#Controversy

I have a really weird fetish for good descriptions. There's this amazing one in Dreams from My Father in which Obama tells us the whole story of why he didn't know his father and the tragedy of his departure. That only part is told in third person similar to the begging of fairy tales. For example: "...the young couple married, and she bore them a son, to whom he bequeathed his name" (10). As I read this, I could imagine baby Obama under the sea with red hair and fins being held by his father Barack Sr. in a little shell ready to be baptized. He sounded like a prodigy or a kid that would become a legend. Just like in fairy tales. What's curious is that only that part was written that way. Strange, huh.

Only Barack Obama can pull the "awkward" word without it being awkward.

One of the most delicate and controversial topics on this ecumene; racism. A subject that is constantly touched and mentioned by Obama, considering his life has been surrounded by it. He shows a really light and  moderate tone against this issue, but is clearly against it. There is a sense of resentment with Americans when he says "...although their ideas would never congeal into anything like a firm ideology; in this, too, they were American" (17). It is not insulting nor degrading, but unconsciously we feel it as a ideological punch. 

In general, the introduction to Barack Obama's life is actually really personal, full of weapons that could destroy him, but he still ceases to remain in silence. It is compelled by a constant battle of logos and pathos that include topics that are hard to handle but Obama does so in such subtleness that even an insult may seem lighthearted. The way he talks about racism gives him a status that no other white could have, because he lived it. There is no arrogance within his status, just a subconscious shift in our minds regarding who is Obama. We are never sure, he's like an electron; constantly changing.

But really, who is Barack Obama?