Race, however, continues to be a stubborn puzzle. It wasn't until 2000 that Americans were allowed to check more than one box for race on U.S. census forms. At that time, about 6.83 million people, or 2.4%, checked two or more races on census forms out of a population of about 281 million.
Carolyn Liebler, a sociology professor specializing in family, race and ethnicity at the University of Minnesota, said she expected that the numbers of people identifying as multiracial would be higher in 2010 than they were in 2000 "because the number of mixed-raced marriages are going up" and because of Obama.
Tom W. Smith, an expert on race and demographics at the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, calls it the "Obama effect."
"He's made being multiracial salient," Smith said.
Glenna Reyes, 20, grew up on Chicago's North Side, the daughter of a Jewish mother and a Puerto Rican father. She calls herself a "Jewican."
"Most of the people I know are mixed," Reyes said. "Barack Obama represents what a lot of the people I know are. But my friends and I don't see him as the face of biracial pride. We refer to him more as black than biracial. We compare him to Martin Luther King."
Obama, 47, has historically described himself as "black" or "African American." (Now he describes himself as "president-elect.")
But younger multiracial people, such as Winograd, Reyes and Victoria Rodriguez, 27, seem more comfortable identifying themselves as multiracial.
"I personally feel if you're mixed, you should say you're mixed," said Rodriguez, who is half black and half Latino. "Growing up, I had a lot of issues with race -- people trying to define me, saying I wasn't black enough. But I decided I love my mother, I love my father, so I'm mixed."
Like Obama, Melissa Harris-Lacewell, 35, a professor of politics and African American studies at Princeton University in New Jersey, identifies herself as black, although her mother is white and her father is African American.
"I was raised to be a black woman with a white mother, like a tall person with a short mother," she said. "I was raised in the South. Biracial was not really an option."
Harris-Lacewell said she did not "normally have mixed-girl emotions," but added: " I had more emotions about being biracial during this campaign then I've ever experienced."
Eddie Heward-Mills, 38, a disc jockey and drummer, never thought he'd live to see a black U.S. president, let alone a black president with a white mother. In other words, a president with a story like his.
"I've heard for years people say, 'I don't see color.' Now I'm starting to believe there are at least some white people who really do feel that way. More than before, that's for sure."
