(Jan. 6) -- As the government prepares to roll out the 2010 Census on March 15, one of the 10 questions on the form already has people cringing. Question 9 asks respondents to designate their race and gives them the option of choosing "Negro," a term many have considered derogatory and antiquated for years.

The question asks "What is person 1's race?" Of the 15 possible options, one is "Black, African Am., or Negro."

The Office of Management and Budget sets racial definitions for the Census Bureau and all federal statistical reporting. In its standards, it says a "Black or African American" person is "A person having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa. Terms such as 'Haitian' or 'Negro' can be used in addition to 'Black or African American.'"

The agency last revised its standards in 1997, and the new definitions first appeared on the 2000 Census, which was also the first time people could identify as more than one race.

A U.S. Census Bureau spokesperson told the Web site The Grio that while the word "Negro" may be old-fashioned, there are still people who prefer to use it to identify themselves. She said the census questions were well-tested and that it was determined that using the word "outweighed the potential negatives."

Still, to many the word "Negro" is a throwback to Lester Walton's days, to slavery, Jim Crow laws and segregation.

The term may have been a preferable delineation of black heritage in 1913 when Lester A. Walton, managing editor of the New York Age, the country's first African-American newspaper, wrote a letter to The Associated Press imploring the group to use the term to refer to a race of people, not a skin color.

"The Census Bureau, in taking the last census, defined as Negroes those who were black. As the majority of my people are not black, in making out the census papers submitted by the enumerators, thousands classed themselves as either mulattoes or of mixed parentage. Others who were not black classed themselves as Negroes," he wrote.

But a century later, the distinction is antiquated and reprehensible to many.

"I don't think my ancestors would appreciate it in 2010," Pamela Reese Smith, a 56-year-old Rochester, N.Y., native, told the New York Daily News. "I don't want my grandchildren being called Negroes." Filed under: Nation, Top Stories, Only On Sphere Follow Sphere on Facebook and Twitter.

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