Dreams from My Father

by

Barack Obama

Dreams from My Father: Chapter 5 Summary & Analysis

Summary
Analysis
It’s 3:00am. Barack pours himself a drink, looks around at his apartment—a mess after a party he and his roommate, Hasan, threw—and listens to Billie Holiday. Everyone but Regina enjoyed the party. Regina accused Barack of being self-centered and, in Barack’s understanding, implied that he’s “somehow responsible for the fate of the entire black race.” Barack decides that Regina doesn’t understand his journey to learning not to care. This journey began in high school when he started drinking and using drugs, which helped him forget. Drugs gave him a community and helped him laugh. He decided that while race and money matter, one’s fate comes down mostly to luck—it was bad luck that his friends were arrested, had bad acid trips, or died in car crashes.
Barack’s teenage insistence that luck governs a person’s life is a recognition that he can’t control everything around him. While to a degree, this is a normal part of growing up and learning about the world, Barack takes this a step further. He leans on luck in part to absolve himself of any responsibility to try to do better, which also seems to be part of the reason he turns to using drugs and alcohol in the first place. In the present, deciding that Regina doesn’t care or understand is another way for Barack to try to escape taking responsibility for his actions.
Themes
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Race and Identity Theme Icon
Storytelling and Truth Theme Icon
Once, Barack tried to explain this to Ann and assured her that he wouldn’t do anything silly. Usually this works, but Ann accused him of being cavalier about his future and of being a loafer. Wanting to assure his mother that she failed to do well by him, he suggested that he might end up like Gramps, who never went to college. Seeing Ann’s reaction, Barack asked if this is her worry—and though she denies it, Barack sees he touched a nerve. Back in the present, Barack realizes that alcohol and drugs can’t distract him from his emptiness. He remembers how successful Ann’s talking-to had been—he graduated and was admitted to Occidental College. Despite these outward signs of success, people like Frank still insisted that Barack had a bad attitude.
Barack feels so disaffected by this point, he wants to make Ann feel just as hopeless as he does. But when he discovers that she just doesn’t want him to end up like Gramps—who’s idealistic, easily hurt, and often tries to make himself look better than he is—it has an effect. Essentially, Barack realizes that he does indeed have the ability to work hard and get somewhere, even if he still feels like a lot of life is pointless or not worth trying to make sense of. Realizing in the present that alcohol and drugs can’t help is a major turning point as he comes of age.
Themes
Family and Community Theme Icon
Fathers, Sons, and Manhood Theme Icon
Storytelling and Truth Theme Icon
Barack remembers his last visit with Frank. Frank told Barack the “real price of admission”: giving up on being Black. Frank insisted that in college, Barack would be trained to believe that America is the land of opportunity for all—but one day, when Barack wants to run things, “they” will remind Barack that he’s just a “well-trained, well-paid nigger.” He warned Barack to keep his eyes open, but that’s hard to do on Occidental’s bright, encouraging campus. And most Black students there don’t seem particularly worried. They all hang out together and though they sometimes grumble about “white folks,” most of the time, they’re worried about classes, sex, and jobs after graduation. Barack realizes that most Black people aren’t interested in revolt. They don’t want to think about race all the time—and being around other Black people is the easiest way to do that.
Frank essentially warns Barack that no matter where he goes or how successful he becomes, he’ll never be able to escape the fact of his skin color—and he’ll be denied opportunities because of this. At Occidental, though, Barack begins to wonder about this, since none of his Black peers seem too worried about race. Instead, they just want to find a sense of community, and most of them find it with each other. For the Black students, it’s easier to find community with others who look like them and share their concerns. This means they don’t have to educate their white classmates about their concerns or their struggles.
Themes
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Race and Identity Theme Icon
Barack, however, can’t forget about race. He believes it’s because he feels a bit like an outsider, since he didn’t grow up in Compton. He’s like other Black students from the suburbs, who “refuse[] to be categorized.” Barack mentions Joyce, a “multiracial” classmate who has Italian, African, French, and Native American ancestors but feels as though it’s only Black people who try to make her choose a race. Barack notices that people like Joyce always avoid talking about their Black ancestry. He understands that white culture is the only neutral, objective, nonracial culture, where people can be individuals—and so people of color who experience success as defined by white people try to distance themselves from their non-white ancestors. Then, they get upset for being mistaken for an “ordinary” Black person. Despite his frustrations, Barack feels he’s being too hard on Joyce—and he recognizes himself in her.
Barack implies that, like Joyce, he wants to be seen as an individual. He implies that this is a normal thing to want for everyone, but because he finds himself between two communities (white and Black), this is more difficult for him. He essentially doesn’t have an upbringing in a historically Black neighborhood or city to fall back on and make him feel more comfortable with being Black. And, for that matter, he uses “ordinary” to mean poor and unsuccessful—which he doesn’t want to be. Since the only way he sees to be successful is to integrate into the white world, dealing with being Black becomes more of a struggle.
Themes
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Race and Identity Theme Icon
Quotes
