Black immigrants see triumphs in Obama

updated 8:01 p.m. ET Jan. 11, 2009

MIAMI - There is no box on U.S. Census forms that accurately describes Ray Gongora.

The Belize-born naturalized citizen grew up in an English-speaking Central American country, a former British colony where African slaves were once sold. He emigrated in 1986 to a country that deemed him Hispanic based on the geography of his birth.

"I identify myself as other," Gongora says. "I am black, so to speak — a brown-skinned Caribbean person. You cannot identify yourself as a black American because our cultures are so totally different."

He doesn't worry about not being counted, though. Not with President-elect Barack Obama set to take office Jan. 20.

Other dreams
Obama, the son of a white woman from Kansas and a black man from Kenya, will be the first black U.S. president, fulfilling the dreams and promise of the civil rights era. But for black immigrants and their children, Obama's swearing-in realizes other dreams.

In Obama, they see their own parents, themselves as outsiders and the children they raised to believe that education was the road to success. His election superseded not only color, but also economics, family divisions, government failures and nagging questions of identity.

"It's an individual accomplishment for each of us," Gongora said.

Gongora, a 53-year-old postal worker, scheduled a vacation day Jan. 20 to watch the inauguration on television at his Pembroke Pines home. His hope for his U.S.-born children is that no one will question their citizenship in an Obama administration, even with a Honduran mother and a Belize-born father.

"I said to my (17-year-old) son, 'You are natural born, you were born here. You can be president even if your parents were both born in different countries,'" he said.

Haitian-American schoolchildren were so caught up in the election that they wrote "Obama" on their arms as they talked about their culture in a Haitian Heritage Museum program this fall. His story, not just his skin color, was so similar to their own, said Lawrence Gonzalez, the Miami museum's education manager.

Obama spent part of his life abroad
Obama's father left Kenya to continue his education in the U.S. The president-elect also knows what it's like to uproot his life: He was born in Hawaii, then spent part of his childhood in Indonesia. He returned to Hawaii to live with his grandparents, then left the islands for college. He eventually settled in Chicago.

"They left that comfort zone and came to a random area where they weren't accepted. They continued to work to make a better life and get a career going," said Gonzalez, a Haitian-American who was born in Miami. "Our parents did this."

Jean-Marie Denis, 67, beams as he lists the reasons any Haitian could say, "Obama is my brother!"

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