Multiracial Identity?

What does it mean to be multiracial on a college campus not known for its diversity?  I am still struggling to figure that out.  Identifying as multiracial at all is something unfamiliar to many Americans.  Just look at our new President.  Barack Obama is of mixed heritage, yet we hail him as the "first black president," not the first multiracial president.  Just glance at the Wikipedia article about Obama.  Yet which would really say more about how far we've come in American society?  I think that the emphasis on "black" and "African American" is very telling.

While interracial marriages have been legal throughout the United States since the 1967 Supreme Court ruling Loving v. Virginia, the children of these marriages (like myself), have only recently really had the opportunity to embrace a multiracial identity.  I really have only started to develop and carry this identity within the past year, and I am nearly 20.  I feel almost as though I have been cheated in always being forced to identify as either "Asian/Pacific Islander" or "White/Non-Hispanic" before.  It has almost always been a "check one" situation, not a "check all that apply."  I questioned this in school, knowing I was fifty-fifty and therefore one did not apply more than the other, but what could I do?  When "multiracial" options finally started appearing more regularly, I had been forced to choose for so long that I continued to select only "Asian."

Now that I am in college, identity is very important.  It is constantly discussed both within and outside of the classroom.  So what does it mean for me to say that I am multiracial here?  It means that I am rare, almost a novelty in a sense, and that people often do not understand what I have gone through.  It means that I still struggle to find acceptance, and so I still struggle with my identity.  It means that my university, with its separate Asian, Black, Latino, and Native Student Alliances, is still missing a key issue.  It means that I have my work cut out for me.

Is it right that my identity is an alien idea to may of my fellow students?