Away from those areas, however, "multiracial individuals may find it economically advantageous not to advertise their heritage," said Juanita Brooks, a clinical psychologist in Florida who ran a Web site for multiracial people with "a white appearance" like herself.
With intermarriage rates on the rise, some multiracial groups are trying to reinforce a positive self-image in younger generations. Fusion, a group that formed three years ago in San Francisco, is starting a summer camp this year for multiracial and multiethnic children as well as for transracial adoptees so "they can interact with role models and kids their own age," said Joemy Ito-Gates, a third-grade teacher who founded the group.
Many young people of mixed race said they are heartened by the increasing number of public figures like Tiger Woods, who refuses to be singularly categorized.
Jen Chau, 28 -- an administrative assistant at New York University who also is a founder of mixedmediawatch.com and Swirl, a social group in New York that has chapters in several cities -- said that there was a measure of respect for those like Halle Berry, who accepted her Oscar for best actress in the 2001 film, Monster's Ball, on behalf of African-Americans even though her mother is white.
"Mixed people should identify the way they want," Chau said. "They shouldn't be questioned. That's how they feel."
Researchers who study questions of racial identity say multiracial people vary in how they relate to their different backgrounds, with some embracing all parts of their heritage equally, and others choosing to be more one than another. And as a group, said Larry Hajime Shinagawa, director of the Center for the Study of Culture, Race and Ethnicity at Ithaca College in New York, the multiracial population is too diverse itself to unite under a banner.
"People will still need a community of interest and identification," he said.
Some, like Lakshminarayanan, say they are still exploring their identities and questions like how being partly white might lend certain advantages. "This tour has made me think about the fact that although I'm a person of color, my white background has in fact given me a lot of white privilege," she recently wrote on Generation Mix's Web log. "But this white privilege thing is a whole new dimension for me."
Aaron Kendeall, 21, a student at West Virginia University and a Generation Mix tour member, said appearing to be white sometimes came with its own problems. Kendeall, who grew up in Pittsburgh, said that in high school he had a fight with a hockey teammate who used a racial slur about blacks while telling a joke in the locker room. Kendeall looks white like his mother, but his father is black, which he said he made clear immediately, by telling him.
"I took my belt off and hit him," he said. His teammate had to apologize.
"When you're mixed," Kendeall added, "you're put in a lot of awkward situations other people would not be put in."
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