Dreams from My Father

by

Barack Obama

Dreams from My Father: Chapter 4 Summary & Analysis

Summary
Analysis
Barack, now a high school sophomore, grouses with his friend Ray about the “bullshit Punahou parties.” Ray, a senior, moved to Hawaii from L.A. a year ago and talks often about the lush city life he used to lead. Ray introduces Barack to the Black parties on the island and Barack listens to Ray gripe in return. Today, Ray moans that no girls will date him because they’re all racist. Ray insists that this is also why Barack is single and why he doesn’t get a ton of playing time on the basketball team. Barack counters that white people here just want people who look and play like them, but that doesn’t make them racist.
Now that Barack is older and has more Black friends like Ray, racism starts to become more real for him—though Barack still holds onto his desire to make peace between everyone, which is why he denies Ray’s claims that their peers are racist. For Barack, people can have preferences about what people look like without being racist. But for Ray, it’s impossible to ignore that he and Barack suffer more than others, presumably because they’re Black.
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It’s been five years since Barack’s father visited, and Barack is thrilled that his social standing at school has steadily risen. He lived with Ann and Maya for three years, but when Ann had to return to Indonesia for fieldwork for her degree, Barack decided to stay with his grandparents. They mostly leave him alone, which suits Barack fine. However, Barack is struggling internally to figure out how to be a Black man in America, and his father’s letters aren’t helpful. For a time, Barack occasionally accompanies Gramps to play poker with Gramps’s Black friends. One of these men, Frank, used to be a well-known poet, and he fascinates Barack while making Barack vaguely uncomfortable. He has this same feeling whenever Gramps takes him to a bar in the red-light district, and he senses that Gramps—the only white person there—is possibly the only one there by choice.
Despite Barack’s insistence that Ray is overstating Hawaii’s racism, he is nevertheless trying to figure out what it means to be young and Black. These outings with Gramps introduce Barack to Black men and women who live lives very different from his own, introducing him to the idea that there is no singular Black experience in America. And especially at the bar in the red-light district, Barack is made uncomfortably aware of the power difference between Black and white people. Gramps can choose to waltz in and out as he chooses, something Barack sees isn’t available to the Black employees there.
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Barack turns to pop culture to figure out how to be a Black man. He plays basketball and by the time he’s in high school, he plays for Punahou and on the university courts. There, Black men teach him respect, follow-through, and companionship. Basketball gives him a community and introduces him to Ray and other Black boys who are also angry and confused. They talk often about “white folks,” and Barack thinks through the many racist incidents he’s experienced. He learns that Black people can be mean, but white people seem to be arrogantly ignorant and cruel. The term “white folks” feels weird to Barack, since Gramps, Toot, and Ann are white, but they’re not “white folks” as Ray means it. Barack decides that for Ray, “white folks” is just shorthand for “bigot.”
Through basketball, Barack begins to discover a community. And this community can help him figure out what it means to be a Black man, in addition to teaching him where to direct his anger—toward “white folks.” Barack sees, however, that a simple divide between Black and white is reductive and not especially useful for understanding his own life, since he lives with white people who aren’t racist and who are kind to Barack and his Black friends. Deciding that Ray is simply talking about bigots, then, is a way for Barack to make peace with both his white grandparents and his Black friends.
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However, Barack and Ray still disagree about some things. Ray seems to imply that they can switch their rage at the white world on and off whenever they feel like it, but Barack argues that they live in Hawaii, not the Jim Crow South—their white friends love them. Ray always reminds Barack that he’s biracial, thereby ending the argument. Barack moves between his Black and white worlds, assuming that someday, they’ll coalesce. Whenever people ask if he plays basketball or mention liking Stevie Wonder, Barack feels a bit tricked—but he can’t figure out how.
Ray implies that because Barack is biracial, he doesn’t experience racism in the same way that Ray does. Though to a degree this may be true—being raised by white people likely shields Barack from some racist incidents—clearly, Barack still feels undue pressure whenever people assume that because he’s Black, he likes certain things. 
