Often, the conflict in a coming-of-age memoir is that realization that there are dominant view and assumptions that form the belief system of many of the individuals in this society regarding the writer. Those assumptions can be based on gender, age, socioeconomic class, race, or ethnicity. Find at least 5 was in which the assumptions of those in the greater society shape how the write defines (or doubts) himself or herself. Describe how the writer struggles with those assumptions.
1. "I mean it this time," he was saying to me now. "These girls are A-1 USDA-certified racists. All of 'em. White girls. Asian girls - shoot, these Asians worse than the whites. Think we got a disease or something."(Pg 167 of 402)
Obama and his friend Ray, who was two years older than him, were talking at the lunch table and were checking a few girls out who has scoffed at the very sight of them and walked away over to a table of white males, who they proudly showed off in front of. This is the kind of behavior that shows that racism is prominent all around us, and Obama discusses that. He retaliates to Ray's comment with "Just because a gil don't go out with you doesn't make her a racist," to which Ray responds "Don't be thick, alright? I'm not just talking about one time. Look, I ask Monica out, she says no. I say okay....your shit's not that hot anyway. Next thing I know, she's hooked him with Steve 'No Neck' Yamaguchi, the two of 'em all holding hands and shit, like a couple of love birds. So fine - I figure there're more fish in the sea. I go ask Pamela out. She tells me she ain't going to the dance. I say cool. Get to the dance, guess who's standing there, got her arms around Rick Cook. 'Hi Ray,' she says, like she don't know what's going down." Obama sits there and laughs, but they both know that it indeed was the fact that Ray is black. Unfortunately, racism was really rampant in the 70s, and Obama reflects on that a lot so far throughout the book. He says that the racism he underwent as a teenager and young adult was awful, but it shaped him into the man that he is today and the reason he has the courage to stand up and be an African-America president.
2. "Only Malcom X's autobiography seemed to offer something different. His repeated acts of self-creation spoke to me; the blunt poetry of his words, his unadorned insistence on respect, promised a new and uncompromising order, martial in its discipline, forged through sheer force of will. All the other stuff, the talk of blue-eyed devils and apocalypse, was incidental to that program, I decided, religious baggage that Malcolm himself seemed to have safely abandoned toward the end of his life." (Pg 180 of 402)
By this point in time, Obama is an adult, and he's out on his own in the world. He's experiencing growing as a black man in America, who is completely independent from his family now and is on his own. He was looking for some sort of answer, and found it after reading his autobiography. It was this sort of coming-of age moment in his life that made him realize that with a lot of willpower and courage, you can defeat the racism and take your own place in society. That you can live in America as a black man and still get a job and live a happy life, just like any white man. The Civil Rights era had been over for 20 some years now, and Obama was thriving in the real world through the words of wisdom he had read from his hero.
3. "That was a truth as Rafiq saw it, and he didn't waste energy picking that truth apart. His was a Hobbesian world where distrust was given and loyalties extended from family to mosque to the balck race - whereupon notions of loyalty ceased to apply. This narrowing vision, of blood and tribe, had probided him with a clarity of sorts, a means of focusing his attention. Black self-respect had delivered the mayor's seat, he could argue, just as black self-respect turned around the lives of drug addicts under the tutelage of the Muslims. Progress was within our group so long as we didn't betray ourselves." (Pg 181 of 402)
Obama is now living in Chicago (Part Two of the book) and has formed sort of alliance with this man, Rafiq, for this internship he has earned with the city offices. In the past few pages, Obama is analyzing Rafiq and the type of person he is - a very proud man who believe that self-respect meant respect from others. Obama is trying to figure out this philosophy, as he had never looked at it from that viewpoint before. All he had dealt with his whole life was racism from whites and asians no matter what you did - no matter if you were a thug on the street or a well-dressed boy going to school in the morning, racism was prominent everywhere, and it was all because of something that can't really be controlled. Self-respect means respect from others? No always. In fact, I may just disagree with that. Sure, a person can respect themself, but that doesn't always mean they'll earn it from the general public. You not only have to have respect for yourself, but you need to show that you have it for others to get it returned. You have to give to get. Obama is seen to disagree with Rafiq's statement later on in the chapter.
4. "The mothers were all in their late teens or early twenties; most had spent their lives in Altgeld, raised by teenage mothers themselves. They spoke without self-consciousness about pregnancy at fourteen or fifteen, the dopping out of school, the tenuous links to the fathers who slipped in and out of their lives. They told me about working the system, which involved mostly waiting - waiting to see the social worker, waiting at the currency exchange to cash their welfare checks, waiting for the bus that would take them to the nearest supermarket just to buy diapers on sale. They were the masters." (Pg 214 of 402)
Obama is volunteering his time at Altgeld Gardens, a public housing project for poor or underprivileged people throughout Chicago. Most of the residents at this point in time are mothers in their mid to late teens, some of them being in their early 20s. This does not settle well with Obama, because he knows that while it is unfortunate that these mothers are suffering and struggling paycheck-to-paycheck, he realizes that they are taking a little bit too much advantage of the system. They do not always have the luxury of getting a job with no man around or supportive parents to take care of a young child, but that is not always the case. Obama finds this all very intriguing and he realizes later on that what he originally thought of these women was not true - they have ambitions. Some of them were taking classes for their high school equivalency diplomas. They supported themselves as well as the other women - some of the girls would watch others' children while they went to work or school, and vice versa. They didn't WANT to live there, and they tried their hardest to work hard and get out of there and try to make it work better the next time around. Obama did not have this positive viewpoint on struggling teen mothers before, but it all changed after working at Altgeld Gardens.
5. No, it was more like a change of atmosphere, like an electricity of an approaching storm. I felt it when, driving home one evening, I saw four tall boys walking down a tree-lined block idly snapping a row of young saplings that an older couple had just finished planting in front of their house. I felt it whenever I looked into the eyes of the young men in wheelchairs that had started appearing on the streets that spring, boys crippled before their prime, their eyes without a trace of self-pity, eyes so composed, already so hardened, that they served to frighten rather than to inspire (Pg 231 of 402)
Obama notices this unravel as he is on his way home one night. He describes this as something new - the arrival of a new equilibrium. Children didn't have much respect for elders or authority anymore, and Obama was in one of the transitioning generations of children in that respect. He writes about how in his generation, it wasn't that much of change, but in this most current generation, it has become a very large problem. When Obama was a child, kids knew their limits. They'd get into fights, they'd get high, but if an adult said something, and most of them would listen. That limit was starting to disappear very quickly for some of the country. It was a new time, and Obama reflected on it as a very eye-opening scene. He saw that most elders were a lot more bitter - that their looks were more stern and less full of stories to tell, but things to forget and hide. The strong exterior was now put on to scare away the younger generations that were breaking the ways that the elders had known for so long - a place of respect for the people older than you and for the things around them. Now, they're kicking down newly planted baby trees and laughing at the people in wheelchairs. So much is changing, and Obama wants to see that stop at this point.
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