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Inspirational Quotes From Barack Obama’s Memoirs
By Thinking Man | November 1, 2008
My grandmother was a typical white person (Barack Obama, 2008).
In 1995, Barack Obama published a book entitled Dreams From My Father — A Story of Race and Inheritance. This book is a memoir of sorts, poorly written — or, rather, ghostwritten — by Obama’s friend, the neo-Marxist terrorist William Ayers.
What follows are a few of the more inspirational passages found between those pages. These quotes are all handpicked (by me) — an admittedly small sampling, considering the sheer number there are to actually choose from. In the interest of space, however, I’ve culled it down to these:
“I ceased to advertise my mother’s race at the age of twelve or thirteen when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites” (Dreams From My Father, pg xiv).
“That’s just how white folks will do you. It wasn’t merely the cruelty involved; I was learning that black people could be mean and then some. It was a particular brand of arrogance, an obtuseness in otherwise sane people that brought forth our bitter laughter. It was as if whites didn’t know that they were being cruel in the first place. Or at least thought you deserving of their scorn” (Ibid, pg. 80).
“To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist Professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets” (Ibid, pg. 100).
“We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets. At night, in the dorms, we discussed neocolonialism, Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism and patriarchy. When we ground out our cigarettes in the hallway carpet or set our stereos so loud that the walls began to shake, we were resisting bourgeois society’s stifling constraints. We weren’t indifferent or careless or insecure. We were alienated” (Ibid, pg 101).
“To that white world, I had been willing to cede the values of my childhood, as if those values were irreversibly soiled by the endless falsehoods that white spoke about black” (Ibid, pg 110).
“Questions of competition, decisions forced by a market economy and majoritarian rule; issues of power. It was this unyielding reality-that whites were not only phantoms to be expunged from our dreams but were an active and varied fact of our everyday lives-that finally explained how nationalism could thrive as an emotion and flounder as a program” (Ibid, Pg 202).
“Nationalism provided that history, an unambiguous morality tale that was easily communicated and easily grasped. A steady attack on the white race, the constant recitation of black people’s brutal experience in this country, served as the ballast that could prevent the ideas of personal and communal responsibility from tipping into an ocean of despair. Yes, the nationalist would say, whites are responsible for your sorry state, not any inherent flaws in you. In fact, whites are so heartless and devious that we can no longer expect anything from them. The self-loathing you feel, what keeps you drinking or thieving, is planted by them. Rid them from your mind and find your true power liberated. Rise up, ye mighty race! … In a sense, then, Rafiq was right when he insisted that, deep down, all blacks were potential nationalists. The anger was there, bottled up and often turned inward. And as I thought about Ruby and her blue eyes, the teenagers calling each other ‘nigger’ and worse, I wondered whether, for now at least, Rafiq wasn’t also right in preferring that that anger be redirected; whether a black politics that suppressed rage toward whites generally, or one that failed to elevate race loyalty above all else, was a politics inadequate to the the task.
“It was a painful thought to consider, as painful now as it had been years ago. It contradicted the morality my mother had taught me, a morality of subtle distinctions — between individuals of goodwill and those wished me ill, between active malice and ignorance or indifference. I had a personal stake in that moral framework; I’d discovered that I couldn’t escape it if I tried…. And yet perhaps it was a framework that blacks in this country could no longer afford; perhaps it weakened black resolve, encouraged confusion within the ranks. Desperate time called for desperate measures, and for many blacks, time were chronically desperate. If nationalism could create a strong and effective insularity, deliver on its promise of self-respect, then the hurt it might cause well-meaning whites, or the inner turmoil it caused people like me, would be of little consequence…. If nationalism could deliver. As it turned out, questions of effectiveness, and not sentiment, caused most of my quarrels with Rafiq” (Ibid, Pg. 198-201).
“I cannot honestly say, however, that the voice in this book is not mine — that I would tell the story much differently today than I did ten years ago, even if certain passages have proven to be inconvenient politically, the grist for pundit commentary and opposition research” (Ibid, pg ix).
In this version, which he had not yet edited because he had not yet decided to run for the Presidency, