Michael Wolfe

I have recently began to read Obama’s book Dreams from my father and, though I am only a few pages into it, I feel some interesting observations can be made.

He has melded different characters into one (p xvii), changed the names of most people he knew, and some events are taken “out of precise chronology.” Such things are perfectly fine for historical fiction, but for someone writing an autobiographical book, one has to wonder how much the truth has been compromised by such actions. Of perhaps greater importance, is that any changes he has made were his choice, and will show us how he views such people and groups and beliefs.

Another unusual feature has been that, only 13 pages in, he has twice made reference or comparison to Communists and socialists. Neither reference was necessary, and is perhaps awkward.

The first reference Obama compares his state of hopelessness to that of the Communists:

“…well, I suspect that I sound incurably naive, wedded to lost hopes, like those Communists who peddle their newspapers on the fringes of college towns(xv).”

The “lost hopes” Obama is referring to seems to be a personal and national racial identity crises, and he feels it is naive to hope that it will be solved. Racial equality is a good thing to strive for, and is indeed true from a scientific and spiritual (Biblical) standpoint.

However, his comparison indicates that Communists have the same sort of hopelessness over their (as of yet) failure to bring about a socialist society. Obama could have picked any other down and out group of people to compare himself to, and yet he chose Communists to sympathize with.

Again, on page 12, he interjects a favorable reference to socialists where it was unnecessary, and perhaps somewhat awkward to do so. It also shows a relatively concealed belief that whites are always racist(a central tenant to Dr. Cone’s Black Liberation Theology as taught at Trinity United Church of Christ), and his attempt to reconcile white grandparents from the age of racism admitting freely that their daughter married a black man.

Sure–but you let your daughter marry one? (Black man)

The fact that my grandparents had answered yes to this question, no matter how grudgingly, remains an enduring puzzle to me. There was nothing in their background to predict such a response, no New England transcendentalists or wild-eyed socialists in their family tree.

Again we have a good thing (interracial acceptance) married to socialism, the foundation of a system that takes away freedom and paycheck.

It is clear to me from this brief portion of Obama’s book that he considers socialism a good thing, and that he has sympathy for those Communists’ lost hopes, the hopes that generations of Americans have fought against for the preservation of the freedoms and values upon which this Union was founded.