Dreams from my Father

The theme of my book (Dreams from my Father, Barack Obama) so far has all been about
Race.
The book, Dreams from my Father starts out when Barack Obama is 21 and living in a shabby apartment in New York. “A few months after my twenty-first birthday, a stranger called to give me the news. I was living in New York at the time, on Ninety-fourth between Second and First, part of that unnamed, shifting border between East Harlem and the rest of Manhattan” (pg. 3) When he gets the news that his father had died, the book changes into a sort of picture book of his past and the stories he’s been told.
The first stories are about Barack’s father, Barack Obama Sr., from Kenya. Barack was brought up by his mother and her parents to be honest and that segregation was a bad thing. One of the stories Barack had been told was of when his father was in a bar sitting next to a white man, and the white man said he shouldn’t have to drink good liquor “next to a nigger”. After that, Barack’s father gave the man a long lecture on human rights and the Constitution. The man felt so bad about it after, he gave him $100 for his forgiveness.
His father never was a huge part of Barack’s life, seeing that he left Barack and his mother when he was two years old, but this book is about how Barack finds out more about his father, and what impact he has had on him.
As the book goes into stories about his mother and her parents, there are had many instances where their morals have been tested. When his grandparents lived in Texas, his grandmother was talking to a janitor of her building and she called him “Mr. Reed”. One of the secretaries of her office came over and told Barack’s grandmother that she should never “call no nigger ‘Mister’” (32) After that, she saw Mr. Reed crying and he asked her, “What have we ever done to be treated so mean?” She didn’t have anything to say to that question, but later at home, Barack’s grandparents decided that she would continue to call Mr. Reed “Mr. Reed” because they thought that everyone should be treated fairly.
Once Barack’s grandparents move to Hawaii however, everything changes. There are so many different racial groups that no one really cares what color one’s skin is. Everyone gets along and helps each other out when they need a hand. Everything is so different in Hawaii than on the mainland, “[he] expresses wry amusement at the fact that ‘Caucasians’ in Hawaii are occasionally at the receiving end of prejudice.” (26) Everyone’s race in Hawaii gets teased at some point or another, we just let it go and laugh about it because we accept that everyone’s different, but that everyone’s the same also, so the issue of race doesn’t separate people.
I know it’s cliché, but Hawaii is like a mixed plate. A different kind of food (or people in this case) all put together into one plate (or island). We accept each other, help each other, and love each other. Hawaii is relaxed; everyone is your Aunty, or Uncle, your family. Hawaii is one of the only places in America where racism isn’t a huge issue. Hawaii is the place where Barack Obama’s grandparents found was most comfortable for their life style, and where I find mine. Sure, the mainland’s not that bad, I even want to go there for college, but I will, for sure, come back to live here. I know that my race is teased, and put down, and there are many stereotypes against my race on the mainland. There are those same stereotypes here in Hawaii, but no one “holds them to you” or expects you to be anything except what you are. I’ve been brought up in Hawaii, and have learned to accept everyone, as they are, not because of what they look like.
Humans want comfort, and familiarity. I think that segregation started because the whites were afraid of the blacks, and because of their accelerated intelligence of the world in which they live, the had the power to overrule the blacks. They had the power to conquer and rule America and make certain people work for them. I think that they were scared. Scared that THEY would be taken out of their comfort zone, and in protecting themselves, they put others in danger and hurt them in ways that can never be forgiven.
America as a whole has to accept their mixed plate, eat it, and then we can all have dessert together, as a family.