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Who Is Barack Obama?
His autobiography paints a disturbing picture
MICHAEL GLEDHILL
Who is Barack Obama? Obama the presidential candidate presents himself as a man who has loved America from his earliest childhood, a man proud of his mixed-race roots who comfortably transcends polarized racial politics, a man who eschews the ideologies of Left and Right, an optimistic healer. But in his critically acclaimed autobiography, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, Obama is something else entirely.
Obama published his autobiography in 1995, when he was in his mid-thirties. Unlike most books by politicians, which are concoctions of clichés penned by ghostwriters, Dreams was clearly written by Obama himself. Unlike most politicians, Obama can write and loves language. (He was contemplating a career as a novelist at the time he wrote Dreams.) Most important, Obama wrote his autobiography after he had become a political activist but before he was a politician; the book is therefore candid in a way a conventional politician’s memoir would never be.
Dreams is a complex, introspective book. Its theme is how Obama, born in Hawaii to a white student mother and Kenyan student father, grows to view himself and the white society around him. The Obama of Dreams abandons his multiracial roots to forge an alienated black identity — that of a man steeped in radical ideology who views history in terms of a huge chasm separating oppressor from oppressed, white from black, and rich from poor; a man who is never more emotionally at home than when sitting in the church pew listening to Rev. Jeremiah Wright rant about white racism.
People and politicians change, and the Obama of today may not be the one of 13 years ago. But he has never forsworn Dreams or given a detailed explanation of how he has evolved since writing it. The book thus remains an extraordinary window into Obama.
WHAT DOES HE LIKE ABOUT AMERICA?
Candidate Obama claims that “throughout my life, I have always taken my deep and abiding love for this country as a given.” He tells us his “heart swells with pride at the sight of our flag.”
In Dreams, his heart swells at many things but sight of the flag certainly isn’t one of them. There he presents a warts-only history of the U.S., a story of evil and suffering. U.S. society is a “racial caste system” where “color and money” determine where you end up in life. He tells us of white children’s stoning black children, Jim Crow, and heatless Harlem housing projects. He describes “Japanese families interned behind barbed wire; young Russian Jews cutting patterns in Lower East Side sweatshops; dust-bowl farmers loading up their trucks with the remains of shattered lives.”
Obama says the Hawaiian islands, where he grew up, are beautiful, but quickly reminds us that behind the beauty lurks the “ugly conquest of the native Hawaiians . . . crippling disease brought by missionaries . . . the indenturing system that kept Japanese, Chinese, and Filipino immigrants stooped sunup to sunset in [the fields].”
Candidate Obama proudly tells audiences that his white grandparents were raised in the American heartland. But in Dreams he describes this heartland as the “landlocked center of the country, a place where decency and endurance and the pioneer spirit were joined at the hip with conformity and suspicion and the potential for unblinking cruelty.”
Candidate Obama fondly tells audiences that one of his earliest memories is of sitting on his grandfather’s shoulders proudly watching the Apollo astronauts return to Hawaii after their splashdown in the Pacific. But in Dreams, even this event is an occasion for outrage, as Obama asks: “How could America send men into space and still keep its black citizens in bondage?”
American affluence offends Obama. The vast upper-middle class lives in a land of isolation and sterility. As a teenager, he envies the white homes in the suburbs but senses that the big pretty houses contain “quiet depression” and “loneliness,” represented by “a mother sneaking a tumbler of gin in the afternoon.” American consumer culture is comforting but mentally and spiritually numbing, yielding a “long hibernation.”
Studying U.S. law at Harvard, Obama concludes it is mainly about “expediency or greed.” Working in a large modern corporation, he sees himself as a “spy behind enemy lines.” Even science and technology draw his disdain as he warns of “technology that spits out goods from its robot mouth.”
Finishing Dreams, I could not recall a single positive sentence about the United States or European society. I reread the book specifically looking for positive remarks. The pickings were lean. Obama does write glowingly of JFK’s Camelot and its promise of a “bright new world,” but concludes this promise was a mere illusion quickly transformed into “war, riot, and famine.” At the end of the book, Obama acknowledges that “faith in other people” can be found everywhere: among Christians as well as Muslims and in Kansas as well as his beloved Kenya. If you’re looking for rousing patriotism, that’s about as good as Obama gets.
Earlier this year, Michelle Obama made headlines by declaring that her husband’s primary victories were the first time she had ever been “proud of my country.” Michelle’s remark simply echoes the assessment Barack presents in his 442-page autobiography: Aside from a few comments about what he regards as the largely unsuccessful struggle for civil rights in the Sixties, Obama has nothing positive to say about his country. Even his hopes for the future are modest and “sometimes hard to sustain.”
POST-RACIAL OBAMA
Obama is touted as a post-racial statesman who sees beyond the narrow issue of white versus black. The Obama of his autobiography is, to the contrary, obsessed with race: Almost all of Dreams is about race and race conflict.
Obama’s early life is marked by uncertainty and rootlessness. Born in Hawaii, he is abandoned by his black Kenyan father at age two. At six he goes to live in Indonesia with his white mother and Indonesian stepfather. At age ten, he leaves his mother and returns to Hawaii, where he spends the rest of his youth, living mainly with his lower-middle-class white grandparents and attending an expensive, almost-all-white prep school.
In multiracial Hawaii, Obama’s encounters with racism, he admits, are pretty slight. On occasion, he deploys what he calls a “bad-assed nigger pose,” but he understands its artificiality. Obama seems well accepted by the youth around him, but, inside, he feels anxious and apart. A turning point in the narrative occurs when some of his white teenage friends attend an otherwise all-black party with him but feel uncomfortable and ask to leave. Obama is enraged and wants to punch his friends.
He begins to inundate himself in black literature: Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and W. E. B. DuBois. Saturated with themes of anger and alienation, Obama withdraws into a “smaller and smaller coil of rage.” He suffers a “nightmare vision” of black powerlessness and feels whites have maimed blacks with a tragic “self contempt.” Malcolm X becomes his favorite author, although he admits all the talk about “blue-eyed devils and apocalypse” is a bit much.