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To not look like a sellout, Barack befriends the most politically active Black students. They discuss eurocentrism and post-colonialism while blasting music and putting out cigarettes in the hallway carpet—and they’re “alienated,” not careless or indifferent. However, Barack discovers that he still has to work to prove his loyalty to his Black friends. One day, Barack chats with Reggie and Marcus. Marcus is “the most conscious of brothers”—he’s proudly Black and has had “authentic” Black experiences, like being searched by cops for no reason. Tim, another Black classmate who talks like Beaver Cleaver, walks in and asks Barack for his Econ assignment. Later, Barack tells Marcus that Tim should change his name to Tom. Marcus insists that Tim is fine—but Barack should stop judging others and focus on himself.
Barack very carefully cultivates his friend group so that he can look “more Black” by association with them. However, his perceived need to prove himself to them suggests that, at least in some ways, he still doesn’t fit in. Because he sees himself in Tim, Barack feels the need to speak badly about Tim behind Tim’s back, implying that Tim is an “uncle Tom” (a slur for a black person seen as too servile to white people). Insulting Tim is an attempt to distance himself from a Black kid who he perceives as acting “too white,” but Marcus’s snide scolding suggests that Barack doesn’t fit in exactly because he’s trying too hard to be a person he isn’t.
Themes
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Race and Identity Theme Icon
Barack still burns with shame a year later, even though he knows he was living a lie his first year of college. The one person he didn’t lie to was Regina. Marcus introduced them at a coffee shop one day and enlisted Regina to help him convince Barack to stop reading Heart of Darkness. After Marcus left, Barack explained with embarrassment that he knew the book was racist but it was assigned and, besides, it was teaching him things about white people and how they learn to hate. They discussed Barack’s name and Regina asked if she could call him Barack instead of Barry. They spent the day together talking about her childhood in Chicago, surrounded by family. Barack felt envious of her childhood—but she laughed and admitted that she wished she’d grown up in Hawaii. After this, Barack began to feel himself growing and rediscovering his voice.
Barack’s interest in figuring out how and why white people learn to hate makes it clear that his disaffected persona with his friends isn’t his true identity—he genuinely wants to figure out how race works and how hatred grows. Those desires present a far more nuanced picture of who Barack is than his rudeness to Tim does. But Barack still doesn’t feel Black enough, which is still a problem for him. This is why he envies Regina’s upbringing in Chicago: to him, that is authentically Black, while being Black in Hawaii was an entirely different experience.
Themes
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Storytelling and Truth Theme Icon
During that year, Barack gets involved in campus protests and campaigns against apartheid in South Africa. It starts as a way to prove that he’s radical, but he begins to notice that people listen when he talks. He plans to give a speech at a rally and helps plan a bit of theater—students dressed in paramilitary uniforms will drag him offstage to make a point about apartheid. But as Barack writes his speech, it becomes something more to him. When he begins to speak, it takes a moment to get the audience’s attention—but just as they start to listen, Barack’s friends yank him away. Part of him really wants to keep talking. Marcus and Regina both speak and then Barack decides that they’re all amateurs.
As Barack begins to write this speech, he starts to discover his own voice and what it can do. Part of his poor reaction to the acting portion of the event comes from having his voice shut down, just as he was starting to connect with the audience. In a sense, then, he recognizes that he’s upset because he was silenced, not necessarily because the event was actually a bust. He discovers how important it is to be able to tell his own story—but because he’s so focused on himself and getting his way, he’s unable to see how this event works in the grander scheme of campus protests.
Themes
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That night, Regina congratulates Barack on his speech, but Barack cuts her off and says he has “no business speaking for Black folks.” He insists his words don’t help; they just make him feel important. Barack also calls Regina naïve for thinking he cares, but Regina insists that Barack, Marcus, and the other guys are all the same—they think everything is about them. Reggie drunkenly wanders in and begins talking about a party they threw at the dorms last year. The Mexican maids began to cry when they saw the mess and Barack laughs at the memory. Shaking, Regina tells Barack that’s not funny and says her grandmother cleaned up after people like him. She leaves.
Throughout this exchange, Barack shows how disillusioned he is; he suggests that he’s not really Black and that he’s not doing anything important by giving a speech about an issue he’s invested in. Through her dressing-down of Barack, though, Regina impresses upon him that he is actually selfish, shallow, and rude. He’s not being authentically Black by being a selfish jerk, and having more power than the Mexican cleaning staff doesn’t give him the right to treat people poorly.
Themes
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Barack thinks about what Regina said. He realizes that he’s heard her words—don’t make others clean up after him, don’t pass judgment, don’t make it about him—before. These virtues aren’t the sole property of white people and being rude doesn’t make him Black. Barack realizes he got this way because of fear. Fear is why he pushed Coretta and why he made fun of Tim. He thinks of Regina’s grandmother and realizes that she and women like her want Barack to keep fighting and resisting. He realizes that all the older women in his life—Toot, Regina’s grandmother, Lolo’s mother—all ask the same thing of him. He might be Black, but that’s not the end of his identity. Barack vows to call Regina later.
By confronting his own fear of being not authentically Black enough, Barack is able to get himself back on a better track. In this moment, he realizes that being Black doesn’t mean being rude, just as being white doesn’t mean always being racist. Rather, he has a responsibility as a person to be a good person. This is why he thinks back on women like Toot, Lolo’s mother, and Regina’s grandmother. Even though all those women are different, they all understand that the most important thing is to be proud of who he is in a way that doesn’t hurt or diminish others.
Themes
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Race and Identity Theme Icon
Quotes