The United States comprises only 2 percent of people like me — people of mixed race, that is.

This figure was made available in 2000, the first year the U.S. Census Bureau allowed people to check a box saying they were of mixed race.

While celebrities such Tiger Woods, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Halle Berry make it seem like there are more of us out there, the number of multiracial Americans remains surprisingly small.

My entire life, I’ve had to choose one box or the other: African-American or Asian American, black or Filipino, my father or my mother. Sometimes I chose the ambiguous “other,” effectively denying both sides of who I am.

But for the first time in American history, a person of mixed race has a chance at the Oval Office.

The presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama, whose personal story is all too familiar to most Americans by now, has brought the issue of race to the forefront of American politics.

Are blacks or whites voting for the senator? Should his campaign focus on the fact that he was raised by his white mother, grandmother and grandfather, who served in World War II, or should it focus on the fact that his father was an African immigrant? Is Obama “too black” or not black enough?

Questions like this disturb me with their alarming black and white polarities.

When did we stop looking at larger issues and trends and start making knee-jerk assumptions?

As much as pundits might argue that we live in an era past the politics of race, the news media and politicians in the United States are still obsessed with the difference between black and white.

Newsweek’s June 2 cover story provided a lengthy, but introspective, look at race and the presidential candidate, proving that the issue is far from dead and far from the minds of the public. As a whole, Americans are concerned with the black and white picture.

For at least 2 percent of the population, however, there is no black and white picture.

A May 28 article on msnbc.com chronicles the confusion of multiracial individuals, our quest for understanding and our relationship to the Obama campaign.

For Americans like us, Obama is not “too black” or not black enough. He straddles the line, in many ways, between black and white politics. If we begin a discussion about race and this campaign, we can’t forget that Obama is neither black nor white, and our politics shouldn’t be, either.

I’m not sure if Obama will win the presidency come November, but until then, his campaign should be evaluated for his policies and plans, without having to favor one race over the other. After all, he’s probably had to do that his whole life.