Teenage Obama now sees himself as a “would-be black.” He begins to deliberately craft a black identity with alienation and anger at its foundation. The reader of Dreams cannot help being struck by the unexplained contrast between the circumstances of Obama’s life — an opportunity to attend a fine school, white grandparents who love him — and his great anger at white society.
Today, Candidate Obama presents himself as a multiracial American who is proud of his mixed ancestry and can comfortably draw from both his white and his black roots. In Dreams, he takes the opposite stance. He deliberately and repeatedly rejects a multiracial identity. For example, attending an expensive private college in California, he meets many young people of mixed black and white ancestry who view themselves, not as black, but as multiracial. Obama specifically rejects this option as a sellout. He also rejects integration as a goal because it is “a one-way street. The minority is assimilated into the dominant culture, not the other way around.”
After college, Obama has an affluent white girlfriend who loves and wants to marry him. She brings him to visit her family, who warmly accept him. Obama is attached to the girl and respects the family’s deep cultural heritage, but he eventually dumps her because she is not black. He feels that if he marries her he will ultimately be assimilated into a foreign white culture, a fate that is unacceptable to him.
Obama comes to define and identify himself as a black man. As a young man he views his white ancestry not as an asset, but as an impediment to achieving authentic blackness. The dozens of cultural and historic figures appearing throughout Dreams are almost all black. (White author Joseph Conrad makes a token appearance as a deranged racist.) Obama identifies his principal role models: Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, and W. E. B. DuBois. He states that while he might love his white grandfather and Indonesian stepfather, he could “never emulate” them because of the racial difference: They were “white men and brown men whose fates didn’t speak to my own.”
Obama is fascinated by his black ancestry. When he journeys to Kenya he has a deep sense of joy and belonging — he feels he has finally come home. By contrast, he has very little interest in his white ancestors or in the history of white America. He views U.S. history simply as a melodrama in which whites crush blacks (although class oppression and brutality against other minorities provide secondary plotlines).
It is true that Obama never abandons his affection for his white mother and grandparents. The memory of his immediate white relatives does remind him that not all whites are culpable racists and that some “could be exempted from the general category of distrust.” But beyond this he has no identification or psychic ties to larger white society.
Dreams does present one exception to Obama’s black exclusiveness. As Obama studies radical Marxist-Leninist literature (Frantz Fanon, neocolonialism, etc.), he comes to see himself as the champion not just of blacks but of the downtrodden of all races. But this shift only distances him farther from the dominant white and European culture, which he views as the focal point of global exploitation. Even in his thirties, he writes with enthusiasm about the Viet Cong, the Mau Mau Uprising, and black rioters in Detroit who lashed out with “street crime and revolution” against complacent white oppressors.
HATRED
Generally, Obama sees an unbridgeable gulf between races: “The other race would always remain just that: menacing, alien, and apart.” He states that at the core of black consciousness is the experience of white hatred of blacks. This hatred inspires an anger in turn that can either be directed out toward whites or in toward blacks themselves, in self-loathing:
[Black awareness] hadn’t arisen simply from struggles with pestilence or drought, or even mere poverty. [It] had arisen out of a very particular experience with hate [of whites toward blacks]. That hate hadn’t gone away; it formed a counternarrative buried deep within each person and at the center of which stood white people — some cruel, some ignorant, sometimes a single face, sometimes just a faceless image of a system claiming power over our lives.
As a youth, Obama is shocked when a black mentor tells him that “black people have reason to hate,” but later comes to accept this view. He ponders whether the “ghostly figure” of white hatred can ever be “exorcised” from black dreams. And he goes so far as to ask whether blacks can love themselves without hating whites, but provides no answer.
Candidate Obama declared that he was shocked when he heard Rev. Jeremiah’s Wright’s outrageous remarks about American society. Despite the fact that he had been a member of Wright’s church for over a decade, Obama asserted that he had never heard such remarks from his spiritual mentor before.
But in the autobiography, Wright’s rants are in plain view. It is obvious that Obama is drawn to Wright’s ministry not in ignorance, but precisely because of the Reverend’s politics. In Dreams, Wright asserts: “Life’s not safe for a black man in this country, Barack. Never has been. Probably never will be.” Obama apparently agrees, ignoring the obvious facts that nearly all black homicides are committed by other blacks, and that the number of violent crimes committed by blacks against whites is about eight times greater than the number of such crimes by whites against blacks.
When Wright, in the pages of Dreams, rants from the pulpit about Hiroshima and proclaims that “white folks’ greed runs a world in need,” it’s not so jarring, since Obama has been saying pretty much the same thing throughout the book. Obama expresses joy and a real sense of belonging in connection with only three places: his childhood home in Indonesia, Kenya, and in the pews of Reverend Wright’s Trinity United Church.
OBAMA AND THE UNDERCLASS
In his personal life, Obama has received highly favorable treatment from white society. His grievance appears, at least on the surface, to be abstract rather than personal. It is the existence of the black poor and underclass that justifies his alienation from and hostility to his nation. For Obama, the black ghetto epitomizes the callousness, greed, and injustice of U.S. society.
Obama became a community organizer in south Chicago to save the black urban poor and underclass. This was no mere job to Obama; it was a quasi-religious calling, his mission in life, offering the promise of personal “redemption.” But at only one point does Obama pause in his narrative and ask the big questions. Contemplating the tangle of homicide, drug addiction, alcoholism, out-of-wedlock childbearing, and educational failure that blights the public-housing complex where he is working, he asks: What causes this? Who is responsible? After all, there are no white people there, “no cigar-chomping crackers . . . no club-wielding Pinkerton thugs.”
With this question, Obama broaches the central paradox of modern race relations. Why, at a point when white society ended segregation, created affirmative action, and erected a massive new welfare state, did the self-destructive behaviors of the black lower classes soar, and entire communities begin spiraling downward in devastating social entropy? But, having raised this question, Obama offers no answer. The only solution he suggests is increased HUD funding. Some pages later he returns to vague charges about racism and hidden structures of power.
Elsewhere in Dreams, however, Obama hints at an explanation for this silence. He says that focusing on the self-destructive behavior of the black underclass smacks of “the explanations that whites had always offered of black poverty: that we continued to suffer from, if not genetic inferiority, then cultural weakness.” A focus on behavior will only confirm the “worst suspicions” of blacks about themselves, pushing them deeper into helplessness and despair.
