From Chicago to Kenya: Obama's Dreams From My Father

This is the second of two parts reviewing Barack Obama's Dreams From My Father. Read Part I here. The photo is from Punahou High School, where Obama wrote his name in concrete. The "King" was added later.

I always find discussions of political experience rather reductive, as the recent discussions of Obama's experience demonstrates. The definition of experience used by Washington insiders is usually pretty limited. Unless a politician was previously a soldier, a lawyer, or a CEO, previous life experience doesn't count for much, and certainly not the experience of working day to day with the working poor of Chicago's south side projects. I'm sure that if Barack Obama had not resigned his job on Wall Street he might be considered by some to be more qualified to be President, but the decision wouldn't have fit with his values and identity.

The middle part of Obama's Dreams describes these years in Chicago, the frustrations and successes, the growth of his leadership, the struggles within him to find direction and meaning in his life, a search which ultimately leads him to Kenya and to the graves of his father and grandfather.


Dreams From My Father, written over ten years ago, gives insight into many of the issues from Obama's life that have commanded media attention during the last few months of his campaign. Of course, first and foremost is Obama's "community organizing" in Chicago. Obama took a job with a non-profit in Chicago after leaving Wall Street for work that would be more meaningful to him. His job is to work with the residents of the south side to find concrete ways to improve their lives. Rather than simply lobby the city government for improved services, Obama and his colleagues work with residents to help them do it themselves. One of Obama's projects is to organize a group of residents to secure an employment center closer to their project. Obama's organizing career coincides with the election of Harold Washington. Obama explains that the election of Washington was a seismic shift in Chicago politics, but it was also an inspiring moment for the city's black population who suddenly felt they had an ally in city hall. Still, the residents had to work to cut through the bureaucracy of the city government in order to have their concerns heard.

Living and working in a predominantly black community causes Obama to think about the divisions in the community. He seems to observe from a distance the confusion regarding color consciousness: "if you're light, you're alright; if you're black, get back." Obama doesn't seem concerned about questions of how "black" he was, even though it would come up later in his own nascent presidential campaign. He admits to "privately measuring my own degree of infection" with these questions, but in general he wonders if it isn't "an expression of self-hatred."

Mostly I kept quiet when these subjects were broached privately measuring my own degree of infection. But I noticed that such conversations rarely took place in large groups and never in front of whites. Later I would realize that the position of most black students in predominantly white colleges was already too tenuous, our identities too scrambled, to admit to ourselves that our black pride remained incomplete. And to admit our doubt and confusion to whites, to open up our psyches to general examination by those who had caused so much of the damage in the first place, seemed ludicrous, itself an expression of self hatred--for there seemed no reason to expect that whites would look at our private struggles as a mirror into their own souls, rather than yet more evidence of black pathology.

Obama's book is full of fascinating observations like these, observations about race, politics, his own efforts to understand the black community that he really didn't grow up in, while at the same time negotiating city and organizational politics. Obama also describes his friendship with "Rafiq," a black nationalist whom Obama admires in spite of his radicalism. Over time, Obama becomes distrustful of an ideological that he finds self-defeating in spite of its message of self determination:

In talking to self-professed nationalists like Rafiq, I came to see how the blanket indictment of everything white served a central function in their message of uplift; how... one depended on the other. For when the nationalist spoke of reawakening of values as the only solution to black poverty, he was expressing an implicit, if not explicit, criticism to black listeners: that we did not have to live as we did. And while there were those who could take such an unadorned message and use it to hew out a new life for themselves,--those with the stolid disposisitons that Booker T. Washington had once demanded from his followers--in the ears of many blacks such talk smacked of the explanations that whites had always offered for black poverty: that we continued to suffer from, if not genetic inferiority, then cultural weakness. It was a message that ignored causality or fault, a message outside history, without a script or plot that might insist on a progression. For a people already stripped of their history, a people often ill equipped to retrieve that history in any form other than what fluttered across the telvision screen, the testimony of what we saw ever day seemed only to confirm our worst suspicions about ourselves.

Nationalism provided that history, an unambiguous morality tale that was easily communicated and easily grasped. A steady attack on the white race, the constant recitation of black people's brutal experience in this country, served as ballast that could prevent the ideas of personal and communal responsibility from tipping into an ocean of despari. Yes, the nationalist would say, whites are responsible for your sorry state, not any inherent flaws in you. In fact, whites are so heartless and devious that we can no longer expect anything from them. The self-loathing you feel, what keeps you drinking or thieving, is planted by them...

Obama finds the white hatred of black nationalism difficult to accept and personally uncomfortable. Ultimately, however, Obama's critique of black nationalism centers on the practical questions of cooperation with whites and the reality of integration on a practical level. Obama understands that his own history and family prevent him from really needing or believing in a complete withdrawal from white society. It's hard to see your mother and grandparents, whom you love, as the white devil. He describes efforts of some in Chicago to create a completely separate economy of goods and services so that no money had to be spent on white businesses. But, he explains that for most blacks, economic realities prevent them from completely withdrawing into black nationalism: he imagines a worker saying, "White folks I work with ain't so bad, and even if they were, I can't be quitting my job--who's gonna pay my rent tomorrow or feed my children today?"

