Barak & Clarence's Memoirs A Stark Contrast
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A black man nominated by Republican President George H.W.Bush and a black man seeking the nomination of the Democratic Party have both written books describing their lives from childhood to the present day. Both of these men are the products of divorced parents, and this is where the similarities end. I have not read these books yet, but I am basing my points about Clarence Thomas from watching him on 60 Minutes. I am basing my points about Barak Obama from this liberal gay blogger's piece at Pajamas Media.
One obvious contrast is in the titles of these books. Clarence has the maternal grandfather who did raise him in his title, and Obama has the divorced father who had nothing to do with him in his title.
Clarence Thomas grew up in the Jim Crow south. His grandfather, whom he called "Daddy," was a black man with a strict work ethic. Thomas witnessed his grandparents' steadfastness despite injustices, their hopefulness despite bigotry, and their deep love for their country. On 60 Minutes he told how his grandfather had told him to not be quitter. Clarence attended catholic seminary toward becoming a catholic priest. After Martin Luther King was shot in Memphis, Clarence overheard white students say that they hoped King was dead. This attitude by future priests in the Roman Catholic Church was more than Clarence could bear, and he dropped out of seminary. This estranged him from his grandfather. Clarence did not get swallowed up into the abyss of victimhood.
Intimately and eloquently, Thomas speaks out, revealing the pieces of his life he holds dear, detailing the suffering and injustices he has overcome, including the acrimonious and polarizing Senate hearing involving a former aide, Anita Hill, and the depression and despair it created in his own life and the lives of those closest to him. My Grandfather's Son is the story of a determined man whose faith, courage, and perseverance inspired him to rise up against all odds and achieve his dreams.
In the 60 Minutes interview Clarence said his journey was coming home to his grandfather's instructions instead of running away from them.
Bruce Bawer explains what he finds disturbing about Barak's book.
As the title intimates, the figure in Obama’s carpet is his father, a Kenyan exchange student who met Barack’s white, Kansas-born mother at the University of Hawaii. After marrying her and fathering Barack, Dr. Obama – as he was universally known – returned to Kenya to take up a high-ranking government position. Thereafter, he showed little or no interest in Barack, whom he met only once, when the boy was ten. Though Barack’s mother had a brief second marriage that took her and the boy to Indonesia, she raised him mostly in the Aloha State – and, by his account, was unfailingly selfless and loving, as were her parents, “Gramps” and “Toot,” who helped bring him up.Yet on whom does Barack’s memoir focus? On his father – whom Barack, against all evidence (which suggests that Dr. Obama was colossally selfish and narcissistic), seeks to portray as heroic, sympathetic, indeed near-mythic. Obama père was a polygamist (and a lousy husband to all his wives), but Barack gives no indication that he finds this morally problematic; on the contrary, he seems determined to excuse his father’s many failings as consequences of imperialism, colonialism, and/or racism.
He treats his mother and grandparents, who by his own account raised him with extraordinary devotion, all but dismissively. At one point he even suggests that Gramps and Toot were really racists – and that all white people, in fact, are racists, and that black people have been so deformed by this racism that black individuals can hardly be held responsible for their own moral lapses.
At times it’s as if there were no historical injustices in the world other than those visited upon blacks by whites. Obama routinely refers to other black men (but never white men) as “brothers”; he exhibits considerably more concern for the dignity of black men than for that of women or non-black men; and he’s acutely sensitive to perceived racial slights (yet even as he deplores the subordination of blacks in America, curiously enough, he appears to accept as his due his family’s lofty position in Kenya).
What does it say about the young Obama that he was well-nigh obsessed with his vain braggart of an absentee father but trivialized his mother’s accomplishments? What does it mean that he himself plainly can’t see that his father comes off in these pages as a world-class jerk and his mother as a woman of admirable self-discipline and quiet achievement? What does it mean that throughout his account of his work as a community organizer in Chicago, Obama himself is in sharp focus while the underprivileged folks he’s supposedly trying to help are hazy figures in the distant background? What does it mean that some of the characters in this book – whom one would otherwise assume to be important people in his life – are, as he admits in the introduction, composites? What does it mean that despite his fixation on his father and his Kenyan kin, their religion (Islam) is barely mentioned, and that in the most substantial reference to it, he gives a genial thumbs-up to his brother’s newfound religious fervor?
