By: Amber Mobley (Add to your loop)
Thu, 10/16/2008 - 00:00

Matt Murchison, here on vacation in Egypt, calls himself 'Barackian'.

Hundreds of years back, they were classified as "mulatto". Half black. Half white ... and usually the result of a slave master's marital indiscretions.
 
These days, biracial people are finding themselves with a new kind of identity, thanks to presidential nominee Barack Obama and his mixed-race heritage. Yeah, folks tend to forget that the "first black presidential nominee" has a white mother and an African father.

"We prefer the term 'Barackian' now," said Matt Murchison, 29, of Tampa, Fla. "That's a joke that I sometimes make, but the joke underscores the difficulty that biracial individuals often have establishing an identity in U.S. society."

Until the most recent Census, people of mixed race, like Obama, were classified as "other." Data from that Census shows that while a relatively small number of people identified themselves with two or more races, most of the people who did were young — between the ages of 5 and 17. Today, eight years later, many of them are old enough not only to follow Obama's campaign, but to vote in this year's presidential election.

"I know my friends who have black and white parents take pride in (Obama's) success because it's taken some of the 'other' out of their 'otherness,'" said University of Southern California visiting professor Erna Smith. The "other" label on the Census always struck Smith as ironic, she said, "because genetically-speaking probably everyone is the other."

Struggling with labels

People of mixed race are often pressured to pick a race, Murchison said. "A lot of people encourage us to identify ourselves as black, but a lot of people discourage us from identifying either way. But they often don't realize that the decision to identify with a race is not entirely ours. I can say that I'm not black, but the cops who pulled me over and handcuffed and harassed me might disagree."

"Black" even though you're bi-racial? It's the ghosts of the centuries-old "one drop rule" which classified anyone with a single drop of African blood as a black person.

Obama encounters it every day on the campaign trail.

"Barack Obama can say that he's not black, but that would do little to diminish the racism that has been opposing him throughout the election," Murchison said. "From Fox News referring to his wife of 16 years as his 'baby's momma' ... to the Latino man in Tampa who told me to my face that he 'ain't votin' for no nigger.'"

Annette Gontarski of Brighton, Mich., the black mother of a bi-racial son knows that racism can be real for bi-racial people too. "I expect (my son) to prove that person wrong who believes that because he is a black man (although not 100%) he is not going to amount to anything," she said. "My son knows that he is watching history in the making and knows that he too can make history."
 
Jill Gilyard's eldest son, 19, will be voting for the first time this year. "He's really excited," said Gilyard of Los Angeles, the white mother of four sons of mixed race, ages 5, 8, 11 and 19. Her 8-year-old is so enthusiastic that he wrote a letter to Obama and addressed it to the White House. He called him "President Obama."

For Murchison, the prediction that the number of people of mixed race is expected to grow makes Obama's run for the White House even more meaningful.
 
"His presidency will serve as one of the strongest symbols of a new era for America, shedding light on the ever-increasing intermixing that makes this country a true 'melting pot' ... and I do think that he helps biracial children find an identity: as symbols of the future."

How would you grade President Obama on his first 100 days?