On this Super Tuesday, I have to thank Lisa Takeuchi Cullen, who writes a Time blog caled "Work in Progress," for turning me on to this article by Greg Kamiya on Salon.

The essay is probably about the 10 billionth written about Barack Obama's bi-racial identity, but one of the only ones I've found poignant and real enough to read all the way through. The piece is long, but stick with it -- it's worth it.

Instead of ceaselessly debating how in the world Obama is going to straddle the line between white and black ("How does he do it?" "What does it all MEAN?"), Kamiya, whose father is Japanese-American and whose mother is of European descent, tackles the issue of Obama's bi-racial identity as I believe many of us in Hawaii, myself included, are trying to look at it.

That is, from the point of view of someone who wonders why being hapa is such a big deal.

Growing up in Hawaii, thoughts about being half one ethnicity and half another just weren't on my mind. It was only when I arrived at school in Massachusetts that I began to know what it meant to be a minority, to be different, to have people assume things about me because of my race or background -- even though I am just as white as I am Asian.

But unlike Obama, I was very reluctant to dive into the a self-search about my racial identity as he talks about in "Dreams from my Father." I shunned Asian organizations that made a big deal about being Asian, eating Asian food or talking about Asian traditions. It appeared to me that some of the groups isolated themselves from people of other ethnicities because they were too wrapped up in their own ethnic identities. All of it seemed very odd and foreign to me, even more so than the new, predominantly white culture I was now immersed in. As a result, I shied away from these groups.

That's why it has been so strange for me to see Obama fully embracing his black heritage, knowing that he is not just black, but hapa like me and just as much a minority as I am, but also just as white as I am.

Like me, Kamiya, who grew up in Berkeley, Calif., "didn't consider his (own) racial identity noteworthy." He writes:

The essence of Obama's politics, his call for reconciliation and unity, is thus deeply grounded in the long and painful creation of his own double identity. It is, almost literally, sealed in blood -- the mixed blood, black and white, that flows through his veins. With Obama, the movement is always toward a double affirmative. Not neither black nor white, which is the way I and many mixed-race people identify ourselves, but both black and something larger.

For someone like me, who completely opted out of racial categories, it isn't easy to understand someone who chose to embrace them. When it comes to something as intimate as the construction of our identities, we all reflexively feel that our way is the "right" way -- any other way is profoundly threatening to our sense of ourselves. As someone who has never belonged to any racial or ethnic "community" and has always been averse to identity politics and its accompanying assertions of racial guilt and victimhood, it isn't easy for me to understand or appreciate Obama's choices or his life. And maybe I'll never understand it fully, not least because being half-Japanese is nothing like being half-black.

The media have concentrated on Obama's appeal to white voters vs. his appeal to black and minority voters, and his appeal to both. But what about the hapas?

Before I got to college, I didn't realize that I would have to actually struggle to not let people define me as either exclusively as one thing or another. And living in Hawaii, perhaps I can more easily forget that such a struggle exists.

Obama, however, is not so lucky. He has chosen to confront his bi-racial identity head-on, especially his minority roots, something I am perhaps not ready or willing to do. His path is not my path, but somehow I suspect his has been more challenging.

And for that, as a fellow hapa, I respect him.