Raised on glorious Hawaiian beaches by three wonderful people who were utterly devoted to him, he attended top schools and walked straight from graduation into a cool job in New York – all in all, a pretty lucky guy. Yet between this memoir’s lines, one senses a barely suppressed rage; his good fortune notwithstanding, one has the distinct feeling that Obama feels he – Dr. Obama’s son! – still hasn’t received his due.
I personally think that having in the future a black American President could be a help to a country with wounds dating back to the Civil War and earlier. However, I think it will only be a help when this future black American President does not employ the "I'm a victim of racism" card to get elected. It will be helpful for this person to get elected for the content of their character instead of the color of their skin.
I wrote this to give myself a break from all of the polling results blogs coming in here fast and furious.
Now there's no more oak oppression,
For they passed a noble law,
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet, axe, and saw.
That commentary on Obama's memoirs is so atrociously wrong I have to question whether the writer read the book or if just skimmed a few pages here and there and took other's people comments about the book as factual.
Dreams of my father is a book about self-realization. The portrayal of his father was based on his beliefs at the time and he discovers, after his father's death and his subsequent trip to Kenya, that many of his beliefs about his father were based on images he created rather than reality.
The book is about how he comes to grips with being a black man in America particularly after leaving the relative color blindness of Hawaii. It isn't a historical overview of his life.
There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why ... I dream of things that never were and ask why not. - Robert Kennedy
He writes that he borrowed the book from a friend and read it from cover to cover. Call him a liar if you will, but he says he read it.
Now there's no more oak oppression,
For they passed a noble law,
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet, axe, and saw.
But I just don't see how he could so badly misread the book.
Mr. Bawer seems to think that what Obama SHOULD have written was a hagiography about his mother and maternal grandparents. Instead of writing a book that discusses how he struggled with his own identity, he should have written yet another self-congratulatory memoirs in which he persevered against adversity due to his own personal strength and his family.
When you read the book one of the first things that you realize is how he DOESN'T spend much time talking about his personal successes.
Psychoanalyzing his relationship with his family based on a book about self-awareness and identity seems utterly pointless to me.
There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why ... I dream of things that never were and ask why not. - Robert Kennedy
You post about how Mr Bawer seems to think Obama should have written about his mom. Over at Amazon I caught this little excerpt by Obama
Let me end instead on a more personal note. Most of the characters in this book remain a part of my life, albeit in varying degrees -- a function of work, children, geography, and turns of fate.The exception is my mother, whom we lost, with a brutal swiftness, to cancer a few months after this book was published.
She had spent the previous ten years doing what she loved. She traveled the world, working in the distant villages of Asia and Africa, helping women buy a sewing machine or a milk cow or an education that might give them a foothold in the world’s economy. She gathered friends from high and low, took long walks, stared at the moon, and foraged through the local markets of Delhi or Marrakesh for some trifle, a scarf or stone carving that would make her laugh or please the eye. She wrote reports, read novels, pestered her children, and dreamed of grandchildren.
We saw each other frequently, our bond unbroken. During the writing of this book, she would read the drafts, correcting stories that I had misunderstood, careful not to comment on my characterizations of her but quick to explain or defend the less flattering aspects of my father’s character. She managed her illness with grace and good humor, and she helped my sister and me push on with our lives, despite our dread, our denials, our sudden constrictions of the heart.
I think sometimes that had I known she would not survive her illness, I might have written a different book.
Now there's no more oak oppression,
For they passed a noble law,
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet, axe, and saw.
He says that had he known his mother would die so quickly he would have written a different book. Doesn't that imply that the book he wrote was specifically NOT about his mother?
He also mentions how his mother read the drafts of the book.
There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why ... I dream of things that never were and ask why not. - Robert Kennedy
Mr. Bawer had this question on his mind after reading the book.
What does it say about the young Obama that he was well-nigh obsessed with his vain braggart of an absentee father but trivialized his mother’s accomplishments?
You don't like that he had this question on his mind. You don't offer any answer you just resent the question. At least Obama answers somewhat by saying that had he known his mom would die as soon as she did he would have written a different book. What is there not to follow?
Now there's no more oak oppression,
For they passed a noble law,
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet, axe, and saw.
He criticizes Obama for not writing a more glowing hagiography of his mother and grandparents and in stead writing a book about his father, whom Mr. Bawer dislikes, oddly enough, based on the description PROVIDED in the book.
