What Obama should have said to the NAACP

About a month ago President Obama gave a speech on the 100th anniversary of the NAACP. Unfortunately, the news media barely covered the speech but by all accounts it was a great speech. As I understand, the speech was broken into two parts, the first part was pretty much boilerplate, "We have accomplished a lot, we still have a long ways to go, etc." About what you would expect to this group. The second half of the speech was more along the lines of, " quit playing the race card, go to school, work hard, stay out of trouble, etc." The type of speech that Bill Cosby gives to black groups.

In my opinion this is what he should have said, "Let me express my honor at being the first African-American president to address the NAACP on it's 100th anniversary. But, actually I'm not, strictly speaking, an African- American. True, my father was born in Kenya, in Africa, but he never became an American. My white mother was born in Kansas and I was born in Hawaii. I consider myself, therefore, as simply an "American", period. Just like millions of other bi-racial folks who were born and live in the United States.

I feel now is the time for this country to do away with hyphenated labels for our citizens. There are no more Irish-Americans, German-Americans, Italian-Americans or Jewish-Americans. Those terms have faded from history. Hispanic is a term that means folks who speak Spanish. But there is no such thing as an Hispanic race. I believe it is past time for this country to stop labeling each other as to who belongs to a race, tribe or clan. This causes divisiveness, strife and misunderstandings. We are all Americans and should look past each other's color, religion or customs as I know so many people do today. But, far too many still put labels on folks who for whatever reason, are "not like themselves."

The 2010 census is next year. As president I am going to issue an Executive Order that all mention of race, color and religion will be eliminated on census forms. From now on I will refer to myself and my family as simply "American" instead of "African-American", a label that strictly speaking, doesn't apply to me anyway. Furthermore, I will order that there will be no more references to race, color or religion in any official correspondence of the United States government. This applies to every employee of the Federal government.

I know most of you will be outraged at this proposal and declare me naive at best and sinister at worst. But my guess is that many, many Americans will finally say they have a President who declares firmly the time for racism is past in this country. It is my firm hope that all race based organizations, of all types, will become irrelevant in the not to distant future.

Thank you for your attention on this historic occasion.