This figure was made available in 2000, the first year the U.S. Census Bureau allowed people to check a box saying they were of mixed race.Interracial relationships varies widely from person to person and region to region, and over time. While celebrities such Tiger Woods, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Halle Berry make it seem like there are more of us out there, the number of multiracial Americans remains surprisingly small. At a more basic level, why are terms such as “race” and “mixed” — leftovers, sociologists say, from the misguided “racial science” of the 19th century — still widely used to describe genetic, cultural and social variations within our one human race? Why are concepts such as the “one-drop rule” — the arbitrary, Jim Crow classification of anyone with any African heritage as black — still accepted by many blacks and whites, even as they serve to deepen racial divisions? The year 1967 was particularly memorable for Multiracial Relationships America: Hollywood came out with the Sidney Poitier film “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” a comedy built around white parents’ acceptance of an interracial couple; and, the U.S. Supreme Court knocked down a Virginia statute that barred Multiracial whites from marrying nonwhites, a decision that overturned bans in 15 other states. Since then, the number of interracial marriages has steadily risen, from 67,685 in 1970 to 440,150 in 2005, comprising more than 7% of America’s 59 million married couples, according to the most recent census figures. Likewise, attitudes toward interraciality appear to be growing more tolerant