How Will Obama's Racial Identity Play Out?

"When people who don't know me well, black or white, discover my background ... I see the split-second adjustments they have to make, the searching of my eyes for some telltale sign. They no longer know who I am."

-- Barack Obama, from the Introduction to Dreams from My Father (1995)

"Allow myself to introduce ... myself."

-- Austin Powers (Mike Myers), from Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997)

At least I feel like I should. I mean, I didn't play basketball for a Hawaiian prep school or anything like that, but I grew up in the suburbs, attended a well-known university, and then moved on up to a low-key but trendy urban neighborhood. I'm biracial, my wife is African American, my parents are of different faiths and they grew up in two different working-class communities only a few miles apart.

It would be fair to say that I fall rather organically within Obama's core demographic. I am to Obama, presumably, what people who are dissatisfied with President Bush but who still favor a few extra years of the Iraq war are to Senator John McCain. One thing I think I can say with confidence is that we all need to take a deep breath when it comes to sorting out the implications of the, uh, mixed messages that abound regarding the identity crisis that America is currently undergoing with the prospect of a black or biracial President only six months away.

Just so that you know where I stand, I do think it was just a coincidence that Soledad O'Brien once hosted a show called Morning Blend. I can't give any of my beige peers a one-size-fits-all answer to use when asked, "What are you?," but I do know that the answer they're looking for is frequently not, "Just a proud American, same as you". And I feel kind of bad for Main Street, U.S.A. In just a few months, we've tossed around the possibility of a woman President, an African-American President, and now we're delving into the concept of a biracial President. It's a lot to take in -- you can't be sure what's true and what isn't. But it's simple: we're not all tragic, but we are all good-looking. Some of us are both (just ask Halle and Keanu).

With a surge of campaign spots that show family photos of the candidate with his (white) mother and grandparents, Obama the nominee and general election Presidential candidate is beginning to tinker with his pitch to American voters in response to questions about his background, his core beliefs, and his general American-ness as relates to his blackness, his whiteness, and his foreign sounding yet undeniably catchy name. Some are asking why these ads don't feature any pictures of his (black African) father or his hapa half sister. And while some may be a little suspicious of his less typical American success story, it's also arguable that he has generated more momentum than he otherwise would have been able to if his name was, let's say, "Mike Johnson", and he had been born and raised on the south side of Chicago.

The Real U.S. Open

We're already more familiar with other popular cultural models of the biracial experience -- the Tiger Woods "Cablinasian" school, wherein being many things all at once might allow you to be anything, but might also reduce you to nothing. And the Jennifer Beals experience, being admired for your exotic properties while at the same time being viewed with a certain amount of pity or even derision for not meeting the pre-conceived notions of those who are unable to reconcile fair skin with African lineage or brown skin with Middle America. Until now, the Obama model is something less examined, yet it is somewhat typical of someone situated as he is -- too young to have experienced the civil rights movement first hand, but too old to be a product of a Derek Jeter and Mariah Carey world.