A long time ago, in another life, I recall how my stomach cringed when I heard a colleague saying, “Oh, I have all the Macs and the O’s. How is anyone supposed to teach them math?”

As a member of the group to whom she was referring, and not being the most proficient mathematician, I felt the sharp pain of racism and the embarrassment of being singled out as a part of a problem. That experience has informed my life and practice as a teacher. I reflected on the view of the Irish that was widely held in the United Kingdom during the 1980s the other day when I saw President Obama visit his ancestral home where he received a exuberant Irish welcome.

Beyond the symbolism of his drinking Guinness at a bar in Moneygall, his visit addressed deeper issues. In this context, it is interesting that Moneygall is an anglicization of two Irish words meaning the village full of foreigners. Here we had the president who is always referred to as the African-American president, though his father was from Kenya and his mother from the Midwest, standing in a small village in Ireland demonstrating for the world the diversity in appearance and experience of the Irish diaspora.

Like Muhammad Ali’s great- great-grandfather, Barack Obama’s grandfather’s grandfather left Ireland during the years of the Famine. Alone in the world, and the only member of his family to leave, he set off to an unknown destination and no doubt was greeted by the signs: Help Wanted – No Irish Need Apply. No chance then to return or to take a vacation at home, this was a one-way trip. Despite the finality of his departure and the lack of legalities involved in his emigration to the United States, memory triumphs and the small village of Moneygall now knows what lay in the future of one of its poor emigrants who left Ireland sustained only by hope.

The Irish leader, Enda Kenny, made the observation in his rousing welcoming speech to the President that Falmouth Kearny, our president’s ancestor, would have been astounded to know that his descendent would be the president of the United States.

In responding to Enda Kenny’s remarks, President Obama noted that the United States is the country of immigration where almost everyone came from somewhere else, fleeing from injustice, poverty and lack of opportunity with a dream of achieving success and building a life in the United States. He spoke of his mother’s Irish roots and his father’s education in the United States as dreams shared through generations and cultures.

Now we on Martha’s Vineyard have a new American population that is part of our daily life and who are our neighbors, our students, our friends and we see them as part of a continuum of people who have dreamed a better future who in many ways embody the President’s electoral slogan: Yes We Can! Last week, several of those new Americans spoke in this newspaper of their lives in the United States and here on the Vineyard, and it is sad that those voices cannot be heard by a wider audience.

In a broadcast early this week our local PBS radio station characterized the Island community as one that is divided and unable to respond appropriately to each other. That has never been my experience. Our Island has changed to reflect a broader picture and just as President Obama does not fit a stereotypical picture of how a man with Irish ancestry should look, our new Americans here on the Vineyard reflect an increasingly diverse world, a world that all of us live in.

World history is a story of constant migration and changing pictures and patterns, and historically our inability to address those has meant conflict and lack of understanding for the generations that follow.

The United States represents what it has always represented, a place where a person can stand up and achieve. Throughout its history, even including as it does the horrors of enslavement and the destruction of many of the native tribes, it still represents a unique place where there is room for everyone who wants to make a better life for themselves, their families and their communities.

In this world, there is indeed room for everyone.

Elaine Weintraub is chairman of the history department at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School.