On Punahou School Campus, Obama and Memories

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: On Campus, Obama and Memories
By JACKIE CALMES
Published: January 2, 2009


(The Oahuan, the Yearbook of Punahou/AP)
Barack Obama, in 1977, with his junior varsity basketball team at Punahou, long known as “the whites’ school.” Mr. Obama, known then as Barry, started attending the academy at age 10.

HONOLULU — Less than three weeks before he becomes the nation’s first black president, Barack Obama returned this week to what was long known here as “the whites’ school.” It was his school and, by his telling, one of the most formative influences in his life.

Mr. Obama was near the end of his annual vacation here when his motorcade pulled into the lush hillside campus of Punahou. One of the nation’s most elite schools, it was founded in the 19th century by white Protestant missionaries for their children. The president-elect headed straight to its basketball court for a pick-up game with former teammates....

Alan Lum now teaches there and was among those who shot hoops with Mr. Obama. Mr. Lum, in an earlier interview, said he was not aware of “the inner struggle” Mr. Obama depicted in the book. “But when you think about it,” Mr. Lum said, “he was trying to define himself as an African-American on a campus where we only had maybe five African-Americans” among 1,600 high school students. “You don’t have any models,” he said. “Basically you have to figure it out on your own.”

Blacks were a small minority statewide, too. Celebrated as a melting pot, Hawaii has for years had its own racially charged brew of native Hawaiians, ethnic Asians and whites; the few blacks mostly came in recent decades as part of the American military presence.

In bridging the unusual racial undercurrents, Mr. Obama honed the people skills that helped him fit in and ultimately propelled him into politics, with the crossover appeal that won him the presidency....

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/03/us/politics/03Reunion.html

[proud2BlibKansan]

1. The tuition at that school is $50,000 a year

Just heard that today from a girl I know who lives in Hawaii and is visiting family here for Christmas.

[Pirate Smile]

2. I remember the part of "Dreams From My Father" where he describes his Grandfather being just

ecstatic that he (Obama) had gotten in with a scholarship. His Grandfather told him that it would get him into anywhere in the world essentially because it was such a prestigious school.

[elleng]

4. The cost of a good education

has not really changed; whats he paying for the girls? The horror is that we have not figured it out.

[dkf]

5. I'm still amazed Punahou did such a good job.

I didn't give them enough credit.

[elleng]

3. About O:

'“He was trying to define himself as an African-American on a campus where we only had maybe five African-Americans” among 1,600 high school students. “You don’t have any models,” he said. “Basically you have to figure it out on your own.” . . .


Mr. Ramos visited Mr. Obama in New York City in the early 1980s after Mr. Obama had graduated from Columbia University.

“I was just so blown away by New York, so intimidated,” Mr. Ramos recalled. “And he said to me, ‘Mike, don’t worry. New Yorkers are just like everybody else — they appreciate a kind gesture and a thoughtful response.’ ” '

[Pirate Smile]

6. I'm glad they talked to the African American girl he mentions in the book.

"In “Dreams,” Mr. Obama recalled just one other black student when he first arrived on a scholarship, a girl with few friends whom he called Coretta, to protect her privacy. While not close, he wrote, they shared “a different sort of pain.”

Coretta is Joella Edwards, who now lives in Florida. In interviews, she recalled the day Barry Obama arrived as a fifth-grader, having returned to Hawaii from four years in Indonesia with his mother. “He had a brown and white weird-design shirt, and just kind of stood there,” Ms. Edwards said. “I remember thinking, ‘Wow, there’s another black person here.’ ”

“I was ‘the lonely only’ until he came,” she said, adding that she wished she had known then how sympathetic Mr. Obama felt. Five years later Ms. Edwards left Punahou, tired of “the n-word” and taunts of “Aunt Jemima,” she said."

I always see the press talk about what a "melting pot" Hawaii is and they act like race wasn't an issue. Her statement gives a more realistic view of what life was like for her and Obama.

It reminds me of the feeling that the press (with the RW and others perhaps pushing it) gave about Michelle and Princeton. There seemed to be this frame that Michelle was "too focused" on race - like it was all in her mind or something. Then the story of how the mother of one of her freshman roommates freaked out and did all kinds of maneuvering to get their white daughter switched out of rooming with an African American. That RW frame seemed to go away after that story broke (although I have no doubt the RW'ers still believe it).

edit to add - I'm in no way saying Hawaii wasn't much better then the mainland re race but it wasn't some kind of utopia - we are still talking about the 60's and 70's.

[FrenchieCat]

7. That story reminds me of growing up in France in the 60s......

I'm so light, I'm damn near white, and yet, attending schools in Paris, because I was the only kinda of brown one, I was still called "La petite Negresse". My brother went to the Boy side of the school as they were not coed, so I don't know what he experienced. Of course, that was before independence was given to most French Colonies, and so before the influx of Africans and Antillians came into France.

Folks always used to think that France, and in particular Paris, was soooo not racist. I try to let them know, that was in the 1920s and 30s. LOL!

[Pirate Smile]

8. kick