The poet William Wordsworth’s statement remains true even if often repeated: “The child is the father of the man.”
In the case of Barack Obama, one of the themes of his childhood is abandonment. His father abandoned him and his mother quickly after he was born - so quickly, in fact, that young Barack had no memories of his father. He was raised, then, primarily by his mother and by his maternal grandparents.
Eventually, his mother would have a series of other men in her life, none of whom, however, assumed any type of paternal role in Barack’s life.
Obama only saw his father once, at the age of ten.
The pain of having been raised without a father made a deep impression. “I only remember my father for one month my whole life, when I was 10,” Obama said in a television appearance. The pain of abandonment motivated him to try to be a good father:
His absence, I think, contributed to me really wanting to be a good dad, you know? Because I think not having him there made me say to myself “You know what? I want to make sure my girls feel like they’ve got somebody they can rely on.”
Ann Dunham, Obama’s mother, was his primary caregiver. She was greatly aided by her parents. Obama’s maternal grandmother was the vice-president of a local bank, and had both wealth and influence to support young Barack. She was able to pay for exclusive private schools, so that Obama didn’t attend public schools. He never attended a public school in the United States, and attended an exclusive public school in Indonesia for one year. The rest of education was in private schools.
His formal education began in a Roman Catholic school, St. Francis, in Indonesia, which he seems to have attended for the first three grades of elementary school. Real estate agents in Indonesia organized a special public school for wealthy families; Obama attended that school for one year.
The rest of his education took place in the United States. He attended prestigious private school in Hawaii for grades five through twelve. The school had very few African-American students. As a high school student, Barack went to parties for nearby university students, because he wanted to meet other Black people. For the same reason, he sometimes socialized with people at Hawaii’s military bases.
In fairness, it should be noted that, although historians routinely cite Obama as the first ‘Black president’ or the first ‘Africa-American’ president of the United States, it is perhaps more accurate to list him as the first ‘biracial’ president. He wrote that his mother was as “white as milk,” and that his father was as “black as pitch.”
After high school, Obama went on to study at three exclusive private institutions: Occidental, Columbia, and Harvard.
Obama’s early years were shaped by the fact that his father abandoned him, by the fact that the series of men who moved through his mother’s life did not provide any paternal stability, and by the fact that his grandparents financed his life of exclusive privilege in private schools. This meant that Obama could not relate to that which African-Americans call their “Black experience.”
Subsequently, Obama’s notions of race were rather abstract and academic, which led to some clumsy and clunky moves by his administration, as David Limbaugh writes:
The expansion of race preferences in school admissions is a key goal of the Left, and this administration has worked hard to further it as well. In March 2010, the Obama administration filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, supporting the University of Texas’ use of racial preferences in undergraduate admissions. In the brief, the administration advocated preferences not just at the university level but also from kindergarten through high school: “In view of the importance of diversity in educational institutions, the United States, through the Departments of Education and Justice, supports the efforts of school systems and post-secondary educational institutions that wish to develop admissions policies that endeavor to achieve the educational benefits of diversity in accordance with [the Supreme Court’s 2003 decision upholding the use of preferences by the University of Michigan law school].”
From the time that young Barack was around ten years old, he was raised primarily by his maternal grandparents. His mother travelled widely and globally, while he remained at home in Hawaii.
With various men, she entered into a series of relationships, none of which lasted long. It was the grandparents who provide a sense of stability for Obama during his childhood and teenage years.
From his early childhood in Hawaii, to his middle childhood in Indonesia, to his late childhood and teenage years back in Hawaii, Obama was surrounded by people who were white American, Indonesians, Japanese, Chinese, Polynesian, and Hawaiian - but not Black. He was in many situations the only African-American.
His childhood playmates and teenage friends were of every race and ethnicity except Black. This must have shaped his self-perception.
Because his maternal grandmother was the vice-president of a bank, he was accustomed to a world of wealth and privilege. His standard of living and his social circles were above average. This may have made it difficult for him to empathize with those who struggle financially; one example, as David Limbaugh writes, was Obama’s interaction with California’s farmers:
One of the biggest, yet least publicized outrages in recent memory is the Obama administration’s assault on California farmers. Environmental regulations purporting to protect endangered species of fish resulted in tens of billions of gallons of water being diverted away from mountains close to Sacramento and into the ocean, greatly exacerbating drought conditions and ruining hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland - a crushing blow to California agriculture.
Obama’s persona has been characterized as cold, distant, and aloof. His attempt at being folksy are clumsy and affected. His manner was shaped by the fact that his father abandoned him, by a lifestyle of privilege among elites, and by the fact that his family kept him apart from his Black peers.
Between Obama’s election in 2008 and his reelection in 2012, the number of African-Americans who voted for him declined. What did they perceive about Obama?
