This fall during the presidential election, Harper Grace Biley sat with her mother, watching TV, when a commercial came on.

"Mommy, look," B.J. Biley remembers her daughter saying. "A-rock Obama is brown like me."

"I said, 'You bet he is, and he's also running for president of the United States,'" Biley says.

"Well, I bet his mommy is really proud of him," Harper Grace told her mom.

"And I said, 'Yes baby, she is.'"

The 4-year-old from Blue Springs, Mo., could see that the future president was biracial, both white and black, like her. And like her, his maternal grandparents were also white.

When people ask, Harper Grace explains that she's brown - easier, her mom thinks, than saying biracial, but just as descriptive.

What's tougher for Harper Grace and other kids who are multiracial or multiethnic is having their identity accepted in a world that wants them to be just one thing.

Until 2000, the U.S. Census wouldn't allow people to check more than one box for race. They do now after lots of pressure from advocacy groups. Nine years later, however, there are still no multiracial classifications for people in many states, including Missouri.

On Tuesday, Jan. 20, Barack Obama will be sworn in as what many view as the nation's first black president. But with a white mother, like Harper Grace, and an African father, perhaps it's more accurate to let the new president check more than one box, too.

"Everybody wants a piece of Barack Obama," says Susan Graham, founder and executive director of Project Race , which has fought for multiracial classification in several states for the past 20 years. "We want him to be multiracial. The black community wants him to be black."

What really matters, she says, is that he has the right to choose how he identifies himself, while many kids in the country aren't given that option.

Check One

In the larger world, Dr. Francis Wardle says most people know someone who is multiracial or multiethnic. It's not such a big deal, really. The problem, says the executive director for the Center for the Study of Biracial Children , is that academia and the government are 30 or 40 years behind, still wanting people to choose one identity.

The media don't get off easy, either.

"In general," he says, "if a multiracial person is involved in something negative, they always point out that they're multiracial."

If that person's getting good press, he says, there's often just one race mentioned.

But the reality that most people seem to accept, he adds, is that people are allowed to be more than one thing.

In the 2000 Census, 6.8 million people, or 2.4 percent of the population, identified themselves as more than one race. That option isn't available to parents or students in Missouri schools, however.

Sharnell Sharp, now 19 and a sophomore at the University of Missouri St. Louis, is the daughter of a Mexican-American mom and a black dad. Sharp grew up in a black neighborhood, went to a mostly black school, but knew her mom's ethnicity was a part of her, as well.

Her identity never seemed a huge issue, however, until high school, when Sharp was taking a state test. Under race, she was told she had to check one box, black.

"And I couldn't understand why, because I was both and I wanted to mark 'other.'"

And the category African American, non-Hispanic didn't work, either.

Sharp put up a fight.

"I'm mixed with both," she says. "It's 50/50 for both. So I shouldn't have to choose one or the other. It's not fair to me."

That's the same point that drives the work behind Project Race. The nonprofit was founded in 1991 and has changed legislation for multiracial classification in Ohio, Illinois, Georgia, Indiana, Michigan and Maryland, as well as several cities in other states.

Harper Grace's mom became a member of the group after her husband was told he had to check just one box when registering their son for school, according to Missouri Department of Education guidelines. If they didn't mark one box, they were told, a member of the staff would observe their son and choose one for him.

That seemed unfair to the Bileys, and now they're working with their state legislator, Rep. Bryan Pratt, to have multiracial classification legislation passed in Missouri.

"In Missouri," Graham says, "we're still fighting the battle."

What Are You?

So what's the big deal, really? If a child has to mark a box that doesn't represent who they are, where's the harm?

"Identity, identity, identity," Graham says. "We all come from different places ... it's being able to embrace a person's entire heritage. That's important."

And the ability to embrace that heritage is changing, too.

Wardle and Graham both say biracial and multiracial people of past generations have felt the need to pick one culture over the other.

No more, they say, and that reflects the expanding and connected world younger generations now live in.

"They're multi everything," Wardle says. "We have a generation of people who say, 'Hell with this whole thing, it doesn't make sense.'"

Groups like Project Race encourage the use of the term bi-racial or multiracial to describe people, rather than mixed. The opposite of mixed, Graham says, is pure, and that brings on a brand new set of connotations.

When Obama recently referred to himself as a mutt, it didn't help, she says.

Instead, an umbrella term such as multiracial provides a category for people who often don't fit in those provided and serves like the term Hispanic or Asian to encompass many while still acknowledging them.

Wardle and Graham both agree that without a classification, multiracial children are invisible. "We don't have any research on these kids," Wardle says, "because they're not categorized."

Not that people don't try -- a natural function of curiosity, perhaps.

Usually, when people ask Paige Overton, 8, of Wentzville, about her ethnicity, they guess completely wrong.

Paige's mom, Tracy, is white, and her dad, Jerry, is black.

For the most part, Paige's mom isn't concerned about how her daughter and son identify themselves. They're both black and white. They spend time with both cultures, live in a multiracial neighborhood and attend a multiracial school in Wentzville.

And those things are key for raising successful multiracial children, Wardle says.

"Saying you have the best of both worlds is absolutely meaningless," he says.

Instead, multiracial kids need to experience it, to have role models in both and a clear and easy term for what they are, so that when people ask, they're ready.

"They keep on asking if I speak any other different languages or if I'm Mexican," Paige says. "I tell them no, I'm from Kansas City."

No. 44

On election day, Paige and her brother went with their parents to their polling place in Wentzville. Jay, 6, went into the voting booth with his dad. Paige went into the booth with her mom.

Both kids placed their hands on their parents arms as their parents cast their votes.

But Obama's presidency might not change the situation for biracial and multiracial children, though it has relit the conversation.

"I don't think the president has anything to do with it," Wardle says. "I think the reality does ... The reality is people are going to understand they're not one thing anymore."

Sharp does, and since coming to college she's exploring other cultures even more.

On election day, she woke at 4 a.m. and headed to the polls with her brother a little after 5. It would be their first time voting.

When the line grew shorter and Sharp finally stepped into the booth, she knew who she'd be voting for -- Obama. But she wasn't voting for someone because of mixed ethnicity, or even for race at all. She was voting for changes in health care, the economy, oil prices, more jobs and more opportunities.

She only had to check one box, and she didn't mind a bit.

Reprinted from St. Louis Beacon, January 16, 2009
© 2009 by St. Louis Beacon