I find it ironic that you call me obtuse when you have haven't even read the book but prefer to defend an critique of the book that is not in line with most other critiques.
Mr. Bawer also fails to mention that nearly half of the book talks about his time in Kenya meeting his father's family, which occurred after his father had passed away.
Pilgrim the title of the book is Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
The book wasn't intended to be an auto-biography explaining how he did so well in life. It was memoir regarding how he grappled with the inner turmoils of his life. His absent father is the basis of the book BECAUSE he was the absent father not because he was more important to Obama than his mother.
You may disregard my opinion all you want. But there are countless reviews of this book available on the Internet and virtually none of them are in agreement with Mr. Bawer's take on the book. Or you could even be so bold as to read yourself.
There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why ... I dream of things that never were and ask why not. - Robert Kennedy
The way you boldface part of the book's title makes your position clear.
I didn't conduct a poll first to find out which review has the most votes before I wrote this. You write that there are virtually no reviews in agreement with Mr. Bawer's take on the book. I counted a dozen reviews at Amazon alone that are in agreement with Mr. Bawer.
Reading both the favorable and the critical reviews I did notice one trend. Every favorable view spoke about the story of race, and every critical view spoke about dreams from my father.
Each one of us are entitled to our own opinions.
Now there's no more oak oppression,
For they passed a noble law,
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet, axe, and saw.
There are over a hundred reviews of the book at Amazon so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that some agree. Of course some were also like this one...
Barack Hussein Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Barack Hussein Obama Sr. (black muslim) of Nyangoma-Kogelo, Siaya District, Kenya, and Ann Dunham of Wichita, Kansas. (white atheist ).
When Obama was two years old, his parents divorced and his father returned to Kenya. His mother married Lolo Soetoro -- a Muslim -- moving to Jakarta with Obama when he was six years old. Within six months he had learned to speak the Indonesian language. Obama spent "two years in a Muslim school, then two more in a Catholic school" in Jakarta. Obama takes great care to conceal the fact that he is a Muslim while admitting that he was once a Muslim, mitigating that damning information by saying that, for two years, he also attended a Catholic school.
I didn't actually see any that criticize Obama for ignoring his mother and her family or for praising his father.
There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why ... I dream of things that never were and ask why not. - Robert Kennedy
I just clicked on customer reviews and it brought up both favorable and critical side by side. The critical review starts
What about Mom?, April 17, 2007
By Julee Rudolf "book snob"
Barack Obama is obviously an articulate, intelligent man; but his "story of race and inheritance" may leave readers scratching their heads at times. The story of his life, the son of a Kenyan man and a white woman who divorced when he was a young child, is atypical. His father, an extremely book smart man, polygamist, big talker and eventually sometimes embarrassment to the family who was known as the Old Man to his many children, seems an unlikely source of the "dreams" of which the title speaks.
Well honestly her brief review was a lot more honest than Mr. Bawer.
I don't have a problem with people criticizing the book for focusing on the father. I have a problem with people making political hay out of that which what Mr. Bawer chose to do.
Mr. Bawer freely admits that he knew nothing about Obama before reading the book but he now apparently knows that his father was really bad and his mother and grandparents were...
Raised on glorious Hawaiian beaches by three wonderful people who were utterly devoted to him, he attended top schools and walked straight from graduation into a cool job in New York – all in all, a pretty lucky guy.
He also apparently knows that Obama went to top schools even though he attended public schools in Hawaii, Occidental College was his first college and of course his "private" school in Indonesia which I somehow doubt would ever be confused for Exeter. I also liked how the beautiful beaches of Hawaii should have made Obama happier.
He speaks of Obama's good fortune yet ignores that he was fatherless child of a middle income family.
He focuses on the struggles that Obama dealt with in the book without even mentioning the resolutions. Instead he attempts to paint him as an angst filled youth who, perhaps, is still angry at America.
In short my problem with the review is that it is not an actual review of the book but a description of the man based on the writer's biases.
Oh, and I have a hard time calling a person a person who wrote a book called "While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within" a hard core liberal.
There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why ... I dream of things that never were and ask why not. - Robert Kennedy
A conservative would not have written this book No. Way.
Now there's no more oak oppression,
For they passed a noble law,
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet, axe, and saw.
So his hostility towards Christian fundamentalism isn't terribly shocking.
