What percent of whites claim American Indian as their second race? You hear whites all the time taking pride in their having a American Indian (AI) great grandfather, or whatever. I just saw Wayne Newton on Larry King the other night bragging about how he is a descendant of Pocahontas. (His father was Irish-Powhatan and his mother German-Cherokee.)

The General Social Survey cannot tell us how many whites claim a distant ancestor, but it can tell us how common it is for a white person to see himself as also being AI. More than 8,700 whites were asked by the General Social Survey if they had a second race. Only 3 percent (2.98% to be exact) answered "American Indian." Now, how many AIs say their second race is white? It's 29.1%. But only 2.73%report that their second race is black.

How about blacks claiming to also be AI? Only 5.87%. And the percent of blacks claiming white as a second race? Even fewer: only 2.43%.