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One afternoon, Barack refuses a high five from a white football player because he thinks that the guy was speaking in a dialect meant to mock them. Ray is incensed, insisting that the guy didn’t mean anything by it and saying that giving the high five is just “getting along,” the same thing that Barack does whenever he sucks up to white teachers. The next day, Ray suggests that Barack bring their white friends Jeff and Scott to a party at Ray’s house. This will mark the first time their white friends attend a Black party. Jeff and Scott are fine at first, but they seem self-conscious and ask to leave after an hour. When Barack tells Ray, they lock eyes steadily. Outside, Jeff says he gets how tough it must be for Ray and Barack at school parties. Part of Barack is enraged. Within an hour, he has a new view of the world: white men are in power and the only thing Black people have of their own is anger.
It’s telling that Ray points out that as Black men, he and Barack are just trying to get by in a white world. Sometimes, this means accepting high-fives from popular white kids, even if those kids are being racist; other times, that means paying more attention in class. What really gets Barack, though, is his sudden realization that Scott and Jeff have no idea what it’s like to be the only one who looks a certain way. They’re content to go back to a world where they feel comfortable, a world that suddenly feels wildly uncomfortable for Barack.
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Barack spends the next few months reading Black authors. Seemingly every author eventually admits defeat and retreats, bitter and angry. Malcolm X seems to be the only one who did better—but Barack is concerned by Malcolm’s wish that his white blood would “be expunged.” Barack knows he’ll never get rid of his own white blood, and he wonders what he would give up if he abandoned his white family. Malcolm didn’t discover until late in life that white people can be brothers in Islam, so Barack decides that reconciliation is possible, but far off. Barack and Ray meet a Nation of Islam follower at the basketball court, but he admits he’s not moving to Africa or giving up ribs and women. Barack scolds Ray for laughing and reminds Ray he’s never read Malcolm, but Ray insists that he doesn’t need a book to learn how to be Black.
Barack’s understanding that reconciliation between Black and white people is possible, but won’t happen until much further in the future, can be read as either a practical recognition that things aren’t going to change as fast as he wants in the present—or, it could be an excuse for Barack to stop trying to make inroads with his white friends or trying to convince Ray that it’s not cool to be rude for the sake of being rude. What annoys Barack most about Ray is that Ray seems to know exactly who he is as a Black man. This makes Barack feel even more unmoored, as he likely feels less Black if he needs books to help him.
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A few weeks later, Barack wakes up to find Gramps and Toot fighting. Toot tells Barack that Gramps doesn’t want to drive her to work, and Gramps tells Barack that Toot wants him to feel bad. After going back and forth between them, Barack learns what’s up: a Black panhandler harassed Toot yesterday at the bus stop—understandably scaring her—but Gramps is incensed that Toot was afraid of a Black man. When they’re gone, Barack is sad. His grandparents love him, but he knows they’re easily scared of men who could be Barack’s brothers. That night, Barack seeks out Frank for the first time in years.
It’s devastating for Barack to have to confront that his grandparents, as much as they love him, can and will sometimes behave like “white folks” as Ray means the term. In this moment, Barack is reminded that many white people still view Black people as dangerous threats, even if they may love individual Black people or even understand that this thought process is inherently racist.
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After pouring whiskey, Frank shares that he and Gramps grew up 50 miles apart. He suggests that Gramps has never told Barack how Black people had to step off the sidewalk for whites, even in Kansas. He says that Gramps once told him about a Black girl they hired to look after Ann, insisting the girl was a “regular part of the family.” Frank scoffs at this. Quietly, he says that Gramps can’t know what it’s like to be Black. He doesn’t understand that Black people never get to relax—they have to stay vigilant to survive. Frank also says that Toot is right to be afraid; she gets that Black people have reasons to hate. Barack leaves, feeling entirely alone.
Frank gets at the idea that the power imbalance between white employers and Black domestic help inherently means that Black employees aren’t family—they’re paid to be there. Frank sees Gramps’s choice not to tell Barack about the way that Black people were treated in Kansas as an indication that Gramps doesn't really understand what it’s like to be Black, even though he pretends that he does.
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