This is a special edition of GPS, the Global Public Square, voices from the Obama years.

Welcome to all of you in the United States and around the world. I'm Farid Zakaryan.

And happy New Year to all of you. Over the last few months, we have had extraordinary

access to the White House to officials, current and former. It was all for a documentary

about President Obama's legacy. You might have seen it last week in this slot or previously

on CNN. Today we wanted to bring you more of these amazing interviews and we wanted

to let them breathe. So without further ado, we will start with the President himself,

on himself, his habits and his race.

You know, the first line of your biography, the capsule of presidents will almost certainly

be not something you did but who you are, the first African-American president. And yet,

you half white, you were raised by three white people, your mother and your two grandparents.

And an Indonesian, you can throw them in.

And an Indonesian. Are you comfortable with this characterization of you?

I am actually. And I write about this in my first book. Fairly early on, I came to the

realization, maybe as a young adult, that the essence of the African-American experience

is we're a hybrid people. Because the concept of race in America is not just genetic. Otherwise,

the one-dropper-rule wouldn't have made sense. It's cultural. It's this notion of a people

who look different than the mainstream, suffering discrimination. And for many decades, terrible

oppression. But somehow being able to make out of that a music and a language and a faith and

a patriotism and a belief in this project we call America, that is unique. And so for me to say

that I'm African-American doesn't preclude all the values that my mother and my grandparents

taught me. It's entirely consistent with those values. And so I didn't feel as if I had to go

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