Four Quotes from Barack Obama’s Earlier Writing That Have Helped Me Challenge My Own Limits
a review of the key quotes that spoke to me from his book Dreams from my Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
Book Title: Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
Author: Barack Obama
From the perspective of a Canadian, here is the timeline of “stuff I know” about Barack Obama.
The beginning: Once upon a time, he was born, and some orange guy questioned his birth story and he struck back in style and humour by releasing his birth video.
The recent: He was the President of the United States and then he wrote a book. Not this book, but a later book. However, that book was unavailable at the library so clearly, I went down the rabbit hole of his earlier books first.
This earlier book filled in the gaps of his story that I’m surprised people don’t discuss as often. For a portion of his childhood, he had lived in Indonesia with his mother and stepfather.
He navigated the search for meaning surrounding what it meant to biracial, raised by a white mother in Indonesia with his stepfather Lolo. There’s one story that struck me the hardest in this entire book.
The first time he really thought about his race, his skin colour was as a child reading a waiting room magazine that contained an article about skin bleaching. He held this story and the many questions to himself.
He also traced back to his roots to meet his extended family on his father’s side in Kenya, detailing his encounters with different sides of the family.
Where there is no experience the wise man is silent.
In essence, I understand it to mean that it is wise to acknowledge your own ignorance rather than speak about what you know little about. This is powerful because so often we perpetuate false knowledge when we jump on headlines and react immediately.
I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I’ve certainly fallen prey to emotional headlines. This emotional fence just pops up as you’re ready to attack, coming from a place of wanting to advocate for something different. Sometimes this is misplaced when that context isn’t first acknowledged and understood.
But anger and frustration are swift-acting; reason is slow-acting. Keeping quiet is being able to acknowledge the message of your anger and frustration yet sit through the distress until the slow-acting reason kicks in. It’s being able to remain silent so that you channel your energy into expressing yourself in a way that facilitates communication best.
It’s also the intentional internal plan to learn about this so that the next time you encounter something, it’s no longer from a point of no experience. There’s a Chinese saying that means, “there’s no shame in not knowing” [不知者不罪]. To me, this means acknowledging that different people have different experiences which means that they won’t necessarily know all the things you know. As long as they don’t hold on to this ignorance as a shield to change, people shouldn’t be ashamed for not knowing.
An incredibly important caveat to these ideas is when these seemingly reasonable pieces of advice get weaponized out of bias. I’m speaking about the angry Black woman trope, where Black women are labeled as angry, aggressive, for making neutral requests that would otherwise not be labeled as angry or aggressive when said by anyone else. Too often, the logic presented in this quote is weaponized against them under the guise of presenting their arguments as “emotional”.
Such stereotypes include the myth of the angry Black woman that characterizes these women as aggressive, ill tempered, illogical, overbearing, hostile, and ignorant without provocation. — (Ashley, 2014)
Food for thought: Be honest — what are some things you have little experience in but for which you are vocal? Why is it that you speak about these things?
How does emotion, particularly anger and frustration, show up in your life, particularly in knee-jerk responding? What are ways you can learn to tolerate that distress so that you focus on the message rather than the emotion?
In what ways have you perpetuated the “angry Black woman” trope and weaponized these concepts against Black women facing discrimination? How might you change this behaviour?
Better to be strong,’ he [Lolo] said…’if you can’t be strong, be clever and make peace with someone who’s strong. But always better to be strong yourself.
In Obama’s recollection of his stepfather (Lolo)’s words, I saw myself and I saw the narratives of many immigrant friends that I know. I saw this belief that you need to be responsible for your own safety and to build a life where you try your best to build community but to, deep down, trust in yourself.
In this quote, I thought of the friend who is always willing to be there for friends and respond to rants, but never shared that she was going through a rough time with a family member’s illness. She never shared to the larger group that some of the things we said or talked excluded her when we talked about post-pandemic travels to different places — places that don’t offer Halal food and frankly, some places that have not historically been safe for Muslims like her. In our group self-centeredness, even if we were generally ‘kind’ or genuinely loved her as a human being, we didn’t stop for enough time to think in her shoes. She never complained, only stayed strong, alone.
