Obama Changed How I View My Identity

By Tim | Tuesday, March 3, 2009 | 2 Comments

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barack hope poster1 Obama Changed How I View My Identity Yumi Wilson just published a beautiful piece on how our new president, Barack Obama changed the way she views her racial identity. Ms. Wilson is multiracial, born to African American and Japanese parents. In her article, she describes her self-realization and coming to terms with her identity:

For most of my life, I had fought to be recognized as half-black and half-Japanese, or by the “Sum of Our Parts,” as a book on the subject of multiracial identity among Asian Americans suggested. …
While trying to process what Obama’s racial identity should be or shouldn’t be, I ended up thinking differently about my own racial identity. I am not half black or half Japanese, as I thought all my life. I am not a dilution of my father’s blood, or even my mother’s. I am all black – and all Japanese. …
It was strange to admit, but Obama had changed my mind on something I thought I understood. Or at the very least, he helped me to think differently about what it means to be multiracial.

I completely applaud Ms. Wilson’s recognition of her complete racial identity, and can only hope my own daughter sees herself in such terms when she’s older. My daughter is still only three years old (very quickly approaching four), but racial identity is something she’s already had to come to terms with. She has both a Caucasian and Chinese parent, and she’s grown up living in a house with her grandmother who spoke mostly Chinese.

My daughter associates “Chinese” with Chinese restaurants, the Chinese TV my mother used to watch, and with memories of her Grandmother. Less than a year ago, if you asked her if she was Chinese, my daughter would very flatly tell you “NO”. As with anyone, she’s grown quite a bit in the last year, and today she realizes that her dad is Chinese, that some of her favorite food is Chinese, that many of her relatives are Chinese, and there are plenty of Chinese holidays to celebrate. All of this has caused a shift in her self-identity, and today if you ask her if she’s Chinese, she’ll tell you “Yes, I’m Chinese”, and she might even follow it up explaining she can’t speak or read the funny Chinese characters, but she’s still Chinese.

I know my daughter will have many more shifts in self-identity to come in her life, and I hope each one will bring her closer to self-acceptance and happiness in her life. As many on this site have blogged about, self-acceptance is something many of us have worked hard towards just growing up Asian in America.

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