Barack Obama

Dreams From My Father By Barack Obama

After reading "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" (see my previous book review) I was interested in seeing what Obama had to say about that author's claims that the USA conspires to keep poor countries poor, and ruins their natural resources for their own selfish purposes.

EXPERIENCES OF POVERTY

Indeed, Obama is no stranger to poverty. He was not born wealthy, and he lived for a few years as a child in Indonesia--not in wealth, but immersed in a poor environment. As an adult, he went to Kenya, his biological father's homeland, where his African relatives were also very poor.

But he does not adhere to any conspiracy theory. Instead, he says poverty exists whether you live in a third world country, or in the backstreets of Chicago (where he worked as a community organizer among the poor).

What Obama fails to mention however is that first world countries have a strong middle class, while third world countries do not.

PERSONAL LIFE

Obama best imparts how he dealt with loss in his personal life. As a child, his biological father abandoned him, and while there were a few letters through the years, and a one month visit as an adolescent, there was little else.

His mother's second marriage is what brought him to Indonesia, and he found many likeable traits in his stepfather. But that marriage ended up badly, too, resulting in his second loss. His mother, his half sister and he then moved to Hawaii, to live with his grandparents.

Obama's third loss was when his mother decided to go back to Indonesia, and asked him if he would like to go too. He declined, and so he lost both his mother and half sister, and grew up with his grandparents. This is a fine blueprint of bitterness, but you will never get any sensibility of that in his book.

DISCRIMMINATION

Obama chose to stay in the States because he wanted to discover his identity as a Black American. This was his situation: He lived with his white grandparents who nurtured and loved him, and went to a school where there were only three black students. He was at the age where he could already be sensitive to discrimmination.

And yet it was only in this way that he could hope to understand why his father left him. He juxtaposed the racism he experienced to its greater intensity in the past, and tried to comprehend why his mother chose not to go to Africa. Cultural differences, the shortcomings of society became his means to understand what he could never otherwise hope to know.

STRONG WOMEN

Obama grew up in an environment of strong women. His mother never failed to set his sights on higher things, ambitions and ideals. His grandmother, Toots was the family provider. She had a good career, and she paid all the bills. She also was so loved by him that he briefly stopped his presidential campaign so he could attend her funeral.

It has been said of late that Obama's half brother plans to write a book of his father's darker side. In this way, the President may finally learn what, all his childhood, he has never known.

WET EARS

If you read only this book, you will really presume that Obama lacks experience to be president, because it only ends with his work as a community organizer in Chicago and his trip to Africa. It does not touch on his studies in Harvard, and his work in the senate. But then, this book had different intentions.

WHAT I LEARNED

I realized through this book how difficult it must be to be a second class citizen in your own country. No wonder so many blacks had looked to Africa for their identity. No wonder black churches have an ebullience and energy unique only to them. The church is where they deal with discrimination and sift their experience through the Word of God. No wonder Jeremiah Wright would be Obama's pastor of choice for so many years. He could do all of the above better than many others.

Long ago I read a book by Jacobo Timmerman, a newsman who was imprisoned and tortured. He said the one thing most commonly brought up while he was tortureds was that he was a Jew. As if being Jewish , being himself, and being born were his biggest crimes.

Having a homeland, I now know, is a privilege I have taken for granted. Feeling at home in my country is a right that many others must fight for.

EVOLUTION OF RACISM

Since then, there are more complexities involved in racism, disagreements among mixed blacks and pure blacks, with lighter blacks considered "prettier" and who seem to have it easier. And yet I remember in my time that if you were white, but even had 1% black in you--even if it didn't show--you were black.

Obama asserts himself to be a man who is part black, part white, who ha lived partly in Indonesia, and is 100% American.