Dreams from My Father

by

Barack Obama

Dreams from My Father: Chapter 8 Summary & Analysis

Summary
Analysis
Barack has only been to Chicago once, when he was 11. That was when Toot, Maya, and Ann traveled the country. He was impressed by the indoor swimming pool at their motel and fascinated by shrunken heads at the Field Museum. Arriving in July as an adult, the city seems much prettier. Barack drives around and thinks of the Black people who came to Chicago during the Great Migration. He imagines Frank watching Ella Fitzgerald perform and Regina skipping rope. He tries to make the city his own. On the third day, he stops in at Smitty’s Barbershop. As he cuts Barack’s hair, Smitty and the other men discuss Harold Washington’s election. They talk about the mayor affectionately, like he’s a relative. Barack wonders if the men would talk like this if they knew where Barack came from—but he knows they’d stop talking if Gramps walked in.
Since the South Side of Chicago, where Barack will be working, is historically Black, Barack has lots of history to draw on as he tries to fit himself into the city. Especially at Smitty’s, Barack begins to understand that because he’s Black, other Black people in Chicago will immediately accept him into their groups, no questions asked. He doesn’t have to prove himself—at least as long as he doesn’t mention that he was raised in Hawaii by his white grandparents. In this sense, although Barack feels more at home in Chicago, he’s still hiding part of himself as he did his first year of college.
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That afternoon, Marty picks Barack up and they drive to the old Wisconsin Steel plant. Marty says that lots of different people used to work there, but they all ignored each other outside of work. These people need to work together if they want their jobs back. Marty talks about his organization, the CCRC. He started it two years ago with the help of a Catholic bishop when he learned that both Black and white people were equally ashamed of being unemployed. Over 20 churches formed CCRC, while others joined a related group. CCRC just won funding from the state for a $500,000 job placement program, and they’re headed to a celebratory rally. Marty allows that it’ll take 10 years to rebuild manufacturing in the city, but people need victories now—they can go after politicians later. Barack realizes that Marty isn’t actually that cynical.
It’s telling that Marty got into organizing in Chicago because he sees similar problems affecting Black and white people. In this sense, it’s possible to infer that Marty doesn’t necessarily understand racism or the difference in how white and Black people move through the world—it’ll likely be far easier to find unemployed white factory workers jobs, if only because they won’t suffer from racism. However, for Barack, he sees that Marty is politically savvy and nevertheless recognizes that people need jobs and income to feel secure, dignified, and purposeful.
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When they arrive at a school auditorium, Marty introduces Barack to Deacon Will Milton and they scurry away. Three Black women block Barack from following and introduce themselves as Angela, Shirley, and Mona. They start to tell Barack that they’re thrilled to have him and imply that Marty is struggling, but Marty calls them onstage before they can finish. Barack watches the event, which includes a choir, a roll call of churches in attendance, and a number of speakers. To him it seems flat, but the crowd seems to enjoy themselves. Seeing Black and white faces united in this vision helps Barack feel cheerful. Marty can’t take Barack home after, so Barack takes the bus.
Angela, Shirley, and Mona’s implication that Marty isn’t doing well adds more credence to the possibility that Marty, as a white man, doesn’t entirely get what the Black people he wants to help face on a daily basis. Though Barack begins to have suspicions of his own—the perceived flatness of the event is an interesting critique—he nevertheless has to conclude, yet again, that Marty has an uncanny ability to bring people together around economic issues.
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Barack sits next to Will and hears Will’s life story. Will served in Vietnam and then worked at a bank, but when he was laid off, he turned to Christ. He makes a point to call out hypocrisy in the church when he sees it. He insists that Black people are obsessed with becoming middle-class and are less interested in following the heart of Scripture. Will chuckles that nobody listens, but he speaks anyway. He notes that many get upset that he wears a collar, since he’s married and not ordained. But a collar gives him some standing, and even the cardinal doesn’t care that Will wears it. Barack knows very little about religion, so he just nods. Will gets off at a church and encourages those on the bus to stay involved. As one woman gets off, she asks where the promised jobs are.
Even though Marty seems to bring people together over economic and job issues, Will seems to take issue with this, at least in part. He sees Black people as being obsessed with bettering themselves financially, to the point where they’re less interested in helping their neighbors or developing Christian vlaues. But despite Will’s skepticism and Marty’s insistence that jobs will bring people together and restore dignity to Black Chicagoans, the woman getting off the bus makes a fair point: Marty’s plan has to work.
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Get the entire Dreams from My Father LitChart as a printable PDF.