Black well-being therefore requires that the blame for black behavior always be placed in historic context — that is, shifted to whites. If 69 percent of black children are born out of wedlock, if blacks kill blacks, if black-run schools don’t teach, it is the white man’s fault. Alternative explanations will only relieve white guilt while raising black self-doubt.
SELF-PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR
Dreams from My Father reveals Barack Obama as a self-constructed, racially obsessed man who regards most whites as oppressors. It is the work of a clever but shallow thinker who confuses ideological cliché for insight — a man who sees U.S. history as a narrow, bitter tale of race and class victimization. The Barack Obama presented in these pages is not electable to national office. No wonder that Obama, aided by a compliant media, has created a new self for public view, one the Obama of Dreams wouldn’t recognize and probably would disdain.
“Michael Gledhill” is the pseudonym of a writer based in Washington, D.C.
_____________________
Lijkt me een duidelijk verhaal. Onbegrijpelijk hoe zo iemand door de primaries heen kan komen. Dat kan alleen als journalisten gezamelijk de andere kant op kijken.
Who Is Barack Obama?
His autobiography paints a disturbing picture
MICHAEL GLEDHILL
Who is Barack Obama? Obama the presidential candidate presents himself as a man who has loved America from his earliest childhood, a man proud of his mixed-race roots who comfortably transcends polarized racial politics, a man who eschews the ideologies of Left and Right, an optimistic healer. But in his critically acclaimed autobiography, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, Obama is something else entirely.
Obama published his autobiography in 1995, when he was in his mid-thirties. Unlike most books by politicians, which are concoctions of clichés penned by ghostwriters, Dreams was clearly written by Obama himself. Unlike most politicians, Obama can write and loves language. (He was contemplating a career as a novelist at the time he wrote Dreams.) Most important, Obama wrote his autobiography after he had become a political activist but before he was a politician; the book is therefore candid in a way a conventional politician’s memoir would never be.
Dreams is a complex, introspective book. Its theme is how Obama, born in Hawaii to a white student mother and Kenyan student father, grows to view himself and the white society around him. The Obama of Dreams abandons his multiracial roots to forge an alienated black identity — that of a man steeped in radical ideology who views history in terms of a huge chasm separating oppressor from oppressed, white from black, and rich from poor; a man who is never more emotionally at home than when sitting in the church pew listening to Rev. Jeremiah Wright rant about white racism.
People and politicians change, and the Obama of today may not be the one of 13 years ago. But he has never forsworn Dreams or given a detailed explanation of how he has evolved since writing it. The book thus remains an extraordinary window into Obama.
WHAT DOES HE LIKE ABOUT AMERICA?
Candidate Obama claims that “throughout my life, I have always taken my deep and abiding love for this country as a given.” He tells us his “heart swells with pride at the sight of our flag.”
In Dreams, his heart swells at many things but sight of the flag certainly isn’t one of them. There he presents a warts-only history of the U.S., a story of evil and suffering. U.S. society is a “racial caste system” where “color and money” determine where you end up in life. He tells us of white children’s stoning black children, Jim Crow, and heatless Harlem housing projects. He describes “Japanese families interned behind barbed wire; young Russian Jews cutting patterns in Lower East Side sweatshops; dust-bowl farmers loading up their trucks with the remains of shattered lives.”
Obama says the Hawaiian islands, where he grew up, are beautiful, but quickly reminds us that behind the beauty lurks the “ugly conquest of the native Hawaiians . . . crippling disease brought by missionaries . . . the indenturing system that kept Japanese, Chinese, and Filipino immigrants stooped sunup to sunset in [the fields].”
Candidate Obama proudly tells audiences that his white grandparents were raised in the American heartland. But in Dreams he describes this heartland as the “landlocked center of the country, a place where decency and endurance and the pioneer spirit were joined at the hip with conformity and suspicion and the potential for unblinking cruelty.”
Candidate Obama fondly tells audiences that one of his earliest memories is of sitting on his grandfather’s shoulders proudly watching the Apollo astronauts return to Hawaii after their splashdown in the Pacific. But in Dreams, even this event is an occasion for outrage, as Obama asks: “How could America send men into space and still keep its black citizens in bondage?”
American affluence offends Obama. The vast upper-middle class lives in a land of isolation and sterility. As a teenager, he envies the white homes in the suburbs but senses that the big pretty houses contain “quiet depression” and “loneliness,” represented by “a mother sneaking a tumbler of gin in the afternoon.” American consumer culture is comforting but mentally and spiritually numbing, yielding a “long hibernation.”
Studying U.S. law at Harvard, Obama concludes it is mainly about “expediency or greed.” Working in a large modern corporation, he sees himself as a “spy behind enemy lines.” Even science and technology draw his disdain as he warns of “technology that spits out goods from its robot mouth.”
Finishing Dreams, I could not recall a single positive sentence about the United States or European society. I reread the book specifically looking for positive remarks. The pickings were lean. Obama does write glowingly of JFK’s Camelot and its promise of a “bright new world,” but concludes this promise was a mere illusion quickly transformed into “war, riot, and famine.” At the end of the book, Obama acknowledges that “faith in other people” can be found everywhere: among Christians as well as Muslims and in Kansas as well as his beloved Kenya. If you’re looking for rousing patriotism, that’s about as good as Obama gets.
Earlier this year, Michelle Obama made headlines by declaring that her husband’s primary victories were the first time she had ever been “proud of my country.” Michelle’s remark simply echoes the assessment Barack presents in his 442-page autobiography: Aside from a few comments about what he regards as the largely unsuccessful struggle for civil rights in the Sixties, Obama has nothing positive to say about his country. Even his hopes for the future are modest and “sometimes hard to sustain.”
POST-RACIAL OBAMA
Obama is touted as a post-racial statesman who sees beyond the narrow issue of white versus black. The Obama of his autobiography is, to the contrary, obsessed with race: Almost all of Dreams is about race and race conflict.
Obama’s early life is marked by uncertainty and rootlessness. Born in Hawaii, he is abandoned by his black Kenyan father at age two. At six he goes to live in Indonesia with his white mother and Indonesian stepfather. At age ten, he leaves his mother and returns to Hawaii, where he spends the rest of his youth, living mainly with his lower-middle-class white grandparents and attending an expensive, almost-all-white prep school.
