Maya Soetoro-Ng, half-sister of President Obama, was recently a special guest speaker at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, talking about her experiences growing up multiracial in America: President's half sister speaks on her mixed-race experience. For her, it was often a struggle with wishing like she belonged:
Her older brother Barack never seemed to struggle with his cultural or racial identity in the same way she did, Soetoro-Ng said. Son of the same white mother but a Kenyan father, Obama identifies as African American - choosing to check that box exclusively and not also the one for white on his 2010 U.S. Census form.Nationwide, 7.3 million Americans identified as mixed race in 2000, the first year the U.S. Census allowed people to check two or more racial categories. The number is expected to rise in the 2010 census.
"There has never been much ambiguity for him," said Soetoro-Ng, 39. "He was able to claim his identity as he made his commitment to community organizing, to being a leader and lawyer."
But Soetoro-Ng's early struggles over identity, a "mild but persistent discomfort" amid an otherwise happy and carefree childhood, gradually eased over time. Today, she embraces all aspects of herself - and urged people to do the same in an interview and program on multiracial identities Saturday evening at the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo.
"We can do much to help our communities loosen their boundaries and begin to welcome a multitude of ways of being ... to make sure that individuals of mixed race, religion or ethnicities don't feel the need to choose one or the other but see their layers as a gift, something that adds beauty," she said.
Soetoro-Ng and her husband, Konrad Ng, have two daughters of Malay, Indonesian, Scottish, Irish, Hakka and Cantonese descent. Man, the President's family portrait is truly all-American. You might do a double-take at first... but then again, maybe not. That's America.
