Homeland and Citizen: The Conflict of Races and Identities

Former U.S. President Barack Obama has complained about the American right’s attempt to redefine the concept of citizenship in the United States. He cited Vice President J.D. Vance as an example, arguing that Vance is leading a discriminatory campaign that questions the legitimacy of an American citizen’s belonging according to how long that person, or their ancestors, has lived in the country. This is despite the fact that Vance himself is of British Isles ancestry, while his wife was born to Indian parents.

Obama, who enjoyed—and continues to enjoy—immense popularity, was subjected to persistent doubts over the legitimacy of his American identity. While he inherited a country fighting on several fronts, he was also forced to fight a personal battle. He carries an Arabic and Islamic name, his father was a Muslim from Kenya, and he acquired American citizenship through his mother.

The free world finds such logic astonishing. The United States is the world’s foremost nation of immigrants, and it is rare to find a citizen whose roots stretch back to the land’s earliest inhabitants. According to specialized studies, a large proportion of Americans are of German ancestry, followed by people of Latin American, English, Irish, Italian, African, and Asian descent.

America was once regarded as the land of dreams and opportunity—although those opportunities were made possible, in part, through the elimination of Indigenous peoples and their confinement to reservations and isolated communities.

The United States takes pride in being a society built on the dreams of the oppressed. Millions of migrants, some voluntarily and others by force, crossed the vast Atlantic toward the New World. America also became known as the land of opportunity, even when those opportunities came at the expense of the lives and dreams of millions.

While the world as we know it appears to be moving toward greater tolerance, broader acceptance, and deeper understanding, the United States is drifting toward racial prejudice and sterile partisanship. This is happening even as the controversial President Donald Trump is married to a Slovenian immigrant, one of his daughters married an American of Arab origin, and Trump himself descends from a family rooted in a rural German town. His favorite daughter, meanwhile, married a Jewish man.

In fairness, this extremist outlook began spreading across the West in the 1990s, with the rise of right-wing parties in Austria, France, and Italy. Its origins were not American. American society had long focused its hostility on African Americans before turning its attention to other groups.

Although the European right has often placed the concept of the homeland above all else, it did not traditionally undermine the principle of citizenship or investigate the ancestral origins of citizens. Anyone who acquires citizenship becomes a full citizen, entitled to the same rights and bound by the same duties. This is the principle that the Republican administration in the White House has increasingly begun to disavow.

There is a clear difference between human characteristics such as skin color, language, and ethnicity, and a person’s rights and value within society. The two concepts are not inherently connected and cannot justifiably be merged.

In Iraq, we suffered deeply from this kind of thinking. The modern Iraqi state classified citizens according to their presumed Ottoman or Persian affiliation. Later, the Ba’ath Party decided that a particular community—the Faili Kurds—was not necessarily Iraqi. They were stripped of everything and abandoned at the border to face an unknown fate.

On this vast earth, people must show tolerance, understanding, coexistence, and respect. Otherwise, no matter how wide the world may be, it will become unbearably narrow for those whose hearts are too closed to accept others.