In multiracial Hawaii, Obama’s encounters with racism, he admits, are pretty slight. On occasion, he deploys what he calls a “bad-assed nigger pose,” but he understands its artificiality. Obama seems well accepted by the youth around him, but, inside, he feels anxious and apart. A turning point in the narrative occurs when some of his white teenage friends attend an otherwise all-black party with him but feel uncomfortable and ask to leave. Obama is enraged and wants to punch his friends.
He begins to inundate himself in black literature: Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and W. E. B. DuBois. Saturated with themes of anger and alienation, Obama withdraws into a “smaller and smaller coil of rage.” He suffers a “nightmare vision” of black powerlessness and feels whites have maimed blacks with a tragic “self contempt.” Malcolm X becomes his favorite author, although he admits all the talk about “blue-eyed devils and apocalypse” is a bit much.
Teenage Obama now sees himself as a “would-be black.” He begins to deliberately craft a black identity with alienation and anger at its foundation. The reader of Dreams cannot help being struck by the unexplained contrast between the circumstances of Obama’s life — an opportunity to attend a fine school, white grandparents who love him — and his great anger at white society.
Today, Candidate Obama presents himself as a multiracial American who is proud of his mixed ancestry and can comfortably draw from both his white and his black roots. In Dreams, he takes the opposite stance. He deliberately and repeatedly rejects a multiracial identity. For example, attending an expensive private college in California, he meets many young people of mixed black and white ancestry who view themselves, not as black, but as multiracial. Obama specifically rejects this option as a sellout. He also rejects integration as a goal because it is “a one-way street. The minority is assimilated into the dominant culture, not the other way around.”
After college, Obama has an affluent white girlfriend who loves and wants to marry him. She brings him to visit her family, who warmly accept him. Obama is attached to the girl and respects the family’s deep cultural heritage, but he eventually dumps her because she is not black. He feels that if he marries her he will ultimately be assimilated into a foreign white culture, a fate that is unacceptable to him.
Obama comes to define and identify himself as a black man. As a young man he views his white ancestry not as an asset, but as an impediment to achieving authentic blackness. The dozens of cultural and historic figures appearing throughout Dreams are almost all black. (White author Joseph Conrad makes a token appearance as a deranged racist.) Obama identifies his principal role models: Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, and W. E. B. DuBois. He states that while he might love his white grandfather and Indonesian stepfather, he could “never emulate” them because of the racial difference: They were “white men and brown men whose fates didn’t speak to my own.”
Obama is fascinated by his black ancestry. When he journeys to Kenya he has a deep sense of joy and belonging — he feels he has finally come home. By contrast, he has very little interest in his white ancestors or in the history of white America. He views U.S. history simply as a melodrama in which whites crush blacks (although class oppression and brutality against other minorities provide secondary plotlines).
It is true that Obama never abandons his affection for his white mother and grandparents. The memory of his immediate white relatives does remind him that not all whites are culpable racists and that some “could be exempted from the general category of distrust.” But beyond this he has no identification or psychic ties to larger white society.
Dreams does present one exception to Obama’s black exclusiveness. As Obama studies radical Marxist-Leninist literature (Frantz Fanon, neocolonialism, etc.), he comes to see himself as the champion not just of blacks but of the downtrodden of all races. But this shift only distances him farther from the dominant white and European culture, which he views as the focal point of global exploitation. Even in his thirties, he writes with enthusiasm about the Viet Cong, the Mau Mau Uprising, and black rioters in Detroit who lashed out with “street crime and revolution” against complacent white oppressors.
HATRED
Generally, Obama sees an unbridgeable gulf between races: “The other race would always remain just that: menacing, alien, and apart.” He states that at the core of black consciousness is the experience of white hatred of blacks. This hatred inspires an anger in turn that can either be directed out toward whites or in toward blacks themselves, in self-loathing:
[Black awareness] hadn’t arisen simply from struggles with pestilence or drought, or even mere poverty. [It] had arisen out of a very particular experience with hate [of whites toward blacks]. That hate hadn’t gone away; it formed a counternarrative buried deep within each person and at the center of which stood white people — some cruel, some ignorant, sometimes a single face, sometimes just a faceless image of a system claiming power over our lives.
As a youth, Obama is shocked when a black mentor tells him that “black people have reason to hate,” but later comes to accept this view. He ponders whether the “ghostly figure” of white hatred can ever be “exorcised” from black dreams. And he goes so far as to ask whether blacks can love themselves without hating whites, but provides no answer.
Candidate Obama declared that he was shocked when he heard Rev. Jeremiah’s Wright’s outrageous remarks about American society. Despite the fact that he had been a member of Wright’s church for over a decade, Obama asserted that he had never heard such remarks from his spiritual mentor before.
But in the autobiography, Wright’s rants are in plain view. It is obvious that Obama is drawn to Wright’s ministry not in ignorance, but precisely because of the Reverend’s politics. In Dreams, Wright asserts: “Life’s not safe for a black man in this country, Barack. Never has been. Probably never will be.” Obama apparently agrees, ignoring the obvious facts that nearly all black homicides are committed by other blacks, and that the number of violent crimes committed by blacks against whites is about eight times greater than the number of such crimes by whites against blacks.
When Wright, in the pages of Dreams, rants from the pulpit about Hiroshima and proclaims that “white folks’ greed runs a world in need,” it’s not so jarring, since Obama has been saying pretty much the same thing throughout the book. Obama expresses joy and a real sense of belonging in connection with only three places: his childhood home in Indonesia, Kenya, and in the pews of Reverend Wright’s Trinity United Church.
OBAMA AND THE UNDERCLASS
In his personal life, Obama has received highly favorable treatment from white society. His grievance appears, at least on the surface, to be abstract rather than personal. It is the existence of the black poor and underclass that justifies his alienation from and hostility to his nation. For Obama, the black ghetto epitomizes the callousness, greed, and injustice of U.S. society.
