Beyond black & white: Barack Obama's candidacy is putting a spotlight on America's growing multiracial population.

Being accepted. Proving loyalty. Navigating the tight space between racial divides. Americans of mixed race say these are issues they have long confronted, and Senator Barack Obama's candidacy for President holds special significance for them: They see parallels between Obama's path and their own. They recall friends who thought they were "not black enough." Or people who wanted them to label themselves by innocently asking, "What are you?" Or the relatives of different races who can sometimes be insensitive to one another.

"I think Barack Obama is going to bring these deeply American stories to the forefront," says Esther John, an administrator at Northwest Indian College in Washington State, who identifies herself as black, American Indian, and white.

"Maybe we'll get a little bit further in the dialogue on race," John says. "The guilt factor may be lowered a little bit because Obama made it right to be white and still love your black relatives, and to be black and still love your white relatives: to love despite another person's racial appearance."

OLD CATEGORIES?

Americans of mixed race say that questions about whether Obama--with a white mother from Kansas and a black father from Kenya is "too black" or "not black enough," as the candidate himself brought up in a March 18 speech on race, show the extent to which the nation is still fixated on old categories. Those categories are weakening, however, as immigration leads to a more diverse society and fuels a steady rise in the number of interracial marriages in the U.S.

Mixed-race marriages were illegal in at least 16 states in 1961, the year Obama was born. Since 1967, when those laws were declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court, interracial marriage among all groups has skyrocketed.

The 2000 Census counted 3.1 million interracial couples, about 6 percent of married couples. For the first time, the Census that year allowed respondents to identify themselves as being two or more races--a category that now includes 7.3 million Americans, or 3 percent of the population; 41 percent of the mixed-race population in the Census was under 18.

Many people still stick to a one-race label, even if they are of mixed descent. In interviews, people of mixed race said that how they identify themselves is personal, not political; it is influenced by how and where they were reared, how others perceive them, and what they look like.

Many mixed-race Americans say they take pride that Obama is presenting his biracial identity as an asset for the White House. Even if he calls himself black, Obama is seen as giving equal weight in his story to his white mother and grandparents.

"He's really having to play the field and know his audience really well," says Phillip Handy, 21, a junior at Rutgers University in New Jersey, whose mother is white and father is black. "In the end, when i hear his message, I don't think he's bailing out on any of us."

Carmen Van Kerckhove, who blogs on race at racialicious.com, doubts that the uproar that Tiger Woods faced in 1997 when he described himself as "Cablinasian" (Caucasian, black, American Indian, and Asian) would occur today. Van Kerckhove, who is white and Asian, says Obama has moved the race debate away from "who's black and who's white, or who's a victim and who's an oppressor."

In The New York Times Magazine, Peggy Orenstein, who is Jewish and married to a Japanese-American, writes that she doesn't know what life will be like for her daughter or grandchildren 50 years from now, but she's pretty sure things will be different:

"Watching Senator Obama campaigning with his black wife, his Indonesian-Caucasian half-sister, his ChineseCanadian brother-in-law, and all their multiculti kids, it seems clear that the binary, black-and-white--not to mention black-or-white--days are already behind us."

BEFORE YOU READ

Ask each student to list and then rank the top 10 identities (e.g., son or daughter, American, etc.) most important to them. Where do students rank their race?

CRITICAL THINKING

What role does race play in American politics? How might a voter's race influence his or her views on key issues? How might electing political leaders of various races affect government policies?

Define "race" and "ethnicity." Then create a diagram with two intersecting circles to show how race and ethnicity overlap and differ.

What racial issues existed in the U.S. when your grandparents were your age? Your parents? Which have been for the most part resolved, and which continue to be issues today?

WRITING PROMPT

Write a creative piece, such as a story, a poem, or a song, about the way you perceive the role of race in your life.

DEBATE

Support or refute: As the mixed-race population in the U.S. continues

to grow, racial tensions and the racial divide will diminish.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

Why might the U.S. still be "fixated on old categories" of race? In what ways do you think old notions of race still play out in the U.S. today?

In what ways does Barack Obama, a multiracial candidate, represent a "deeply American story?"

FAST FACT

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, about 0.4 percent of the population in 1960 classified themselves as being in an interracial marriage. That number rose to six percent in 2000.

WEB WATCH

www.nytimes.com/race Articles from the 2001 Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times series "How Race Is lived in America," plus multimedia, classroom resources, and more.

Mireya Navarro is a New York-based reporter for The New York Times.