Read The Roots of Obama's Rage Online
Authors: Dinesh D'Souza
The Roots of Obama's Rage (10 page)
Obama’s father is the central character of
Dreams from My Father
. This is odd, because for most of Obama’s life his dad was absent. Still, his absence is palpable and continues to define the narrative, somewhat like the absence of Achilles defines the events of the
Iliad
. “Achilles absent, was Achilles still,” Homer writes, and something similar can be said about Barack Obama Sr. Although he is away, he continues to inhabit and indeed overpower the mind of his impressionable son. Obama writes that “my fierce ambitions might have been fueled by my father—by my knowledge of his achievements and failures, by my unspoken desire to somehow earn his love, and by my resentments and anger toward him.” Even in absentia, Obama confides, “my father’s voice had nevertheless remained untainted, inspiring, rebuking, granting or withholding approval. You do not work hard enough, Barry. You must help in your people’s struggle. Wake up, black man!”
9
Dreams from My Father
. This is odd, because for most of Obama’s life his dad was absent. Still, his absence is palpable and continues to define the narrative, somewhat like the absence of Achilles defines the events of the
Iliad
. “Achilles absent, was Achilles still,” Homer writes, and something similar can be said about Barack Obama Sr. Although he is away, he continues to inhabit and indeed overpower the mind of his impressionable son. Obama writes that “my fierce ambitions might have been fueled by my father—by my knowledge of his achievements and failures, by my unspoken desire to somehow earn his love, and by my resentments and anger toward him.” Even in absentia, Obama confides, “my father’s voice had nevertheless remained untainted, inspiring, rebuking, granting or withholding approval. You do not work hard enough, Barry. You must help in your people’s struggle. Wake up, black man!”
9
What kind of magnetism did his father have? Obama’s aunt Zeituni told him about the time his father brought a young girl to the family hut in Kenya. This was before Obama was born. Barack Sr. was in his twenties, and the girl’s name was Kezia. (Later she would become his first wife.) Obama’s grandfather Onyango Obama was notoriously strict and, according to Zeituni, his hearing was very sharp. So when Barack Sr. lured Kezia into the hut, Onyango heard them and angrily confronted his son. Kezia fled. At this point, Zeituni said, she was sure Onyango would cane Barack Sr. But to Zeituni’s astonishment, “Barack walked over to the old man’s phonograph and started to play a record. Then he turned and shouted to Kezia, who was hiding outside: Woman! Come here! Right away Kezia came into the house, too frightened to refuse, and Barack took her into his arms and began to dance with her, around and around in the old man’s house, as if he were dancing in a palace ballroom.” No one, Zeituni said, had treated Onyango this way. For a long time the old man said nothing. Then he went to the door of the hut and shouted to his wife: Woman! Come here! Immediately the woman came, and Onyango began to dance with her. “Soon all four of them were dancing in the hut.”
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I grew up with people like Onyango, and I have to say that if this incident happened as Zeituni described, Barack Sr. was a man with a very forceful personality.
10
I grew up with people like Onyango, and I have to say that if this incident happened as Zeituni described, Barack Sr. was a man with a very forceful personality.
Obama begins
Dreams from My Father
in 1982, when a relative from Africa calls to tell him his father has been killed in a car accident. The death energizes Obama in his quest to find the man he never really knew. One of the highlights of Obama’s autobiography is when his father comes to visit his 10-year-old son. Despite his tender age, Obama recalls the event with almost eerie clarity. But the meeting is brief; then the father is gone, and Obama never sees him again. Even so the son keeps searching, recovering through conversations with his mother and through study the shaping events of his father’s life. Obama’s narrative culminates in his month-long journey to Africa, where he talks to various relatives about who his dad really was, and then weeps at the man’s grave.
Dreams from My Father
in 1982, when a relative from Africa calls to tell him his father has been killed in a car accident. The death energizes Obama in his quest to find the man he never really knew. One of the highlights of Obama’s autobiography is when his father comes to visit his 10-year-old son. Despite his tender age, Obama recalls the event with almost eerie clarity. But the meeting is brief; then the father is gone, and Obama never sees him again. Even so the son keeps searching, recovering through conversations with his mother and through study the shaping events of his father’s life. Obama’s narrative culminates in his month-long journey to Africa, where he talks to various relatives about who his dad really was, and then weeps at the man’s grave.
It’s powerful stuff. But at first glance it’s a little hard for the reader to understand Obama’s depth of allegiance. His dad was, after all, a complete jerk. He married Kezia in Kenya and had two children with her. Before the second child was born, he abandoned his family to come to America. There he met Obama’s mother Ann, got her pregnant, and then married her, but without telling her he was already married. When Obama was two, his father abandoned him and his mother to go to Harvard; there he moved in with a teacher, Ruth Nidesand. Eventually he took Nidesand back to Africa, married her, and had two children with her. But he also rejoined his African wife, Kezia, and had two more children with her. Later in life he took up with still another woman, Jael Otieno, and impregnated her. The two of them planned to get married after the child was born, but the marriage never took place. By the time he was done, Barack Sr. managed a grand total of three wives, one wife-to-be, and eight children. He was a terrible husband and a worse father; he neglected virtually all his offspring, and one of his sons has accused him of domestic violence. In the words of Mark Ndesandjo, who is the son of Obama Sr. and Nidesand, “I remember situations when I was growing up, and there would be a light coming from our living room, and I could hear thuds and screams, and my father’s voice and my mother shouting. I remember one night when she ran out into the street and she didn’t know where to go.”
