Go into any inner-city neighborhood, and folks will tell you that government alone can’t teach kids to learn.They know that parents have to parent, that children can’t achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white.I'm pretty sure that most people reading this are aware of this fact, but I am not white. Not entirely, anyway. For my entire life, when filling out survey forms and such, I've always checked off the "Native American/Alaskan Native" box. My father is chairman of my tribe and has been fighting to get our tribe nationally recognized for a long time now.
—Barack Obama, Keynote Address, Democratic National Convention, 2004
I don't bring up my race very much, though. I'm not active in my tribe, and I have no real connection to Native American culture. Does that make me less of an American Indian? Does the rejection of my ethnicity mean that I'm just acting white?