As an aside, anyone reading these pages in Obama's book can't help but wonder at the simplistic criticism of his supposed association with Louis Farrakhan. Obama discusses the following and the crowds he drew in Chicago in the 80's, the allure of his message to the residents of the south side. But Obama offers a thoughtful critique, written long before his presidential or even senatorial runs, to Farrakhan and black nationalism, however unsensational it may be in the climate of "gotcha" political reporting.

There is a story from Chicago that speaks directly to Obama's campaign rhetoric about empowerment. One of his major successes as an organizer was to uncover a serious asbestos problem in the Altgeld project where Obama worked. The problem became apparent after asbestos was removed from the offices of some of the directors of public housing, while the asbestos present in the residences was to be left untouched. After a time spent organizing the residents and creating awareness of the issue, Obama organizes a bus trip to the director's office at the Chicago Housing Authority to demand answers about the asbestos problem. The press arrived, and one of the parents at Altgeld, a woman named Sadie, became a media celebrity after Obama made her answer the questions from the press. Obama says that he "changed" as a result of that bus trip, becoming more aware of the power of individuals to alter their own destiny.

But is was away from all that (publicity), as wwe prepared for our meeting with the CHA director, that I began to see something wonderful happening. The parents began talking about ideas for future campaigns. New parents got involved. The block by block canvass we'd planned earlier was put into effect, with LInda and her swollen belly waddling door to door to collect complaint forms; Mr. Lucas, unable to read the forms himself, explaining to neighbors how to fill them out properly...It was as though Sadie's small, nohest step had broken into a reservoir of hope, allowing people in Altgeld to reclaim a power they had all along.

Obama's time in Chicago comes to an end when he is admitted to Harvard Law School. But first he makes a trip to Kenya, a trip which comprises the final third of the book. His sister, Auma, and his brother Roy both have visited him in the US, giving hints as to his father's history and his grandfather's. In Kenya, Obama learns of the family divisions. The paltry estate of his father is the subject of a legal dispute, pitting Obama's grandmother on one side, and the second (or step) mother of his father and Barack's children on the other. Obama, led by his sister Auma through the Kenyan family sites, doesn't choose sides. Obama is looking for his own share of the inheritance: the stories of his father and grandfather.

Obama's grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama, was a stern man who made a small fortune as a domestic during Kenya's colonial era. He also assisted with organizational affairs, working with road crews to facilitate the infrastructure the British needed. After a lifetime of service, Onyango as he is known purchases a plot of land and builds a life there. He has a hard time finding a woman who can put up with his aloofness, and even Barack's (Obama's father is known as Barack) mother runs away. After a time, the children, Barack and his sister, attempt to run away and rejoin their mother, but they aren't successful, and Barack never attempts to leave again.

Barack is an excellent student, and a very quick learner. He succeeds in school, in spite of his laziness, although he is eventually expelled, and his father sends him to work as a clerk in Mombasa in order to teach him responsibility. He becomes involved in politics, is jailed for his involvement, gets married and has two children, Auma and Roy, whom Obama has met in the US. After a time, he finds two American women, missionaries, who offer to help Barack find a university to attend in the United States. This inspires Barack to complete correspondance courses and enables him to gain the credentials needed to be admitted in an American university. Finally, he is admitted to the University of Hawaii where he meets Obama's mother. Having left one family in Kenya, he later leaves another behind in Hawaii. As Granny explains, Onyango's opposition to the marriage in Hawaii had nothing to do with the fact that Obama's mother was white. It was that Barack already had a family in Kenya, and he doubted that he would be able to take care of both.

Later, Barack returned to Kenya and a white woman, Ruth, came looking for him. They were married as well. Barack continued in his career in public service until at the end of his life he found himself alone and underemployed. At the end of this book, Obama has had his questions answered, the story of his life and his father's is as complete as it can be. The book ends with the image of Obama sitting before the graves of his grandfather and father, both of whom are buried at the family compound in graves beside each other, while the rest of his reunited African family looks on.

For a long time I sat between the two graves and wept. When my tears were finally spent, I felt a calmness wash over me. I felt the circle finally close. I realized who I was, what I cared about, was no longer just a matter of intellect or obligation no longer a construct of words. I saw that my life in America--the black life, the white life, the sense of abandonment I'd felt as a boy, the frustration and hope I'd witnessed in Chicago--all of it was connected with this small plot of earth an ocean away, connected by more thatn the accident of a name or the color of my skin. The pain I felt was my father's pain. My questions were my brother's questions. Their struggle, my birthright.

In the heat of a presidential campaign, it's easy to distort a candidate's past, invent radicalisms where none exist, fabricate associations out of mere acquaintances. Obama's Dreams From My Father not only puts some of the heated rhetoric of this campaign into a more sensible context, but it also provides a view of Barack Obama as a man, his youth and his development, his insecurities and passions. The book also shows his brilliance. The book is prefectly constructed, beautifully written, and honest.