My son has many things in common with president-elect Barack Obama; they both have a mother who is white and a father who is black, they are both dynamic and educated, and they have both been active in Washington. One difference is that my son chooses to identify himself as "multiracial," and Obama chose "black" for his racial identification until he called himself a "mutt" in his first press conference.

I realized when my son started kindergarten that there was no place for him under race/ethnicity on the enrollment form and we could only check one box. My children were being raised to honor the colors of both sides of their families; to embrace their entire heritage, and self-identify as they wished. At some point, we just naturally began using the words biracial and multiracial.

Suddenly, those little race boxes were everywhere; on school tests, employment applications, hospital admission forms, voter registration cards, etc. Of course, they had always been there, but I had always checked "white" and did not think about it. That changes when you have a multiracial child.

Some people opt to check one box, so they make a choice and usually stick with it through their lives. Often, people pick what they think other people see. In some families, the old one-drop rule - if you have one drop of black blood, you are black - passes down by generation. Some people choose "other" if they have that choice. Some think they are making a statement by not filling in a box at all, unaware that if they do not, someone may pick a race for them. Many people ask if my son is "mixed," which doesn't work for either of us. Isn't "mixed" the opposite of "pure"? When my son went before congress at the age of eight, he told them, "Puppies are mixed, people are multiracial." Mutts are also in the mixed breed category.

The one that hit me hard was the 1990 U.S. Census form. I called the Census Bureau, explained that my children were multiracial and asked how I should indicate that. It took a long time for the man to get the final answer: The children take the race of the mother. "Could that be right?" I asked, "Why arbitrarily the mother?" The government employee lowered his voice and said, "Because in cases like these, we know who the mother is and not the father."

I was shocked and infuriated at our government. I vowed to do something about it. Little did I know what I was getting myself into when I began to advocate for multiracial children, and that three years later, my son and I would be testifying before Congress in Washington.

Now, almost 20 years after starting the fight to embrace one's entire heritage, we have made some significant strides, and I have met thousands of mothers like me. We have shared similar stories of how our children's teachers were told to pick a race for our child based on their "knowledge and observation" of our child on their first day of school, yet getting the Department of Education to enact the change isn't on anyone's election agenda. We wept when multiracial children died because we could not find a racial and ethnic match needed for bone marrow donation, and began to hold donor drives to enlarge the pool of donors, but donors must pay for the testing. That should be part of the healthcare plan for this country.

A mother in Wisconsin was recently told by a school principal that she could not register her child for public school if she did not pick only one race for him. Another feisty mother in Missouri has taken a stand. We went up against a school board member in Illinois when he called our kids mutts.

We forced the Census Bureau to allow people to check more than one race for the first time, but they would not allow the word "multiracial." Our government has no name for my children; they officially call them "people who check more than one box." I suppose we should just be glad that they don't call them mutts. I have learned collecting that racial data is a political numbers game, which is not going to stop; I understand that on an intellectual level, but on a mom level, it is despicable.

Barack Obama has every right and opportunity to identify himself as whatever he wants, but now his choice, the freshly coined "mutt," will be acceptable. The difference is that the federal government and all but a few states will not let my son choose to be multiracial. Many of us hope the next president understands the importance of that choice.

Susan Graham is executive director of Project RACE (Reclassify All Children Equally).