"Between my black and white worlds"

On August 4, 2008 Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. will be 47 years old. As of the spring of 2008, the junior U. S. Senator from Illinois leads Senator Hillary Clinton in the competition to be Democratic Party candidate for President.

Questions are asked about Obama's alleged racism, religion and patriotism. One indispensable source for evaluating the 46-year old candidate is his memoirs about his first 26 years, DREAMS FROM MY FATHER. This was published in 1995, when Barack Obama was 34 years old. From birth through teens everyone called him Barry or Bar. DREAMS is a young's man's introspective working through his coming of age. The tale moves from his birth in Hawaii in August 1961 to his first visit to Kenya (a country which can legally claim him as a citizen) in August 1987. The book's 19 chapters are distributed among THREE PARTS:

ONE: ORIGINS
TWO: CHICAGO
THREE: KENYA.

Thirty-something Obama says this about those first 26 years:

"I learned long ago to distrust my childhood and the stories that shaped it. ... I had spent much of my life trying to rewrite these stories ... all in the hope of extracting some granite slab of truth upon which my unborn children can firmly stand" (INTRODUCTION xv-xvi).

The author sees his book as describing "a boy's search for his father, and through that search a workable meaning for his life as a black American" (xvi).

Barack Obama is notably introspective. He speaks of friends who see him as self-centered. He projects a secular sense of a kind of cosmic or mystic destiny with clues scattered in his genealogy and upbringing. He decides that one of those clues is his white-black genetic makeup. Obama was primarily raised in Hawaii by a white mother and white grandparents. He describes the three with detached affection. With his multiracial-age mates, young Barry "learned to slip back and forth between my black and white worlds" (82). His white family are no mystery to him. The mystery, the more important clues, begin with his black, Kenyan father. His destiny requires him to unravel that father's, that nation's contributions to his psyche.

As the years go by, young Obama consciously decides to emphasize the lesser known and less well understood component of his nature and nurture: his blackness. His initial mind-set is distinctly secular, detached, aloof, analytical (much like his anthropologist mother's). He becomes a Christian in Chicago after being rebuked by one black pastor for his secular aloofness. He begins to lose his quasi-anthropological detachment toward religion in general and Christianity in particular while doing secular social and political organizing among 50 black churches on Chicago's south side. Having interviewed Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Jr., pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ, and knowing that he will soon be off to Harvard Law School, Barack Obama, still a detached unbeliever, attended an early Sunday morning service at Trinity.

A white robed choir sang and clapped as they entered:

"I'm so glad, Jesus lifted me!
I'm so glad, Jesus lifted me!
I'm so glad, Jesus lifted me!
Singing Glory, Ha-le-lu-yah!
Jesus lifted me!"

After leading the congregation in a prayer of thanks for Jesus, "... our burden bearer and heavy load sharer," Reverend Wright preached "The Audacity of Hope." It was "a meditation on a fallen world." His text is taken from the Book of Samuel and is about mistreated Hannah. "She dares to hope. ... She has the audacity ... to make music ... and praise God." Barack Obama heard his own story in the struggles of Jewish and Christian heroes. The boy next to him offered Obama a tissue to wipe his tears. The woman on the other side said: "Oh, Jesus ... Thank your for carrying us this far!" (291 - 295).

Barack Obama had long before decided that his destiny was to be "a black man in America"(76). He therefore devoted huge energy to learning how to be an authentically black American. And at Trinity that Sunday morning his heart discovered a Christianity whose God spoke with great love to and did mighty deeds for black people everywhere, especially in America.

Read DREAMS FROM MY FATHER to see young man Barack Obama as he came to see (some might argue "invent") himself. Ponder why he rejects the obvious in his racial background for the mysterious. Read the book for its extended, affectionate treatment of his first pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Jr.(274, 280-287, 291-295). The book is clearly structured, its words carefully chosen, not difficult to read. To the extent that DREAMS FROM MY FATHER records a journey of destiny or faith, it is less exciting than Saint Augustine's CONFESSIONS or Thomas Merton's SEVEN STOREY MOUNTAIN. But it seems equally honest and introspective. And it is very, very well expressed.
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