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It’s hard to imagine what could be so attractive about a man like this. Not surprisingly, his charms were lost on his mother-in-law, Barack Obama Jr.’s maternal grandmother Madelyn Dunham. She described her son-in-law as “straaaaaange.” Yet by the testimony of many who knew him, Obama Sr. was quite a sophisticated charmer. He was an elegant dresser and wore a tie even to casual events. Obama’s aunt Zeituni described him as a very good dancer. Frederick Okatcha, a family friend and now a professor at Kenyatta University, recalls that Obama Sr. “had everything with which to impress the girls, despite a different cultural background.” He had a slight British accent and called himself “Doctor Obama,” even though he was neither a medical doctor nor the holder of an academic doctorate. Obama recalls his father spouting off incomprehensible aphorisms: “Like water finding its level, you will arrive at a career that suits you.” He was a smoker, as his son after him would be. At Harvard, he was also a heavy drinker. There he earned the nickname “Double Double” because he liked to order a double Scotch and tell the waiter, as soon as it was delivered, “Another double.” Eventually Obama Sr. developed liver disease due to his excessive drinking. To make things worse, he was a reckless driver who often drove under the influence, getting into several accidents in which he killed at least one other person before finally getting into a fatal wreck himself.
12
Obama acknowledges that his father had liver trouble but says nothing about his alcoholism; he also neglects to say that his father was driving drunk when he got into the accident that killed him.
12
Obama acknowledges that his father had liver trouble but says nothing about his alcoholism; he also neglects to say that his father was driving drunk when he got into the accident that killed him.
Heck of a guy to spend your life pursuing. What gave dignity and depth, however, to Barack Obama Sr. was that he was part of a much larger movement—the movement to build a free and independent Africa in the aftermath of colonial rule. We know that this history made an impact on young Obama because he tells us so. Obama was a shy, withdrawn child who was trying to find his place in the world. Before his father came to Hawaii, Barack Jr. would try and make himself important by boasting about his father to his friends. Listen to the way Obama describes it. “I explained to a group of boys that my father was a prince. ‘My grandfather, see, he’s a chief. It’s sort of like the king of the tribe, you know... like the Indians. So that makes my father a prince. He’ll take over when my grandfather dies.’” When the boys asked him if he was next in line, Obama responded, “Well . . . if I want to, I could. It’s sort of complicated, see, ’cause the tribe is full of warriors. Like Obama . . . the name means Burning Spear. The men in our tribe all want to be chief, so my father has to settle these feuds before I can come.”
Of course he knew it was all a lie. The lie was in danger of being exposed when Obama Sr. came to Hawaii to visit. One of Obama’s teachers, Miss Hefty, invited Obama Sr. to come and speak about Africa to the class. The prospect filled the son with dread. “I spent that night and all of the next day trying to suppress thoughts of the inevitable: the faces of my classmates when they heard about mud huts, all my lies exposed, the painful jokes afterward. Each time I remembered, my body squirmed as if it had received a jolt to the nerves.”
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The big day arrived. Obama’s father came dressed in traditional Kenyan clothing, which gave his entrance the sense of drama. As Obama Jr. hesitantly took his seat in Miss Hefty’s class, he heard some commotion, and then the math teacher, Mr. Eldredge, entered the room followed by thirty or so students from his class. “We have a special treat for you today,” Miss Hefty told the two classes. “Barry Obama’s father is here, and he’s come all the way from Kenya, in Africa, to tell us about his country.” Obama Jr. could barely endure his discomfort. “The other kids looked at me as my father stood up, and I held my head stiffly, trying to focus on a vacant point on the blackboard behind him. He had been speaking for some time before I could finally bring myself back to the moment.”
Once Obama Jr. engaged with his father’s presentation, he experienced something of a revelation. He describes the elder Obama’s performance,
He was leaning against Miss Hefty’s thick oak desk and describing the deep gash in the earth where mankind had first appeared. He spoke of the wild animals that still roamed the plains, the tribes that still required a young boy to kill a lion to prove his manhood. He spoke of the customs of the Luo, how elders received the utmost respect and made laws for all to follow under great-trunked trees. And he told us of Kenya’s struggle to be free, how the British had wanted to stay and unjustly rule the people, just as they had in America; how many had been enslaved only because of the color of their skin, just as they had in America; but that Kenyans, like all of us in the room, longed to be free and develop themselves through hard work and sacrifice.
