Creating Lives: An Introduction to Biography

Historical Background Information — Barack Obama

"There's no question that in the next thirty or forty years, a Negro can also achieve the same position that my brother has as President of the United States," ⁸ Robert F. Kennedy.

What a prophetic statement, which came true 40 years after the assassination of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. One month after formally declaring his candidacy for President, Barack Obama, the junior senator from Illinois arrived in Selma, Alabama, at Brown Chapel, to speak. This was not just a run of the mill campaign speech; it was a speech designed to tell his story to the American people, challenge Hillary Clinton, who held the Democratic lead and the lion's share of the African-American vote, and garner the endorsements of prominent civil rights leaders.

Obama's speech "brought himself into the narrative and as he explained the particularity of his background, insisted on a place in the story: my very existence might not have been possible had it not been for some of the folks here today… I stand on the shoulders of giants." ⁹ In Selma, the message was specifically directed at African-Americans; every speech afterward was enlarged to include people of all races and creeds. This moment demonstrates that Obama was determined to be an individual with an African-American identity but a politician with a broad vision and purpose. This purpose gave way to his birthright as a descendant of the Joshua generation. Joshua 6:20 reads, "When the trumpets sounded, the people shouted, and at the sound of the trumpet, when the people gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed….and they took the city..." ¹⁰ This powerful account of a city being overtaken was written after the conquest of Canaan which took place between 1406 and 1375B.C. for future generations of God's people to give them a record of God's mighty acts. On November 4, 2008, God acted mightily, when Barack Obama became the 44 ^th President of our nation and mighty shouts went out from Chicago, Kenya, Hawaii, and all across the world! God had delivered on his promise and President Obama will deliver on his promise of change; yet President Obama's life wasn't always so full of hope, perseverance or determination.

In Dreams from my Father, we immediately encounter Obama as a young adult who receives the news that his father has just been killed in West Africa in a car accident. His father had been present only in memory since he had visited Obama just once in the past 20 years of his life. John Amos ¹¹ suggests that Obamas identity as a black man is in question as a result of his father's absence. In an attempt to understand his racial heritage Obama chooses to see himself as a black man experiencing global themes: relationships between fathers and sons, the promise of fulfilling the American Dream, struggles associated with coming-of-age, and struggles of the working class. These struggles are understood by all Americans and resonate loudly with young Obama during this period of his life. Interspersed among the universal themes is a dominant theme that Obama cannot change: the impact that fatherlessness has on the construction of male identity. A major factor that can make any level of success unappreciated when questions persist on a personal level that ask Who am I? and Where do I belong? Since Obama, was without a father and had an idealistic mother, no family member was available to help Obama develop an understanding of African-American life, African- American culture, or manhood, &mdash he was left alone to determine all the above while searching for his identity.

Obamas teen years mark the point when he began his search for a racial identity and formed a liaison with a small cohort of African-American males in Hawaii. Obama ¹² admits, "I was living out a caricature of black male adolescence, itself a caricature of swaggering American manhood" and from black athletes he learned how to exhibit an "attitude" that was about earning respect, not who your father was. Obama also learned on the basketball court to intimidate an opponent and to never, ever let anyone see you "sweat" which is see you express feelings of vulnerability. Obama transferred those skills to social settings when he confronted anyone who appeared racist or made racist remarks. In Obamas world "white folk" dominated his conversations with his cohort of males and all their past and future transgressions towards blacks. Obama had become what America feared the most: an angry black male. "Our rage at the white world needed no object ¹³," he calmly states while driving home from a party. Implicit in his behaviors at this time is the belief that his possession of rage is typical of young black males.

Nonetheless, for all of Obamas rage he does not develop or trust the identity he's been searching for. Obama ¹⁴ states, "you couldn't even be sure that everything you had assumed to be an expression of your black unfettered self-the humor, the song, the behind-the-back pass-had been freely chosen by you." Subsequently, the only choice was to withdraw and to recognize that "being black meant only the knowledge of your own powerlessness, of your own defeat. ¹⁵" After searching for a father, after searching for a racial identity, after searching for a community a teenage Obama is left feeling the opposite of the empowering experiences he was seeking: powerless. He still must find a way to combat his powerlessness without conforming to the stereotypical image of black male adolescent anger.

Obama had not conformed to the image of a typical black male but he did stray into using drugs which is considered a typical phase in teenage development. Obama ¹⁶ made no such distinction and acknowledges that he was on a slippery slope as he recalls taking drugs, "junkie. pothead. That's where I'd been headed: the final, fatal role of the young would-be black man. Except the highs hadn't been about me trying to prove what a down brother I was…I got high to push questions of who I was out of my mind, something that could flatten out the landscape of my heart…." Recognizing that her son was adrift, Ann Dunham, his mother prodded him about his grades and getting accepted to college. A turning point came when Obama realized to make some sense of his life he would have to leave Hawaii. Obama entered Occidental College in California but graduated from Columbia University in New York. Obama was on his way to finding an identity, a community, a purpose, and great success.

The following political images represent pivotal moments in Obama's political pursuits