Paulo Serodio Suing N.J. Medical School for Discrimination, Says he is a White African-American

Can a white guy call himself an African American? Well, Paulo Serodio says he is. He was born and raised in Mozambique and is now a naturalized American citizen. He has filed a lawsuit against Newark-based University of Medicine and Dentistry, claiming that he was harassed and suspended for identifying himself during a class cultural exercise as a "white African-American." He said that this has destroyed his life and his career. The lawsuit asks for Serodio's reinstatement at the school and monetary damages. It has named the university and several doctors and university employees as defendants. So, besides some people being unable to keep a straight face during this discussion, the guy is right in a sense. Doesn't Teresa Heinz Kerry come to mind? She was born in Mozambique and does consider herself an African American. So, is the term African American only reserved for blacks? Africa is so diverse, there are people of all races that can call themselves Africans, so why not African Americans if they are naturalized?

Filed Monday in U.S. District Court in New Jersey, the lawsuit traces a series of events that Serodio maintains led to his 2007 suspension, starting with a March 2006 cultural exercise in a clinical skills course taught by Dr. Kathy Ann Duncan, where each student was asked to define themselves for a discussion on culture and medicine. After Serodio labeled himself as a white African-American, another student said she was offended by his comments and that, because of his white skin, was not an African-American. According to the lawsuit, Serodio was summoned to Duncan's office where he was instructed "never to define himself as an African-American & because it was offensive to others and to people of color for him to do so." Serodio said he is a third-generation African of Portuguese ethnicity whose great-grandfather emigrated to Mozambique. He came to the U.S. in 1984 after being accepted at New York University.

In September 2006, Serodio said he again asked to define himself culturally as part of another course exercise. Again, according to the lawsuit he said he was a "white African-American." And again, he was called to the course instructor's office and told never to define himself that way again. According to the lawsuit, Serodio then wrote an article for the student newspaper, titled "A More Colorful View Than Black and White," in an attempt to explain his self-identification and to call for tolerance at the school.

But when complaints started pouring into Dr. I. Thomas Cohen, then the dean of student affairs, the lawsuit alleges that Serodio was called in again and told by Cohen that if he "lay low for awhile" Cohen would see that a record of the incident would not be placed in Serodio's transcript. Source: ABC News

I absolutely despise the fact that we are a country driven by labels -- Jewish-American, Indian-American, Jamaican-American, Chinese-American, Italian-American and so on. So, we are bound to run into legal issues surrounding who can rightly call themselves what. Thanks to Rev. Jesse Jackson who, while speaking in Chicago in the late 1980s, suggested that we call ourselves African American. He said that the ethnic label had more integrity than "black." Some see it as a step by blacks to be more inclusive, while others see it as more divisive. Does the legacy of American slavery call for a special label for us, the descendants of that legacy? If the truth be told, Americans who come more recently from African have a stronger claim to the African American label than those of us whose families have been in this country for centuries. Can't we just be happy being Americans?