The changing face of America: with help from Hollywood and Madison Avenue, Generation Y is challenging the way America thinks about race and ethnicity.

• Author: La Ferla, Ruth
• Position: National - Cover Story

Patria Rodriguez, an advertising sales director for a women's magazine in New York, has light brown skin and thick, curly hair. She says that she resembles the actress Rosie Perez, and others have told her that she looks like the singer Sade.

Yet Rodriguez, 31, does not think of herself as black or white, though she has both races in her ancestry. She labels herself Latina or Hispanic or Puerto Rican. "Why should I have to choose?" she says.

Leo Jimenez, 25, is a much-in-demand New York model, who has appeared in ads for companies like Levi's, DKNY, and Aldo. His steeply raked cheekbones and jet-colored eyes suggest Asian or American Indian ancestry.

In fact, Jimenez is Colombian by birth, a product of the mixed racial heritage of that South American country. He says his melting-pot looks have "definitely opened doors for me."

Rodriguez and Jimenez are both helping to define a shift in American attitudes about race. With the country's increasingly multiracial character, especially among the young, more and more Americans are unwilling to see themselves as bound by a single racial category, and Hollywood and Madison Avenue are taking notice.

The changing attitudes about race have led Louis Vuitton, YSL Beauty, and H&M to highlight models with racially indeterminate features. The popularity of movie stars like Vin Diesel, Lisa Bonet, and Jessica Alba with young audiences seems due in part to the tease over whether they are black, white, Hispanic, American Indian, or some combination. And athletes like Derek Jeter and Tiger Woods may owe part of their appeal to their diverse backgrounds.

"Today what's ethnically neutral, diverse, or ambiguous has tremendous appeal," says Ron Berger, the chief executive of an advertising agency and trend-research company in New York, Euro RSCG MVBMS Partners.

The new attitudes are evident not only in fashion, the media, and entertainment. Nearly 7 million Americans identified themselves as members of more than one race in the 2000 census, the first time respondents were able to check more than one category. In addition, more than 14 million Latinos--about 42 percent of Latino respondents--checked "some other race," an indication, experts say, of the mixed race heritage of many Hispanics with black, white, and indigenous Indian strains. (Another 48 percent of Hispanics checked white, while 2 percent chose black, and 6 percent selected "more than one race.")

The more fluid way that Americans are viewing their racial identities has stumped the Census Bureau, whose counting of the population and...