Barack Hussein Obama serves as the president of the United States of America. Obama is notable because he is the first African-American to be elected to be president. In a country with a history of racial prejudice and a struggle to progress to inclusivity after the banning of slave trade, Obama is a representation of the growth of this nation. Obama is notable for his mixed race identity, and lack of a particular ethnicity; factors which he has embraced and use to work his way to being accepted in the American diversity.
Focusing on the first primary identity of race, Barack Obama was born to a Kenyan father who was an exchange student in America, and an American mother (Mazurkiewicz, 2012). The American society is diverse, and African American are essentially descendants of slaves then there are the whites. Obama’s ethnicity, though African American, does not exactly fit this bill since he was born of a white mother and an African father. Obama chose to identify himself as an African-American since according to him, that is the identity that he would be tagged in bad situations, so he opted to embrace it for all situations (Mazurkiewicz, 2012).
Ethnicity presents an even bigger challenge than race to Obama. Growing up, Obama was not accepted by the black community since he was living with his white side of the family(Mazurkiewicz, 2012). On the hand, he could not claim his ethnicity from his mother's side of the household since he looked different and his name was even more strange (Mazurkiewicz, 2012).
Obama greatly embraced his unique identity by first seeking a sense of belonging in the African American community. He identified himself as an African American, joined the community, belonged to a church that majorly severed the black community and served their course (Daley, 2008). Obama immersed themselves himself into the issues affecting people, reaching out to the to young people and pivoting himself as a representation of the hope for a new America, and evidence that the dreams of American forefathers could be realized. Obama enjoyed tremendous support from people from all walks of life. As he stated in his book, "My identity might begin with the fact of my race, but it didn't, couldn't end there. At least that's what I would choose to believe,” (Obama, 2004).
References
Daley, J. (2008). Barack Obama's desperate desire to belong. Telegraph.co.uk. Retrieved 23 May 2016, from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/janetdaley/3556505/Barack-Obamas desperate-desire-to-belong.html
Mazurkiewicz, M. (2012). Contemporary Black biography. Detroit, Mich.: Gale.
Obama, B. (2004). Dreams from my father. New York: Three Rivers Press.