There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why ... I dream of things that never were and ask why not. - Robert Kennedy
Clearly Obama would seek to excuse some things his father did, becasue its his father. I see nothing wrong w/ that, and honestly there aren't many people who will just say oh my dad was a terrible person. His mother is the one who proof-read his book, in my opinion this post is bordering on racism with its demand that Obama write about all the white people in his life, not the black ones. I guarantee if Obama's father was white and mother was black you would not be complaining that he wrote a book about his father.
Where do you read a DEMAND about what Obama or Clarence write? The answer is you don't read it because it's not there. You don't like Mr. Bawer's review of the book? Fine. But don't you dare call me a racist!
Now there's no more oak oppression,
For they passed a noble law,
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet, axe, and saw.
I said ur diary borders on racism. And okay it wasnt a "demand" that Obama write about the white people in his life, but the bottom line is you are criticizing him for not writing in extensive detail about him. Seems to me growing up without a father is something that will have a profound effect on most people, and would be very worthy of writing a book about.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion about how Justice Thomas and Senator Obama write their memoirs. They each took a different approach, and I point out this contrast. I only point out the contrast, and the reader forms their own opinion as to what they are favorable to and what they are critical to.
Now there's no more oak oppression,
For they passed a noble law,
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet, axe, and saw.
That one wrote his book when he was 31 and the other wrote it when he was 59 might have something to do with the differences in tone.
But that's just a guess.
There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why ... I dream of things that never were and ask why not. - Robert Kennedy
and also it was you who brought up race, not me. Accusing Obama of "playing the victim" and blaming everything on his race is simply inaccurate.
I wrote that after Clarence dropped out of school he did not fall into the abyss of victimhood. At the end of the piece I said that a future black American President will help the country if he wins based on the content of his character and not the color of his skin. That is a paraphrasing of Dr. Martin Luther King, and a future black American could be lots of different people not specifically Sen Obama.
Now there's no more oak oppression,
For they passed a noble law,
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet, axe, and saw.
your charge of victimhood on one person's view of Obama's book, written 12 year ago, which described his youth.
How many times Barack Obama EVER reference the color of his skin?
There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why ... I dream of things that never were and ask why not. - Robert Kennedy
I wrote to point out a stark contrast in the memoirs written by Justice Thomas and Senator Obama. That is it.period. I used my thoughts from seeing the Thomas 60-Minutes interview for the Thomas part, and I used a review by Mr. Bawer for the Obama part. Neither of you would have your panties in a wad if I had used a different reviewer for the Obama part, and the stark contrast between how each wrote his memoir would have still been evident.
Now there's no more oak oppression,
For they passed a noble law,
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet, axe, and saw.
Because you are willfully making a comparison of two black men who have little else in common?
The contrast in question has more to do with upbringing than beliefs. And you most certainly are trying to suggest that Barack Obama is more focused about race than Clarence Thomas.
There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why ... I dream of things that never were and ask why not. - Robert Kennedy
Well ok let me quote what you said:
"However, I think it will only be a help when this future black American President does not employ the "I'm a victim of racism" card to get elected."
You are obviously implying based upon his book Obama employs this race as a victim card to get elected. This is simply false. In his book he does not use race as an excuse, he simply points out how it affected his life. In his presidential campaign race has not been a focal point at all, he even has been attacked by Jesse Jackson and Sharpton for "ignoring" race. Obama, unlike how Hillary points out her gender at every turn, does not use race as a reason to vote for him.
Where do I write that the future black American President is Obama? The answer is I do not write that. The phrase future black American President could mean lots of different people who are black and American.
Now there's no more oak oppression,
For they passed a noble law,
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet, axe, and saw.
Do you mean to claim that you wrote this entire post, comparing Obama and Thomas, in which you quote a very negative review of Obama's book which claims he uses race as an excuse, and than at the end make a comment about a generic and future black president? It is obvious that this was directed towards Obama.
for smears regardless of who the target is, except maybe Hillary and Rudi.
There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why ... I dream of things that never were and ask why not. - Robert Kennedy
yesterday that you inserted here. And watching Clarence Thomas on "60 Minutes" was one of only two times that I can think of that I have voluntarily watched the show in quite a while. The other one was when Sarkozy walked out on Lesley Stahl. Both shows were memorable.
Good comparison and contrast! It reminds me of the recent survey that showed that conservatives in general have better mental health and are happier than libs. We don't walk around feeling like victims non-stop.