A defining moment in American race relations, Barack Obama's presidential victory holds special meaning for a growing number of multiracial Americans.

The country's first black president is also half white and was raised by an Indonesian stepfather.

"His presidency validates my cultural existence when most of my life, my background has either been questioned, misunderstood or not acknowledged at all," said Noel Hollis of Folsom.

Like Obama, Hollis had a black father who left when she was a toddler, and she was raised by her white mother and a white woman she considers her grandmother.

Obama's family spans many races. His mother's roots stretch back to the Civil War – both Union and Confederate – and to the Cherokee. His Kenyan father was the son of a traditional healer who followed Islam. He has an Indonesian-American half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng.

"It's hard to think of somebody who connects with so many different ancestries," said UC Davis Law School Dean Kevin Johnson, who is of Mexican and European descent. "He's ahead of his time. As intermarriages increase, we're going to see more and more stories like this. He's been very honest about growing up mixed and not sure where he fit in."

More than 6.5 million Americans – 2.1 percent – identify with more than one race, according to the census, which didn't offer the multiple race option until 2000.

In California, the percentage is higher – 3.5 percent, or 1.26 million.

The percentage is even higher in the Sacramento metropolitan area, where 4 percent of the population – almost 83,000 – identify themselves as multiracial.

In Obama's 1995 book, "Dreams from My Father – A Story of Race and Inheritance," he writes of his "troubled heart … the mixed blood, the divided soul, the ghostly image of the tragic mulatto trapped between two worlds."

This touches Hollis deeply.

"My parents got a divorce because my father couldn't be married to a white woman," said Hollis, 22, an English major at Folsom Lake College and a sales coordinator at e.Republic media and publishing.

One of a handful of African American students in her elementary school in Temecula, in Southern California, she didn't realize she looked different until third grade. "Six of us wrote a play about animal families, and someone decided I should be the chipmunk adopted by the squirrel family," Hollis said. "My mom is blonde and blue-eyed, and people were always saying, 'That's your mom?' "

"Some African Americans said I was 'whitewashed,' " she said.

"Until six months ago I was very unsure of my racial identity – I had this idea of beauty based on my mom and straightened my hair constantly," Hollis said.

The woman she considers her grandmother, Sherry Prysock of North Sacramento, persuaded her to register to vote in August and opened her eyes to Obama.

Hollis, who plans to be a motivational speaker, said she used to check "other" on race boxes and now checks both white and black.

When ethnicity comes into play, Johnson of UC Davis said, the actual number of multiracial Americans is much higher than indicated on the census. "Most African Americans and Latinos are from a variety of different backgrounds," he said.

Most of the nation's more than 45 million Latinos – including 13.2 million in California and close to 400,000 in the Sacramento area – are multiracial, with indigenous, European, African and Asian blood, Johnson said.

"It's complicated because Hispanic is listed as an ethnic, not a racial, category," he said.

Many of the nation's 1.7 million Filipinos, including 800,000 Californians and 32,000 Sacramentans, are coming to terms with their mixed heritage.

"We are very multiracial," said Debra Paular Aban, managing editor of Asian Pacific American News & Review, a bimonthly Sacramento publication. Along with their Pacific Islander roots, "We're Spanish, Portuguese and my dad said our family's Italian, too."

And as many as 60 percent of the nation's more than 38 million African Americans have European and/or American Indian roots, said Ward Connerly, a leading opponent of racial classifications and preferences.

Call The Bee's Stephen Magagnini, (916) 321-1072. Bee staff writer Phillip Reese contributed to this report.