Obama became a community organizer in south Chicago to save the black urban poor and underclass. This was no mere job to Obama; it was a quasi-religious calling, his mission in life, offering the promise of personal “redemption.” But at only one point does Obama pause in his narrative and ask the big questions. Contemplating the tangle of homicide, drug addiction, alcoholism, out-of-wedlock childbearing, and educational failure that blights the public-housing complex where he is working, he asks: What causes this? Who is responsible? After all, there are no white people there, “no cigar-chomping crackers . . . no club-wielding Pinkerton thugs.”
With this question, Obama broaches the central paradox of modern race relations. Why, at a point when white society ended segregation, created affirmative action, and erected a massive new welfare state, did the self-destructive behaviors of the black lower classes soar, and entire communities begin spiraling downward in devastating social entropy? But, having raised this question, Obama offers no answer. The only solution he suggests is increased HUD funding. Some pages later he returns to vague charges about racism and hidden structures of power.
Elsewhere in Dreams, however, Obama hints at an explanation for this silence. He says that focusing on the self-destructive behavior of the black underclass smacks of “the explanations that whites had always offered of black poverty: that we continued to suffer from, if not genetic inferiority, then cultural weakness.” A focus on behavior will only confirm the “worst suspicions” of blacks about themselves, pushing them deeper into helplessness and despair.
Black well-being therefore requires that the blame for black behavior always be placed in historic context — that is, shifted to whites. If 69 percent of black children are born out of wedlock, if blacks kill blacks, if black-run schools don’t teach, it is the white man’s fault. Alternative explanations will only relieve white guilt while raising black self-doubt.
SELF-PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR
Dreams from My Father reveals Barack Obama as a self-constructed, racially obsessed man who regards most whites as oppressors. It is the work of a clever but shallow thinker who confuses ideological cliché for insight — a man who sees U.S. history as a narrow, bitter tale of race and class victimization. The Barack Obama presented in these pages is not electable to national office. No wonder that Obama, aided by a compliant media, has created a new self for public view, one the Obama of Dreams wouldn’t recognize and probably would disdain.
“Michael Gledhill” is the pseudonym of a writer based in Washington, D.C.
_____________________
Lijkt me een duidelijk verhaal. Onbegrijpelijk hoe zo iemand door de primaries heen kan komen. Dat kan alleen als journalisten gezamelijk de andere kant op kijken.
Good intentions and tender feelings may do credit to those who possess them, but they often lead to ineffective — or positively destructive — policies ... Kevin D. Williamson
Op donderdag 22 juli 2010 01:22 schreef xmamacitax het volgende:
mijn nederlands is 1000 x beter dan de joune
mijn nederlands is 1000 x beter dan de joune
Amazon: (275 customer reviews)
Dat zijn natuurlijk allemaal linkse socialisten die een review geplaatst hebben.
Dat boek gaat juist over ras en roots en dan aan komen zetten met een paar in vet gedrukte quotes uit een heel boek. 
Lees de The Audacity of Hope ook eens.
Oh en, SteefP, kom er maar in !
(275 customer reviews)Dat zijn natuurlijk allemaal linkse socialisten die een review geplaatst hebben.
Dat boek gaat juist over ras en roots en dan aan komen zetten met een paar in vet gedrukte quotes uit een heel boek. Lees de The Audacity of Hope ook eens.
Oh en, SteefP, kom er maar in !
Patience is not one of my virtues, neither is memory. Or patience for that matter.
Inderdaad, hij praat de gemiddelde zwarte in de VS na met z'n fabeltjes over zogenaamde "inequality." Dat past zo goed bij de democratische visie dat Amerika een slecht, kwaadaardig land is en dat Amerikanen boosaardig en schuldig zijn (goh, zie je al een parallel met de Europese socialisten?). En uit die inequality vloeit vanzelf voort een "entitlement" - het automatische recht op repatriation, hulp, geld, subsidies, steun, e.d. Special interest groeps zijn daarom ook helemaal gek van democraten.
Obama's vrouw is ook een raciste. Google maar eens naar haar "whitey" speech Of anders erl haar calimero scriptie over hoe zielig en achtergesteld zwarten zijn... Enneh, Obama zat twintig jaar bij die priester in de kerk en wist zogenaamd niets van zijn tirades tegen de grote, boze blanke Amerikaan? Kolder. Wat een lariekoek. Hij en zijn vrouw zijn niets dan racisten.
Obama is een clown die in z'n hele leven nog niets bereikt heeft. Tig jaar "community organizer" spelen en uiteindelijk opstappen omdat je na tien jaar nog geen astbest uit woningen hebt weten te krijgen (maar dat in je boek wel claimen ). Wat een grap. En nu, na een paar nietszeggende jaartjes in de Illinois senate en twee jaartjes in Congress, denkt meneertje klaar te zijn voor het presidentschap van het machtigste land ter wereld.
Obama's vrouw is ook een raciste. Google maar eens naar haar "whitey" speech
Of anders erl haar calimero scriptie over hoe zielig en achtergesteld zwarten zijn... Enneh, Obama zat twintig jaar bij die priester in de kerk en wist zogenaamd niets van zijn tirades tegen de grote, boze blanke Amerikaan? Kolder. Wat een lariekoek. Hij en zijn vrouw zijn niets dan racisten.Obama is een clown die in z'n hele leven nog niets bereikt heeft. Tig jaar "community organizer" spelen en uiteindelijk opstappen omdat je na tien jaar nog geen astbest uit woningen hebt weten te krijgen (maar dat in je boek wel claimen
). Wat een grap. En nu, na een paar nietszeggende jaartjes in de Illinois senate en twee jaartjes in Congress, denkt meneertje klaar te zijn voor het presidentschap van het machtigste land ter wereld.
"Welfare culture is bad not just because, as in Europe, it's bankrupting the state, but because it enfeebles the citizenry, it erodes self-reliance and resourcefulness."
-Mark Steyn
-Mark Steyn
Van dezelfde bron als het stuk tekst in de OP:
Er staan nog zo 6 boeken op met vergelijkbare titels en allemaal over Obama.
Er staan nog zo 6 boeken op met vergelijkbare titels en allemaal over Obama.
