A Search for Self in Obama’s Hawaii Childhood

[Ethelk2044]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/17/us/politics/17hawaii.html?_r=1&ref=politics&oref=slogin


HONOLULU, March 12 — To his high school classmates, Barack Obama was a pleasant if undistinguished student, the guy who seemed happiest on the basketball court, the first to dive into the pumpkin carving at Halloween, the one whose oratorical prowess was largely limited to out-debating classmates over the relative qualities of point guards.

But Mr. Obama’s family here in Hawaii saw a more complex young man, a person whose racial confusion and feelings of alienation were matched with equal parts ambition, disquietude and lofty notions about where his internal struggles might lead.

“There was always a joke between my mom and Barack that he would be the first black president,” his sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, said in an interview over tea. “So there were intimations of all this early on. He has always been restless. There was always somewhere else he needed to go.”

It was his early search for a cultural identity on this plumeria-scented island populated with people of diverse origins, but relatively few blacks, that presaged his current political persona, his sister suggested.

“He couldn’t sit back and wait for the answers to come to him,” said Ms. Soetoro-Ng, the child of Mr. Obama’s mother from another marriage, who remains close to him. “He had to pursue those answers actively. People from very far-away places collide here, and cultures collide, and there is a blending and negotiation that is constant.”

She continued, “I think Hawaii gave him a sense that a lot of different voices and textures can sort of live together, however imperfectly, and he would walk in many worlds and feel a level of comfort.”

The political narrative of Mr. Obama was written about 4,500 miles and a cultural universe away from here, largely in Illinois. But the seeds of his racial consciousness, its attendant alienation and political curiosity appear to have been planted in Hawaii.

There was, by the description of his classmates, coaches and teachers, their Barry, the one who still looks remarkably like the picture in his yearbook, smiling under his Afro, or posing somewhat stiffly with other children under a sign “Mixed Races of America.”

That Barry had a confident gait, a cheerful smile and a B average.