Obama completes the story: “When he finished, Miss Hefty was absolutely beaming with pride. All my classmates applauded heartily.... The bell rang for lunch, and Mr. Eldredge came up to me. ‘You’ve got a pretty impressive father.’ The ruddy faced-boy who had asked about cannibalism said, ‘Your dad is pretty cool.’”
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Of course the most mesmerized person in the class that day was young Barack himself. He discovered that his father, whether or not he grew up in a mud hut, had a strange and talismanic power: the power to hold other people’s attention, the power to convince. The son seems to have resolved right then that he should learn to be more like his father so that he too could have some of that power. Somehow by imbibing his father’s personality—his talismanic secret—the withdrawn child could gain some of the confidence and persuasive power of his dad.
14
Of course the most mesmerized person in the class that day was young Barack himself. He discovered that his father, whether or not he grew up in a mud hut, had a strange and talismanic power: the power to hold other people’s attention, the power to convince. The son seems to have resolved right then that he should learn to be more like his father so that he too could have some of that power. Somehow by imbibing his father’s personality—his talismanic secret—the withdrawn child could gain some of the confidence and persuasive power of his dad.
This was, by Obama’s own account, a pivotal moment in his life. And how successfully Obama internalized his father’s communication skills can be gleaned from an incident years later when Obama, now a young man, is courting the woman he will eventually marry, Michelle. She was not initially impressed by him. She said, “I had dated a lot of brothers who had this kind of reputation coming in, so I figured he was one of these smooth brothers who could talk straight and impress people. So we had lunch, and he had this bad sport jacket and cigarette dangling from his mouth, and I thought: oh, here you go. Here’s this good-looking, smooth-talking guy. I’ve been down this road before.” Then Obama took her to one of his talks at a Chicago church. I’ll let Michelle pick up the story as she narrated it at the 2008 Democratic National Convention: “The people gathered there together that day were ordinary folks doing the best they could to build a good life.... And Barack stood up that day, and he spoke words that have stayed with me ever since. He talked about the world as it is, and the world as it should be. And he said that, all too often, we accept the distance between the two, and we settle for the world as it is, even when it doesn’t reflect our values and aspirations.” Michelle concluded that by the time he was finished, she was hooked. She took him to meet her family, and the two of them were eventually married.
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From this episode, I conclude that the father’s near-magical skill of communication had been fully transmitted to the son. Later we will see how other people besides Michelle became hooked.
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From this episode, I conclude that the father’s near-magical skill of communication had been fully transmitted to the son. Later we will see how other people besides Michelle became hooked.
Now let’s get back to what made the senior Obama such an effective communicator. It wasn’t just his persona; it was also what he said. Somehow he was able to integrate very primal themes—creation, the wilds of Africa, bringing down lions—with the grand themes of anti-colonialism and independence. It was one part
National Geographic
, one part “Out of Africa,” and one part Nelson Mandela. A potent combination. Sure, Obama gave the students that day a crayon version of anti-colonial history, but the real history is no less exciting, and much bloodier. I defer the details of the bloodshed until later in this book because I want readers to discover them when Barack Obama Jr. discovered them, at an older stage of his life.
National Geographic
, one part “Out of Africa,” and one part Nelson Mandela. A potent combination. Sure, Obama gave the students that day a crayon version of anti-colonial history, but the real history is no less exciting, and much bloodier. I defer the details of the bloodshed until later in this book because I want readers to discover them when Barack Obama Jr. discovered them, at an older stage of his life.
Here I want to focus on the excitement of independence, when African nations one by one threw off the colonial yoke and entered a new age of self-government. This happened not only in Obama’s Kenya, but also in Nigeria, Congo, Togo, Mali, the Gold Coast, and elsewhere. The two big names in African anti-colonialism are Kwame Nkrumah, who led the freedom movement in Ghana, and Jomo Kenyatta, who spearheaded it in Kenya. “Spearheaded” is an appropriate word here because Kenyatta was known as the Burning Spear; evidently Obama Jr. had taken this appellation of the father of modern Kenya and assigned it to his own father.
Barack Obama Sr. was actually a political opponent of Kenyatta. This is worth noting because it shows two very different strains of anti-colonialism that developed in Kenya and in the Third World. Kenyatta was both pro-Western and a free market capitalist. In his book, revealingly titled
Suffering Without Bitterness
, Kenyatta argued that his goal was for Kenya to embrace Western values, but to do so as an independent nation. Rebuffing those who were calling for socialism, Kenyatta wrote, “Those Africans who think that when we have achieved our freedom they can walk into a shop and say this is my property, or go onto a farm and say this is my farm are very much mistaken, because this is not our aim.”
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Suffering Without Bitterness
, Kenyatta argued that his goal was for Kenya to embrace Western values, but to do so as an independent nation. Rebuffing those who were calling for socialism, Kenyatta wrote, “Those Africans who think that when we have achieved our freedom they can walk into a shop and say this is my property, or go onto a farm and say this is my farm are very much mistaken, because this is not our aim.”
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