"I think I'm in a tragedy"
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZFG5PKw504[/youtube]
"In America today profit is privatized but risk is increasingly socialized"
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZFG5PKw504[/youtube]
"In America today profit is privatized but risk is increasingly socialized"
quote:Op zondag 31 augustus 2008 21:02 schreef StefanP het volgende:
Inderdaad, hij praat de gemiddelde zwarte in de VS na met z'n fabeltjes over zogenaamde "inequality." Dat past zo goed bij de democratische visie dat Amerika een slecht, kwaadaardig land is en dat Amerikanen boosaardig en schuldig zijn (goh, zie je al een parallel met de Europese socialisten?). En uit die inequality vloeit vanzelf voort een "entitlement" - het automatische recht op repatriation, hulp, geld, subsidies, steun, e.d. Special interest groeps zijn daarom ook helemaal gek van democraten.
Obama's vrouw is ook een raciste. Google maar eens naar haar "whitey" speech
Obama is een clown die in z'n hele leven nog niets bereikt heeft. Tig jaar "community organizer" spelen en uiteindelijk opstappen omdat je na tien jaar nog geen astbest uit woningen hebt weten te krijgen (maar dat in je boek wel claimen
[ afbeelding ]
On-topic:
Samenvatting, wat is nu de concrete kritiek en moet dit niet gewoon in het centrale topic?
Ik heb hem bijna uit en ik heb alleen maar meer respect en waardering voor de man gekregen. Het is natuurlijk niet objectief, maar wel goed geschreven en erg boeiend. Ras is overigens inderdaad een belangrijk thema in het boek, maar niet op een vermoeiende of twijfelachtige manier.
Lees en oordeel zelf, en die van McCain ook trouwens.
[ Bericht 11% gewijzigd door Wheelgunner op 31-08-2008 21:26:50 ]
Lees en oordeel zelf, en die van McCain ook trouwens.
[ Bericht 11% gewijzigd door Wheelgunner op 31-08-2008 21:26:50 ]
Jij gaat hierop dus je mening baseren terwijl je het boek zelf niet eens hebt gelezenquote:Op zondag 31 augustus 2008 20:45 schreef Lyrebird het volgende:
Lijkt me een duidelijk verhaal. Onbegrijpelijk hoe zo iemand door de primaries heen kan komen. Dat kan alleen als journalisten gezamelijk de andere kant op kijken.
Mjah, Reagan speelde in slechte B-films en kreeg toch de Sovjets op hun knieën. Kun je nagaan wat een negertje moet kunnen doen, vast niet minder dan voor wereldvrede zorgen.
Ik ga naar huis.
Reagan was een conservative met een ruggegraat van staal. Obama is een socialistische dweil.
"Welfare culture is bad not just because, as in Europe, it's bankrupting the state, but because it enfeebles the citizenry, it erodes self-reliance and resourcefulness."
-Mark Steyn
-Mark Steyn
Bedankt voor de intelligente bijdrage...quote:Op zondag 31 augustus 2008 21:37 schreef Maurice90 het volgende:
Amerika zuigt wat hebben we aan deze nutteloze informatie
Nounou, Reagan was eerst ook zo'n verderfelijke democraat, en zelfs ons eigen IJzeren Rita blijkt vroeger een extreem links terroristische brandbommengooiende Lenin-vingerende militante linkse geweest te zijn.quote:Op zondag 31 augustus 2008 21:32 schreef StefanP het volgende:
Reagan was een conservative met een ruggegraat van staal. Obama is een socialistische dweil.
Mensen kunnen je verrassen. Schijnt.
Ik ga naar huis.
Inderdaad, een democraat ten tijde dat die niet te vergelijken waren met nu. Het is pas na de jaren 50/60 dat ook in de VS de socialisten de overheid enorm deden groeien en steeds meer macht naar zich trokken. Toen duidelijk werd waar democraten nu eigenlijk voor staan, is Reagan terecht van partij veranderd.quote:Op zondag 31 augustus 2008 21:39 schreef nietzman het volgende:
[..]
Nounou, Reagan was eerst ook zo'n verderfelijke democraat, en zelfs ons eigen IJzeren Rita blijkt vroeger een extreem links terroristische brandbommengooiende Lenin-vingerende militante linkse geweest te zijn.
Mensen kunnen je verrassen. Schijnt.
"Welfare culture is bad not just because, as in Europe, it's bankrupting the state, but because it enfeebles the citizenry, it erodes self-reliance and resourcefulness."
-Mark Steyn
-Mark Steyn
Hij verliet de Democraten (Oh wacht nee, de Democraten verlieten hem.) in hetzelfde jaar dat die softe linkse Kennedy z'n ballen liet zien en de Cubaanse raketcrisis verhielp.
Ik ga naar huis.
Het is een man met ervaringen en indrukken waar jij nooit van je langzalzeleven bij zal kunnen komen. En hij heeft/had op veel vlakken een goed punt.quote:Op zondag 31 augustus 2008 21:02 schreef StefanP het volgende:
Inderdaad, hij praat de gemiddelde zwarte in de VS na met z'n fabeltjes over zogenaamde "inequality." Dat past zo goed bij de democratische visie dat Amerika een slecht, kwaadaardig land is en dat Amerikanen boosaardig en schuldig zijn (goh, zie je al een parallel met de Europese socialisten?). En uit die inequality vloeit vanzelf voort een "entitlement" - het automatische recht op repatriation, hulp, geld, subsidies, steun, e.d. Special interest groeps zijn daarom ook helemaal gek van democraten.
Obama's vrouw is ook een raciste. Google maar eens naar haar "whitey" speech
Obama is een clown die in z'n hele leven nog niets bereikt heeft. Tig jaar "community organizer" spelen en uiteindelijk opstappen omdat je na tien jaar nog geen astbest uit woningen hebt weten te krijgen (maar dat in je boek wel claimen
[ afbeelding ]
Maar als je vooruit wilt komen als politicus kun je je niet blijven opstellen als politiek activist. Die twee gaan helaas niet samen. Hij heeft ervoor gekozen om politicus te zijn. Ik vraag me af of hij dat vol kan houden. Iets zijn wat hij van nature niet is.
En noem dat racisme, grote delen zijn een vrij nuchter beeld van hoe de dagelijkse werkelijkheid maar al te vaak in elkaar zit.