This is what I think about when I do my anti-racism and decolonization work myself. Though a person of colour myself, there are narratives I have yet to learn, and narratives where I’m fully aware but have not yet taken the time to truly apply to enough instances. I fully acknowledge that even though I’m the recipient of microaggressions and racism, I am just as likely to perpetuate these on others. This is why anti-racism isn’t just one book you read for a book club, or to set up a DEI group that someone else runs. It’s the daily and lifelong work of listening and supporting lives other than your own.
In Lolo’s story and too in Obama’s story of his father, I saw narratives of BIPOC studying and engaging with American culture and wanting to push forward aspects of change they found valuable for their communities. In both stories I saw that happening without community support, and the ensuing learned helplessness and/or “survival takes all” narrative.
Food for thought: In what ways do you lean into your community for support? What needs do you think could be filled with community support? On the spectrum between trying to always fix things on your own vs. always relying on community, where do you lie in between? What does reflecting on this tell you?
All the education and good intentions in the world couldn’t help plug up the holes in the universe or give you the power to change its blind, mindless course.
I think the empowering thing in Obama’s story is that beyond learning, he did things. It’s particularly humbling because I am very much an “all learn, hesitate to do” kind of person.
My way of coping with noticing change is to gather information, and then gather information, afraid that I don’t have enough information to truly make the “right” judgment. Yet, the more information I have, the more overwhelmed that I’m not truly seeing the nuances within the information, so guess what? I try to learn more.
While I still firmly believe learning is important, particularly in continually updating assumptions about the world, his story helped me shift from this analysis paralysis into taking tangible steps. In hearing his story of how he began his career organizing for local change wherever he could, it reminded me that I need to start somewhere.
As an outsider, I kind of hear Obama’s name and only associate it with being the President of the US, not understanding the journey it took to get there. In this book, I saw that narrative.
Food for thought: What is it that you would like to change in your community? What would be a tangible step forward to make this change?
All this marked them as vaguely liberal, although their ideas would never congeal into anything like a firm ideology; in this, too, they were American.
This quote is about Obama’s maternal grandparents, illustrating a complex relationship with people he loved, but also people who held racist beliefs.
Particularly, it reminded me of a story of his teens when he was living with them and his grandmother had begun requesting his grandfather to drive her to work because of some harassment at the bus stop. His grandfather threw a fit and refused, and Obama had stepped in to mediate.
His grandfather later shared his side of the story to share that he had refused to do so because she had only requested to be driven because the person to harass her was Black; she’d been harassed at the bus stop many times before and not felt bothered.
I reflected on how he had to mediate between the two and resolve the conflict by offering to drive his grandmother, how this incident because just one memory (one drop in the ocean) to be retold only later in this book.
I reflect on how he was barely between adolescence and young adult then.
It reminds me of folks who were vaguely liberal but still carry racist notions. Honestly, it reminds me of me. If I’d never stopped to audit my existence, who I encounter, who I read, who I interact with as a result of the Black Lives Matter movement that really came to the forefront last year, I may have carried on living this exact life. Well-meaning, but racist. Kind, but racist. BIPOC and encounter racism sometimes, yet holding ignorance that in itself is racist.
And anti-racism work isn’t just a checkmark off a to-do list, not just one book read, but rather a change in the balance of what information I seek out on a regular basis.
And this idea comes in the form of empathy for someone I believe had taken on more than he “should have” at that age, and not wanting to build or continue a world where that burden is placed on other BIPOC to smooth over.
Food for thought: Do an audit on your life — who do you read? Who do you interact with? What patterns are there? Whose voices are missing? Who takes on most of the responsibility of making others feel comfortable? Why is that? What can you do to balance that out more?
Parting words
This is by no means a summary of Obama’s book, political career, or life. This is the tip of the iceberg and represents specifically what pieces jumped out to me in reading this book. But from just these quotes, it’s helped me step outside of my current understanding of the world and challenge my limits. It helped me reflect on my focus on thinking that paralyzes action. It’s reminded me to consistently complete audits on my life to ensure that what I’m reading, who I’m encountering, who I’m supporting truly aligns with the values I have in life, instead of just what’s fallen into my lap.
What about you?
Hi I’m Lucy Dan 蛋小姐 (she/her/她) and I’m on a mission to read 12 books in 2021! The next book review to come is going to be Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes; the current book I’m reading and soon finishing is Life of Pi by Yann Martel. Have a book suggestion you think would be great? Please let me know!
Hop down the rabbit hole? 🐰🕳
^ by Rebecca Stevens A.
