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Barack Obama teaches about himself, society, and all people
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Barack Obama is our 44th President of the United States of America. He is our first African American president. He is an attorney and a politician who believes that if everyone works together, we can make changes for the greater good of the United States of America. In his presidency so far, President Obama is trying to stress not only the revitalization of the US economy but immense changes in the way institutions such as health care, the stock market, and the automotive companies are regulated and operated on a daily basis. Whether or not you support his political views, you have to admit he is ambitious. Before Mr. Obama was president, however, he also held the title of author. After Mr. Obama was elected as the first African American president to The Harvard Law Review, a publisher approached him to write his life story. Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance was the result.
In Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, Mr Obama directly and compassionately details the early years of his life before his landmark rise to the US Presidency. Beginning with his childhood and adolescence in Hawaii, he describes the relationship with his mother and grandparents as very loving but very idealistic, His mother and grandparents spoke positively of his father who had gone to Harvard and then had to return to Kenya. However as Mr. Obama writes, the specific reasons for his father's absence and also the issues of race that were swirling around his family were never completely discussed. "The stories gave voice to a spirit that would grip the nation for that fleeting period between Kennedy's election and the passage of The Voting Rights Act: the seeming triumph of universalism over parochialism and narrowmindedness, a bright new world where differences of race or culture would instruct and amuse and perhaps even ennoble. A useful fiction, one that haunts me no less than it haunted my family, evoking as it does some lost Eden that extends beyond mere childhood"(Obama 25-26).
Next, Mr Obama continues the account of his childhood by describing the time he spent living in Indonesia with his mother, stepfather, and baby sister and how he witnessed and experienced poverty, oppression, and bigotry during everyday life as well as through the lens of the media. These experiences and attitudes would affect his image of himself and would cause him to question his existence. He also felt disconnected from his mother in this regard writing: "I kept these observations to myself, deciding that either my mother didn't see them or she was trying to protect me and I shouldn't expose her efforts as having failed. I still trusted my mother's love-----but I now faced the prospect that her account of the world, and my father's place in it, was somehow incomplete"(Obama 52).
Mr Obama is eventually sent back to Hawaii to continue his education. He recounts his adolescence notably the only visit he would have from his father at ten years old and the questions and discomfort that it irrevocably caused. In addition he recounts trying to find his true identity during his teenage years amidst his grandparents' racial fears, his friends' companionship and troubles, and his mother's love and insistence on obtaining a good education so he was not just a "good time Charlie"(Obama 95). Mr. Obama enters Occidental College and then Columbia University where he receives his degree and decides to become a community organizer in Chicago.
Mr Obama thoroughly and passionately details his tireless work as a community organizer by describing the countless meetings and activities where he tries to convince people to get involved and then stay involved ( the hardest of the two by far). He describes how even his staunchest fellow leaders and supporters find it difficult to continue fighting. Most of the time, they are given the message that nothing will ever change and it is better to save money until they can move to the suburbs. A young friend of Mr. Obama's even tells him that this is the way things are and also that " the air force will never let a black man fly a plane" ( Obama 254). Besides detailing Mr Obama's life before the presidency, another message of this book emerges even more to the forefront. This message is unfortunately, racism and discrimination are alive and well in the United Sates during the 1980's and also here in the 21st century. White/Caucasian people may believe that prejudice and discrimination have been long overcome and they should no longer have to hear about oppression and marginalization. Mr. Obama shows everyone, and especially Whites, that this is not the case and there is still much more work to be done by everyone. Mr. Obama also tells how being a community organizer led him to come full circle with his childhood experiences and the expectations of all of his family. He decides to become a lawyer.
The last part of the book details how after law school, Mr. Obama traveled to Kenya to meet his father's family and to learn more deeply the identity of his father and how that shaped Mr. Obama into who he is as an adult and beyond. He describes the warm welcome of his father's family and how he was able to participate in many family events. He also describes the heartbreak of discovering the arguments and the unhealed wounds that he is expected to heal. In whatever he experiences, Mr. Obama realizes how he fits into his father's family in Kenya as well as his mother's family back in the US. He still has questions, but in many ways, he is finally able to connect the dots and live his life as someone who knows who he is, where he came from, and where he is going.
Whatever someone's political views happen to be and whether or not they support President Obama's policies, many people will find his autobiography, Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance a remarkable memoir where you learn not only about President Obama but also about yourself. Marian Wright Edelman writes that this book is "Perceptive and wise, this book will tell you something about yourself whether you are black or white." In this way, his memoir transcends all races and all peoples and could easily be about anyone's life or anyone's family.
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