ON DEADLINE: When race is a multiple choice

By ELIZABETH DAVIDZ, Associated Press Writer Thu Jul 3, 3:14 AM ET

WASHINGTON - This presidential election is about more than checking a box for either a Democrat or a Republican. For me, it's also about choosing a box that identifies my race.

Because I am biracial, I always dreaded those forms that asked you to check one box only. Are you black? Are you white? Are you Hispanic? Are you Asian?

For anyone who is like me or Barack Obama, racially mixed, the choice has always been clear. We would choose the minority box because that is how the world sees you. To choose the white box was to try to pass as white, to be ashamed of that drop of blood that makes you dark. To choose "other" was to have your race not counted at all.

Those forms are gone. But when it comes to race in America, we still tend to talk about it in terms of black versus white or some race versus another. In this election, Obama's diverse family has come up again and again, but in the end we tend to define him one way.

Yes, Obama is black. But he is also white.

Increasingly, families are bridging these divides. People in my generation who grew up in the '80s, and those younger, may hardly see interracial families as revolutionary, since the numbers have grown.

But interracial families have been an American taboo since colonial times.

Interracial marriage was once banned in 41 states.

In 1961, when Obama was born to a white woman and a black man from Kenya, 22 states did not allow interracial marriage. Those prohibitions fell when the Supreme Court, in 1967, overturned a Virginia law banning whites from marrying nonwhites.

A year later, when my parents were married in Ohio, it was legal but not easy.

My mother is white and my father is a dark-skinned man from Indonesia. My mom's father refused to come to the wedding. A family member told my mother no one would marry her children because they would be "mutts."

My dad's family, in Indonesia, didn't attend.

I never experienced the tensions in my family surrounding my parents' marriage. By the time my brother, my sister and I were born, the family's initial doubts had been put to rest — my grandfather's included. They showed us nothing but love and acceptance.

Still, it was hard to grow up biracial.

In our small Midwestern community, we never really fit in. Other than a spattering of Confederate flags and a few KKK's scratched in school desks, racism was never really the issue. The daily frustration was ignorance. My siblings and I continually faced the questions.

"Where are you from?"

"Here. Ohio."

"No, where are you from really?"

My brother, my sister and I would exchange stories about what people thought we were: Hispanic, Jewish, Native American, Mediterranean, Middle Eastern.

The guesses never got it right. It was clear that even though we were half white, and culturally white, to be part white was to be not white at all.

We may have been sheltered in our small town, but what we knew of the outside world in the '80s through TV, movies and news was that America was still divided into black and white. The only interracial couples we knew were the neighbors on the sitcom "The Jeffersons" and the tragic couples in the musicals "Show Boat" and "West Side Story."

Things got better in the '90s. Biracial celebrities were taking the stage in sports, TV and in music. Interracial couples started to grace the screen in happier circumstances. For the first time, I saw biracial-multiracial boxes and marked them with joy.

In 2000, the U.S. census allowed Americans for the first time to identify themselves by more than one racial category. Nearly 7 million did.

And the last state ban on interracial marriage finally fell, an unenforceable law that had lingered on the books in Alabama.

In that year's presidential election, John McCain faced false rumors spread during the South Carolina primary that he'd fathered a black child out of wedlock. In fact, he and his wife, Cindy, had adopted their daughter Bridget from an orphanage in Bangladesh.

Increasingly, couples like the McCains are adopting internationally. Since 1990, the number of international adoptions has more than doubled, to more than 20,000 in 2006.

I have rarely pondered my race in recent years. It wasn't until this year, with my parent's 40th wedding anniversary and the presidential election, that I've once again faced the old frustrations, confusions and emotions.

Looking through my parent's wedding photos and hearing the old stories, I think about how hard it must have been for them and Obama's parents. Hearing Obama talk about his white mother and grandparents, I think about my own.

Reading about his black father and his Indonesian stepfather, I think of my dad. When I see Bridget McCain's photo, a dark-skinned girl in a sea of white faces, I think of my own childhood insecurities.

When people file Obama under black and only black, I feel like I am once again facing those old forms, that chasm between the races. Check only one box — never mind one parent, half my family, one part of who I am.

This historic election is about more than black versus white; it is also about families that fill the in-betweens.

Regardless of who wins this election, if it is McCain or Obama, a racial milestone will be met. America will have its first interracial first family in the White House.

___

EDITOR'S NOTE — Elizabeth Davidz is a multimedia producer for The Associated Press' bureau in Washington. On Deadline is a weekly political column.