more" classification assumes "we're this homogeneous group and we're not at all," Malone agreed.

"Someone like myself who's of black and Asian descent would not be the same as white and Latino," she said. "To lump us together does a huge disservice to the accuracy of the data."

The proposal would set up a two-question process for collecting racial data. Students would first answer a yes or no question asking if they are of Hispanic or Latino origin. They would then select whether they are from one or more of five racial groups: American Indian or Alaskan native; Asian; black or African American; Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander; or white.

A public comment period on the proposal ends Sept. 21, and the proposal may be modified before it is finalized later this year.

The proposed change follows one implemented in the 2000 Census, when respondents were asked for the first time to select one or more racial categories. Some 6.8 million people -- or 2.4 percent of the population -- identified themselves as belonging to two or more racial groups. About 2.8 million of them were under age 18, according to the education department.

Officials at California State University and the University of California are still reviewing the proposal, but they cited a number of issues with the plan, including how it would impact long-term statistical data on their students.

Each system follows a different process for collecting racial data.

CSU -- the nation's largest university system -- allows students to check only one box when collecting racial data, in keeping with current federal data reporting guidelines.

UC, on the other hand, allows students to check more than one box. When it comes to reporting racial statistics, however, students are identified by one race. By default, race is determined by whichever checked box falls first on the list of categories. A student who checked white and Asian, for instance, would be classified as Asian, since that category is higher on the list than white.

Nina Robinson, UC's director of policy and external affairs in the student affairs division, said the university adopted that plan about 10 years ago, when officials thought guidelines for reporting students of several races would be imminent.

"At the time we made the decision, we fully expected we would get guidance from the federal government within a couple of months," Robinson said. "It was a temporary solution, but we had to stick with it for several years. Once you adopt a particular method of reporting, you don't want to change it."

About 7 percent of 84,000 students who applied to the university in 2004 checked more than one race box, Robinson said.

Robinson said the federal proposal is a mixed bag.

"You gain the information that (students) are of mixed race, and that's important information in our country and our state," she said, "but you lose the information about which ethnicity they are."

Marsha Hirano-Nakanishi, assistant vice chancellor for academic research and resources with CSU, sees a different problem. The change could have a large impact on data collection among populations that are already poorly represented at universities, she said.

"It could be really difficult for small groups, like Native Americans," she said. "They're already really (statistically) small. If they also happen to be of Hispanic origin, they may not exist at all."

Ryan Graham, a 21-year-old senior at the University of Florida, Gainesville who is of African American and white heritage, said the proposal isn't perfect, but it's better than that way it is now.

"Just being able to have it say we can check more than one is just a giant leap," said Graham, whose mother is Susan Graham.

Ryan Graham was in third grade when he was first confronted by the boxes dilemma. He didn't know which box to check on a standardized test, so asked his teacher for help. She told him to check "other."

"Everybody else had their own box to check," he said. "I never really had my own box."

Contact Michelle Maitre at mmaitre@angnewspapers.com.