Illustration: Rusty Zimmerman

In 1997, Tiger Woods radically altered the debate on racial identity by announcing on Oprah that he viewed himself not as black, but as “Cablinasian,” referring to his Caucasian, black, Indian and Asian heritage.

In 2000, nearly 7 million Americans embraced their multiracial identity by checking more than one racial category in the US Census. Many predict the number will grow in the 2010 census, noting that of interracial births have more than tripled since the ’70s.

But there was a shift during the 2008 presidential campaign when candidate Barack Hussein Obama, whose mother is white and father is black Kenyan, repeatedly told the media that he viewed himself not as biracial, but as black. "I identify as African American — that's how I'm treated and that's how I'm viewed,” Obama said in a 2007 interview. I'm proud of it."

At first, I was perturbed that Obama insisted on using what American Chica author and Washington Post book editor Marie Arana has described as outdated language. “Unless the one-drop rule still applies, our president-elect is not black. We call him that — he calls himself that –because we use dated language and logic.”

For most of my life, I had fought to be recognized as half-black and half-Japanese, or by the “Sum of Our Parts,” as a book on the subject of multiracial identity among Asian Americans suggested.

For me, my racial identity was based on my experience as the daughter of a Japanese-born mother and African American soldier. My love of Japanese soba came from my mother’s cooking. My choice of music came from my father’s taste for soul and R&B. My identity also had been shaped by my experience outside the home. One particular event happened when I was in college more than 20 years ago in Los Angeles at the University of Southern California.

“Wanna dance?” a tall, lanky black guy with a closed-shaved cut asked me as I stood against a cream-colored wall. The guy was a junior, possibly a basketball player at USC. I was a sophomore, sharing a place with a fun-loving, black Jamaican student who decided to throw a party at our apartment. Nearly everyone at the party was black. I nodded to Mr. Basketball as his eyes twinkled under the dim lights. Without saying a word, the guy grabbed my hand and pushed his way through a circle of hot, sweaty students, many of who were holding plastic cups of cheap beer.

On the dance floor, I began swaying my hips and bobbing my head left and right. The guy smiled at me, perhaps amused by my enthusiasm. Feeling carefree and happy to be in a crowd of clearly some of the coolest people on campus, I pointed my palms toward the ceiling, pretending to raise the roof. Some women, standing behind me, started laughing. Loudly. Intrigued, I turned around to find out what was so funny. The women, slender and curvy, stopped laughing when they saw me looking. They turned away. My body froze. Were these women laughing at me? Was I dancing like a geek? I turned back around, hoping to re-connect with Mr. Basketball, but he was looking the other way.

I tossed my long curly hair behind my shoulders, hoping to get I try to get back into the rhythm of music, but the guy leaned over, and whispered, “Thanks.”

Moments like this are why I have called myself everything from zebra to half-breed to ha-fu, the Japanese term for mixed-race people. Indeed, similar events may have been among the reasons why Obama casually referred to himself as a “mutt” during a conversation about getting a dog for his daughters. So, I couldn’t understand why Obama was not following Tiger’s lead and declaring his multiracial identity on Oprah.

And then President Obama was inaugurated.

While watching Michelle Obama stroll gracefully down the stairs of the West Front of the Capitol on inauguration day, I felt my stomach flutter. My chest tightened. The First Lady appeared so elegant, strong and confident. It’s the way my father often described his mother, who raised five children in the Appalachian hills of West Virginia by working a variety of low-paying, blue-collar jobs. “My momma did the best she could providing for us,” my father often told me. “She was a tough woman, but she loved us.”

My chest grew tighter when President Obama took the stage. Though Obama is lighter in hue and perhaps a bit taller, he reminded me of my father, a man who always told me that I could be anything if I put my mind to it. I imagined my father, who now lives in the southern hills of Ohio, tearing up over Obama’s swearing-in ceremony. He must be so excited, I thought. Later, I e-mailed my father to find out if I was right.

“It was great,” my father said. “The sites on television with all the people, with everyone of all ethnic groups being there made me even more happy and proud. … It makes everything worthwhile, from being the first Afro American to attend an all-white school in 1955 or so. … And this made it all worth it.”

That’s when it hit me.

Obama is black. And so am I.

While trying to process what Obama’s racial identity should be or shouldn’t be, I ended up thinking differently about my own racial identity. I am not half black or half Japanese, as I thought all my life. I am not a dilution of my father’s blood, or even my mother’s. I am all black – and all Japanese.

At lunch at a San Mateo, CA, ramen shop the other day I shared my new way of thinking with a dear friend from the gym. “You know,” I said to Junko while slurping a spoonful of shio ramen, “I don’t want to be called ha-fu anymore. Ha-fu makes it sounds like I don’t belong anywhere, like I’m not part of any race, like …”

Junko, who was born in Japan, gently cut me off and smiled. “You’re not ha-fu,” she said. “You’re a Double.”

I paused for a moment, surprised that Junko knew the term I had learned in 2001 while studying in Japan on a research grant. The term came from a 1995 documentary called “Doubles,” which chronicled the lives of children born to Japanese and American couples after WWII.

“Exactly. I am all black … and all Japanese,” I said. “I’m a double.”

I giggled. It was strange to admit, but Obama had changed my mind on something I thought I understood. Or at the very least, he helped me to think differently about what it means to be multiracial.

Yumi Wilson is a journalism professor at San Francisco State University.

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