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The next day, Marty gives Barack a list of people to interview. His job is to “Find out their self-interest,” because that will get these people to organize. The interviews are harder than Barack expected. People are tired and suspicious, but once he’s in people’s kitchens, most are happy to talk. He learns that most people in the South Side grew up on the West Side, where conditions were tough. Some followed their parents into industrial jobs; many more found jobs as social workers, teachers, or bus drivers. They were able to buy houses in white neighborhoods. These stories remind Barack of Gramps, Toot, and Ann’s stories of moving to do better—but these take a different tone. Chicago never recovers from the racial upheaval, and though many people are proud of their accomplishments, they worry for the future.
In some ways, these interviews teach Barack that Black and white people’s desire to better one’s family are much the same. People save money, are able to move to better neighborhoods or cities, and then become more prosperous. But this simple story of self-improvement also doesn’t fully speak to what Black people face as they grow wealthier and move to new neighborhoods. Instead, given Chicago’s racist, segregated history, this moving creates “upheaval,” not just better neighborhoods for everyone—and Barack implies that these people’s progress is tenuous at best.
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Many of these people have adult kids who live at home, and many see younger, less stable families moving into the neighborhood. The new families don’t invest in maintenance and crime increases. Barack’s interview subjects see that their progress is ephemeral, and he sees that Will is right. People are proud that they’ve achieved middle-class status and will do anything to try to distance themselves from those who are poorer. But in every home, no matter how poor or wealthy, Barack notices a photo of Harold Washington; Washington offers “collective redemption.” However, Marty still accuses Barack of not digging deep enough.
As Barack speaks with Black people of all incomes, he realizes that climbing the status ladder is perhaps even more important to these Black people than it ever was for Gramps and Toot. However, Barack also sees the photos of Harold Washington in every Black household as proof that Black people in Chicago are still united in one thing: their love of their mayor, who looks like them and makes them feel as though progress is possible.
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Quotes
Finally, during an interview with a woman named Ruby, Barack starts to get it. Ruby talks about her son, Kyle, and his brushes with gang activity and she introduces Barack to other parents concerned about the poor police response. They organize a neighborhood meeting with the district commissioner and point Barack to Reverend Reynolds, whose church is on the block where a shooting took place. Reverend Reynolds is the president of the local ministerial alliance and invites Barack to a meeting. Barack is thrilled and gives an impassioned pitch. Though Reverend Reynolds is impressed, a Reverend Smalls isn’t. He insists they don’t need Barack and Marty, and they won’t work with the racist Catholic archdiocese when they have committed Black aldermen on city council. None of the ministers take Barack’s flyers with them, and none return his calls.
The experience of speaking to Reverend Reynolds’s ministerial alliance is instructive. He begins to see that his suspicions about Marty are right: Marty doesn’t necessarily see that targeting Black and white people the same way isn’t useful. Black people are understandably wary about working with white church organizations, like the Catholics, who are known to be racist—it’s not a huge leap to suspect that the Catholics will look out for themselves rather than the Black people working with them. As Barack learns this, he begins to come into his own and figure out how he needs to do things to be successful.
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The community meeting is a disaster. Thirteen people show up and the district commander cancels. Barack spends his time directing elderly people to the Bingo game upstairs while Ruby sits sadly. Marty arrives halfway, helps Barack clean up, and takes Barack for coffee. He says that Barack needs a more specific issue than gangs and needs to make inroads with leaders. Marty laughs when Barack tells him about Reverend Smalls and says that Smalls is just a politician in a collar who is trying to take advantage of the polarized city. Marty says it’s good Barack learned his lesson, but Barack doesn’t know what he learned. He realizes that each faith group may say the same prayers, but they all are loyal to different people. Smalls and others don’t want to hear that a Black mayor won’t solve their problems.
As misguided as Marty may be in some ways, he also teaches Barack a useful lesson here: that Black people in Chicago don’t want to hear that their struggle is more difficult than a Black mayor can fix all on his own. Barack has been going into these meetings believing that it’s possible and necessary to find more nuance and dig deeper—and while he’s not wrong, this doesn’t change that the people in the community may have very specific ideas about what’s happening and how to fix it. And if he wants to help the community, he must listen to their stories and what they want.
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