We are All Americans
We are All Americans
By Steve Mozena
Contributing Writer
In the midst of celebrating the uniqueness of
Barack Obama's election to the Oval Office and
hailing him as our first black President, we seem to be forgetting one thing.
Our President-elect is biracial. His mother was a
white woman from Kansas and his father a black man from Kenya.
Like so many Americans, Obama is of mixed race.
The 2000 census showed that 7.3 million Americans
identified themselves as members of two or more
races. That's 3 percent of the population. That
number is on the rise as interracial marriages,
currently accounting for about 6 percent of marriages, increase.
African-Americans claim Obama as one of their
own, but I am reminded of a similar desire some
years ago to call Tiger Woods an
African-American. But that proved to be a little
too simple. It turned out that Woods' exact
ethnic background is as follows: Mother: 1/2
Thai, 1/4 Caucasian, 1/4 Chinese. Father: 1/2
Black, 1/4 American Indian, 1/4 Chinese. Add it
all up and it becomes apparent that Woods is
actually 1/2 Asian, 1/4 Black, and 1/4 Caucasian and Native American.
What does that make him, an
Asian-African-American? Even that doesn't cover
every aspect of his ethnic background.
No, Tiger Woods is an American. Isn't that
simpler, and just as true? He is a U.S. citizen;
he carries an American passport. He identifies as an American.
And isn't that true of Barack Obama also? He has
a mixed racial heritage, but he is first and
foremost an American. That's why we elected him.
His ethnic identity is secondary to his perceived
ability to lead all Americans as one nation.
The issue has a personal significance for me. My
wife is originally from the Philippines and is
now an American citizen. We have a daughter, but
we do not want her to identify her racial makeup
as Fil-Am, as such biracial people are sometimes
known. She is an American, just as we are.
When we identify Barack Obama as an
African-American, we forget that one of the
biggest influences on his early life was his
white grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, who died only a few days ago.
Obama has chosen to identify as a black man, and
this played a role in his strategy to win the
presidency. But let's hope that he also remembers his biracial roots.
I would prefer to see everyone stop using the
hyphenated term, African-American, as well as
Asian-American and Latino-American. We are all
Americans, and identifying as such can bring us
all together as one nation. This is surely what
we need in these times of crisis.
As Americans, almost all of us have something
exotic in our racial or ethnic backgrounds. Me?
My father was Italian and my mother Irish, but I
am not an Italian-Irish-American. I'm an American.
We don't refer to former Presidents Bill Clinton,
Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy as
Irish-American, although they all have Irish
ancestry, so why should we speak about Barack Obama as African-American?
He has frequently said that he does not want to
be president of Red state America or Blue state
America, but of the United States of America.
I would like to hear him say also that he does
not want to be president of a hyphenated America,
of African-Americans or Asian-Americans or any
other group, but of all Americans identifying as Americans.
This is what our society is supposed to be, a
melting pot in which we pour our separate
identities and emerge as Americans-one nation, one people, under God.
It is time to reassert our common identity and
our common goals in language that unites us rather than divides us.
Steve Mozena lives in Carson, California.
