Obama’s racial and cultural identity: Third culture kid or African-American?

Barack Obama has said, “I identify as African-American — that’s how I’m treated and that’s how I’m viewed. I’m proud of it.” In other words, the world gave Obama no choice but to be black, and he was happy to oblige.”  I read this quote by a reporter when I googled President-Elect Obama on the issue of race.

What I notice here is that this statement does not say what he thinks about his race. This is an underlying perception about race that needs to be address. We identify race based on how others identify us. Not how we identify ourselves.

I was thinking about this with regards to myself. Truly, if it would not be confusing, I would say that I am bi-racial and bi-cultrually Nigerian American. That language begins to give me a sense of my race versus my culture. There is a difference. Crossing cultures does make you a different person. You cannot deny that it is part of your identity. It just is.

Please note the commentator says “he had no choice but to be black. Why does he not have a choice? Genetically speaking he is 50 percent white and 50 percent black. Why must he fit into one box? Political convenience? I can see that. Maybe it is just not an issue to him. That is Ok too.

This same issue came up for me today as I found yet another wonderful social networking tool – seesmic. Here people record short videos and you respond to them via videos. It is like twitter, except it is a video. This is what I love about social networking as a research tool. I met Andre Keon on seesmic and he is a diversity officer for a county in Minnesota. In addition, his website has fantastic videos on diversity issues. My conversation with him was fulfilling as I told him about third culture kids and cross cultural kids including them in the conversation about hidden diversity.

It was a great conversation and I look forward to more interaction with him. He definitely has a very open and broad minded approach to the “inclusion” issue. I applaud this about him.

What are the cultural mixes in your background? Do you feel more pulled to one than the other? Even if your race is not mixed, maybe your culture is? This is also an interesting diversity piece.