Umuntu Ngumuntu Ngabantu
"Those who look before they leap, never leap".
http://www.dierenthuis-naar-almere.nl
"Those who look before they leap, never leap".
http://www.dierenthuis-naar-almere.nl
Jij bent zeker niet bevooroordeeld?quote:Op zondag 31 augustus 2008 21:32 schreef StefanP het volgende:
Reagan was een conservative met een ruggegraat van staal. Obama is een socialistische dweil.
Eindelijk iemand die denkt wat iedereen zegt
Ik heb een echte baan. Ik ben een echte immigrant. Ik betaal belasting en moet zelf rond zien komen. Ik kan het me niet veroorloven om me op mijn werk te gedragen zoals deze "junior senator" die meer dan de helft van de tijd afwezig is en na het eerste (!) jaar lekker campagne gaat voeren (maar nog wel lekker pretendeert senator te zijn, zodat hij z'n loon kan trekken. Wat een grap. Ervaringen en indrukken? Obama is een mislukking. Een kluns. Zijn hele leven lang heeft hij nog geen worst gepresteerd of iets bereikt behalve op de rug teren van belastingbetalers en jankerig "CHANGE!!!!" roepen. Maar goed, ik begrijp dus dat dat indruk maakt op goedgelovige simpelen.quote:Op zondag 31 augustus 2008 22:25 schreef nokwanda het volgende:
[..]
Het is een man met ervaringen en indrukken waar jij nooit van je langzalzeleven bij zal kunnen komen.
Zo, wat een argumentatie Wat een onderbouwing! Ik ben diep onder de indruk. Wauw, "hij heeft een goed punt." Ik ben overtuigd!quote:En hij heeft/had op veel vlakken een goed punt.
Ah, dus het gaat niet om de mensen die hij zogenaamd hielp als "community organizer" (quote:Maar als je vooruit wilt komen als politicus kun je je niet blijven opstellen als politiek activist. Die twee gaan helaas niet samen.
) maar om zijn eigen carriere! Nee, het gaat om vooruit komen als politicus! Als beroepspoliticus, welteverstaan. Politiek activisme, joh, da's een stepping stone to more power. Vandaar dat hij in tien jaar als "community organizer" ( ) geen ene donder heeft weten te bereiken. Maar vanzelfsprekend claimt hij dat wel in z'n boekje... het doet vast pijn wanneer z'n leugens door de bewoners zelf aan het licht gebracht worden. Maar goed, je moet toch wat met zo'n lachwekkend triest CV wil je president worden.quote:Hij heeft ervoor gekozen om politicus te zijn. Ik vraag me af of hij dat vol kan houden. Iets zijn wat hij van nature niet is.
Daarom is hij zeker vanaf z'n eerste "werk"dag al politicus? Laat me niet lachen. Obama is een clown die nog geen dag in z'n leven gewerkt heeft. Een beetje op z'n socialistisch "community organizertje" ( )spelen en daarna de Illinois senate en het congres in. Nee, hij is van nature geen politicus.... do as I say, not as I do, right? Net als alle socialistjes quote:En noem dat racisme, grote delen zijn een vrij nuchter beeld van hoe de dagelijkse werkelijkheid maar al te vaak in elkaar zit.
Cultuurrelativisme. Racisme van Obama, z'n achterlijk vrouwtje en z'n pastoor zijn OK! Het is namelijk de schuld van de blanken! Die smerige rednecks! Obama en zijn zielige special interest groepen worden keihard onderdrukt! Boehoehoe waaaaah!Probeer het maar goed te praten. Lachwekkend gewoon. Obama is een dom, racistisch socialistje.
"Welfare culture is bad not just because, as in Europe, it's bankrupting the state, but because it enfeebles the citizenry, it erodes self-reliance and resourcefulness."
-Mark Steyn
-Mark Steyn
wie stefanPquote:Op zondag 31 augustus 2008 22:42 schreef Parafernalia het volgende:
[..]
Jij bent zeker niet bevooroordeeld?
Die gaat overal neutraal een topic in
1/10 Van de rappers dankt zijn bestaan in Amerika aan de Nederlanders die zijn voorouders met een cruiseschip uit hun hongerige landen ophaalde om te werken op prachtige plantages.
"Oorlog is de overtreffende trap van concurrentie."
"Oorlog is de overtreffende trap van concurrentie."
Goed punt.quote:Op zondag 31 augustus 2008 23:21 schreef StefanP het volgende:
Die smerige rednecks!
He's simple, he's dumb, he's the pilot.
-edit- niet op de man spelen, maar op de argumenten -edit-
[ Bericht 32% gewijzigd door Rock_de_Braziliaan op 01-09-2008 08:20:55 ]
[ Bericht 32% gewijzigd door Rock_de_Braziliaan op 01-09-2008 08:20:55 ]
Goed dat je het effe dikgedrukt typte, anders was het me niet opgevallenquote:Op zondag 31 augustus 2008 23:50 schreef alors het volgende:
Hij heet Barack Hussein Obama hoor. Vergeet dat vooral niet.
Eindelijk iemand die denkt wat iedereen zegt
Ik zie weinig verschil tussen StefanP's post over Obama en al jouw jankposts over McCain.quote:
Carpe Libertatem
Ik heb het boek inderdaad niet gelezen. Het beeld wat hier geschetst wordt, klopt wel met wat ik van de man wist. Ik heb me altijd verbaasd over zijn gedrag, wetende dat hij in een bevoorrechte blanke familie is opgegroeid en op een van de beste - zo niet de beste (Harvard) - school is opgeleid.quote:Op zondag 31 augustus 2008 21:21 schreef Wheelgunner het volgende:
[..]
Jij gaat hierop dus je mening baseren terwijl je het boek zelf niet eens hebt gelezen
Overigens wat StefanP hier schrijft over Obama's track record klopt: het is verbazingwekkend hoe weinig Senator Obama gedaan heeft, maar hoe vaak hij op campagne is. Ergens is dat logisch omdat je niet zo maar president wordt en veel campagne moet voeren. Maar bij Obama ligt de verhouding wel erg scheef.
