As many of you know, we have Bunkers who are African American, Native American and Thai/American. Someone was just wondering how you would indicate that in Family Tree Maker. In Family Tree Maker there is a section for notes. In those notes you can add the race of the individual. This information may come from family information, census records or other records. People of many races may have a problem putting themselves into a specific category. The notes area of FTM can be used to reflect this. The last census was the first one (I believe) that allowed people to indicate they considered themselves to be from more than one race. Even so, the form had its inadequacies. I have a problem with the definition "Hispanic". I was told that you are Hispanic if you have Spanish ancestors. Therefore, I am Hispanic. I do not consider myself to be Hispanic however. Another definition is that you are Hispanic if you have a Spanish surname. What happens if your mother was named Ruelas and your father Bunker? It does get complicated. In The Master Genealogist program where the BFA data base is kept, you can create a tag for anything and I have created one for race. In some census records however, "colored" included Asian, African and Native peoples. That too creates a problem. We have one family named Bunker where the census lists the father, a Bunker, as Chinese and the mother as Hawaiian. I have been trying to figure out how a Chinese person got named Bunker. Perhaps in this case, the Bunker was born in China, but his parents were not Asians. However, in the database section for race the Bunker is listed as Chinese and the wife is listed as Hawaiian. What about Mexican? Living in AZ we have many Mexicans here that were born in Mexico. I also have family that was born in Mexico or are children of people born in Mexico. However, in Mexico there were the Natives, Spanish, Germans, Welsh, Irish, Scottish, etc. and today's Mexican citizens are just as much a mixture as most Americans are. Mexican is not a race and not necessarily Hispanic either. I have a cousin that is African, Samoan, Caucasian, North American Indian (Samoans are Native Americans too) and Mexican. Absolutely gorgeous but what would I put as race when I can't trace back to the ancestors who provided these wonderful genes? Also, are Mexicans Caucasian (certainly Spaniards are), Native American, Hispanic or something else entirely? Because certain congenital diseases are more common amongst people of some races, it is a good thing to have this information for your descendants. When people are of mixed races, you should indicate that and describe them all. My darling cousin is a mixture of three races. In my immediate family, we are fortunate to have people of all four races. All of my parent's descendants start out with two (Caucasian and Native American) and we have added the other two along the way. Bette ____________________________________________ Check out the Bunker Family Association. http://www.bunkerfamilyassn.org. If your name is Bunker and you are a male, consider joining our surname DNA project.