I listened to the audio versions of Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope. I drove down to Easton on Maryland's Eastern Shore to see Nellie McKay and the Mills Family Band. It was four hours round trip and that gave me plenty of time to listen. If people feel that they don't know who this man Barack Obama is beyond the bullsh*t being thrown around by Faux news, the Clintons and the Republicans then these books are a good place to start. I just sent copies to my mom and my girlfriend's mom for Mother's Day.
I live in Philadelphia, Pa and listened to the audio CDs during the Pennsylvania primary and the whole 'bittergate' nonsense. I was struck by a scene from Dreams from My Father describing a period when Obama was going to school in Hawaii and living with his grandparents.
"I gathered up books from the library, Baldwin, Ellison, Hughes, Wright, De Bois. At night I would close the door to my room, telling my grandparents I had homework to do and there I would sit and wrestle with words, locked in suddenly desperate argument trying to reconcile the world as I'd found it with the terms of my birth. But there was no escape to be had. In every page of every book... I kept finding the same anguish the same doubt, a self contempt that neither irony nor intellect seemed able to deflect. Even Du Bois learning and Baldwin's love, and Langston's humor eventually succumb to its corrosive force. Each man finally forced to doubt art's redemptive power, each man finally forced to withdraw, one to Africa, one to Europe, one deeper into the bowels of Harlem. But all of them in the same weary flight, all of them exhausted, bitter men. The devil at their heels. Only Malcolm X's autobiography seemed to offer something different. His repeated acts of self-creation spoke to me. The blunt poetry of his words. His unadorned insistence on respect, promised a new and uncompromising order. Marshal in its discipline, forged through sheer force of will. All the other stuff, the talk of blue eyed devils and apocalypse, was incidental to that program I decided. Religious baggage that Malcolm himself seemed to have safely abandoned towards the end of his life."
I have meet few people in my lifetime as capable as Obama when it comes to discussing race relations. I'm multiracial, have lived, gone to school and worked in many places. At some point people will always ask me, "So, what are you?" I remember a girl I dated in high school. We'd been dating for a month or so and one night hanging out together she said, "Yeah, but you're not really black. I mean you don't talk black." The relationship didn't last much longer after that but it wouldn't be the last time I'd hear a comment along those same lines whether from friends, classmates or coworkers. When talking about race there are so many pitfalls that cause the discussion to descend into unhelpful bickering no matter how well meaning the parties involved may be. People are quick to take offense at a misspoken phrase or word that wasn't intended to be a slight. Bill Cosby is certainly well intentioned but so many African-Americans, but not all, take offense when he suggest that a corrosive force has run amok through the youth culture of black America and our inner cities. There is so much work to be done on this front. We have come so far as a nation and as a people but we still have so far to go. It's not like one day we'll wake up and find we've arrived at some racial utopia that doesn't even exist. What does exist however is a constant struggle to achieve an ideal that we believe is exemplified in our United States Constitution- "That all men are created equal." Equality has always had to be earned and it is never given.
Whatever cognitive dissonance America has regarding the blunderings of Reverend Jeremiah Wright there are people who agree with the what he has said. It's not an issue many people are capable of tackling without the whole mess going to pot. It's apparent too from the salvos being fired from the Clinton and Republican camps that in their opinion this scuffle between a man and his pastor is best used for political cannon fodder to advance their political ambitions. After listening to Obama's two books on CD I really don't believe that he is as shallow as his adversaries. I think that his call to rally around a new American politics is legitimate and in the best interest of this country. I don't know what more I have to say on this topic right now so please leave your comments and tell me what you have to say. I'm going to bed and will check back later tomorrow.
Thanks for reading.