Good intentions and tender feelings may do credit to those who possess them, but they often lead to ineffective — or positively destructive — policies ... Kevin D. Williamson
Je weet hoe hij daar gekomen is? Bevoorrechte blanke familie? Pardon.quote:Op maandag 1 september 2008 01:53 schreef Lyrebird het volgende:
[..]
Ik heb het boek inderdaad niet gelezen. Het beeld wat hier geschetst wordt, klopt wel met wat ik van de man wist. Ik heb me altijd verbaasd over zijn gedrag, wetende dat hij in een bevoorrechte blanke familie is opgegroeid en op een van de beste - zo niet de beste (Harvard) - school is opgeleid.
Obama had enorme studieschulden zeg.
Patience is not one of my virtues, neither is memory. Or patience for that matter.
Wel grappig al dat gegraaf, er valt gelukkig niks te vinden over de huidige president.
Dat is pas een bevoorrecht lulletje dat kansloze cijfers haalde en dienst wist te ontwijken. Als er eentje een lafaard is ........
Dat is pas een bevoorrecht lulletje dat kansloze cijfers haalde en dienst wist te ontwijken. Als er eentje een lafaard is ........
Patience is not one of my virtues, neither is memory. Or patience for that matter.
Ja hoor. In een topic over Nederland, of misschien Rusland.quote:Op maandag 1 september 2008 03:43 schreef Maurice90 het volgende:
Kunnen we ons niet beter bezig houden met ons eigen landje ^^
Alsjeblieft : Russisch journalist doodgeschoten door politie Succes !
Patience is not one of my virtues, neither is memory. Or patience for that matter.
Zijn vooropleiding werd door zijn ouders betaald. En idd, Harvard heeft ie zelf betaald.quote:Op maandag 1 september 2008 01:59 schreef popolon het volgende:
[..]
Je weet hoe hij daar gekomen is? Bevoorrechte blanke familie? Pardon.
Obama had enorme studieschulden zeg.
Good intentions and tender feelings may do credit to those who possess them, but they often lead to ineffective — or positively destructive — policies ... Kevin D. Williamson
Ik heb jou advies niet nodig..quote:Op maandag 1 september 2008 03:53 schreef popolon het volgende:
[..]
Ja hoor. In een topic over Nederland, of misschien Rusland.
Alsjeblieft : Russisch journalist doodgeschoten door politie Succes !
Zeg nee tegen diarree!
Ik zie niet in wat er mis is met een man die de politiek is ingegaan om de achtersgestelde positie van een groep te verbeteren.
Of wil er iemand hier met droge ogen beweren dat je als latino of afro-american net zulke grote kansen hebt om te 'slagen' in de samenleving als WASP...?
Of wil er iemand hier met droge ogen beweren dat je als latino of afro-american net zulke grote kansen hebt om te 'slagen' in de samenleving als WASP...?
[b]@RemiLehmann[/b]
Wat een gedoe om iemand die na zijn verkiezingsnederlaag weer in de vergetelheid terecht gaat komen
*****Kraak........
Om met het laatste te beginnen, nee dat wil ik niet beweren. Ik denk dat veel afro-amerikanen het verdomd lastig hebben, vooral omdat ze op moeten groeien in een-ouder gezinnen, in wijken waar het niet veilig leven is en waar het niet cool is om naar school te gaan en om te studeren.quote:Op maandag 1 september 2008 04:55 schreef reem het volgende:
Ik zie niet in wat er mis is met een man die de politiek is ingegaan om de achtersgestelde positie van een groep te verbeteren.
Of wil er iemand hier met droge ogen beweren dat je als latino of afro-american net zulke grote kansen hebt om te 'slagen' in de samenleving als WASP...?
Maar voor hen die zichzelf uit de nesten kunnen werken, ligt er een goede toekomst klaar, en veel afro-Amerikaanse meisjes laten zien dat de kansen in de VS voor het grijpen liggen.
Maar om terug te komen op Obama: waar het in het artikel om gaat, is dat Obama door ons wordt gezien als de verzoener tussen blank en zwart, de verlosser, terwijl uit zijn auto biografie blijkt dat hij zichzelf altijd heeft afgezet tegen zijn blanke roots. Dat is IMHO een nare kwaliteit, die best wel eens wat verder belicht had mogen worden door de heren en dames journalisten. Want met name vanwege die nare kwaliteit heeft Obama zichzelf ingezet als community organizer (en verrekkes weinig gerealiseerd), voor zijn "eigen" groep, terwijl hij daar maar heel erg weinig mee te maken had.
Good intentions and tender feelings may do credit to those who possess them, but they often lead to ineffective — or positively destructive — policies ... Kevin D. Williamson
Wanneer ik me in Obama verdiep vind ik toch dat hij heel wat meer in zijn mars heeft dan Bush. Die heeft daadwerkelijk enkel dankzij zijn familie carriére kunnen maken en president kunnen worden. Obama is toch heel wat meer self-made dan hij! Hetzelfde geld (in veel mindere mate) voor McCain.
The End Times are wild
Zeg je met een rusland-avatar?quote:Op maandag 1 september 2008 03:43 schreef Maurice90 het volgende:
Kunnen we ons niet beter bezig houden met ons eigen landje ^^
O, puh-lease! Als je je gekrenkt voelt, moet je je maar op iemand anders afreageren.quote:Op maandag 1 september 2008 01:16 schreef Boze_Appel het volgende:
[..]
Ik zie weinig verschil tussen StefanP's post over Obama en al jouw jankposts over McCain.
.
Klinkt allemaal ook erg betrouwbaarquote:De christelijke Palin zou zich hebben opgeworpen als moeder om een schandaal te voorkomen.
Eindelijk iemand die denkt wat iedereen zegt
hij is natuurlijk lang niet de enige die dat denkt.quote:Op zondag 31 augustus 2008 21:02 schreef StefanP het volgende:
denkt meneertje klaar te zijn voor het presidentschap van het machtigste land ter wereld.
Na 8 jaar Bush is eigenlijk iedere Democraat die een beetje kan spellen klaar voor het presidentschap van de VS. Het verbaast mij alleen dat er uberhaupt nog mensen zijn die vandaag de dag dat baantje ambieren.
When you're racing, it's life. Anything that happens before or after is just waiting.
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