About a year ago, Asian Pop Columnist and Secret Identities editor-in-chief Jeff Yang memorably asked, "Could Obama be the first Asian American president?" As Jeff convincingly points out, many of the "tropes that surround and define Obama can just as easily be read as those of another community entirely" - that of the Asian American community. In addition to being born and raised in HI (the nation's only Asian-majority state), spending several of his formative years in Indonesia, and being close to his Indonesian half-sister, Maya Soetoro (and later on her husband, Konrad Ng), many other aspects of Obama's history mirror those of the Asian American experience, including a unique name (what Betty Brown would have had to say about that!), his father's "outsized academic expectations" for him*, and the gradual realization that there was no one looks like him in images from popular culture.

Now, 100 days into President Obama's first term, the rest of the media seem to have caught on to this idea of Obama as the first Asian American president. (Although it would be nice if they could have credited Jeff with coming up with the idea. ;) As the 44th president, Obama appointed an unprecedented number of Asian Amerian cabinet secretaries, including Dr. Steven Chu as Energy Secretary, General Eric Shinseki as Secretary of Veterans' Affairs, and Governor Gary Locke as Commerce Secretary, in addition to selecting Aneesh P. Chopra to be the nation's first Chief Technology Officer and Vivek Kundra to be Chief Information Office. In addition, some of his closest staff members (including several from the campaign) are Asian American: Eugene Kang, Special Assistant to the President, Chris Lu, Cabinet Secretary, Pete Rouse, Senior Advisor, and more recently Kal Penn, who very famously left the TV show House to join the White House Office of Public Liaison, where he will serve as liaison to the Asian American and Pacific Islander community.  

As Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage month fast approaches, it will be interesting to see what the White House has planned to celebrate this month. What are people's thoughts about what they would like to see? And what do y'all think about the notion of the president as a fellow or honorary Asian American? (Can we consider him a brother? :) 

*In fact, it was downright spooky how much his father's admonitions to study hard and excel in school echoed my mom's exhortations almost verbatim!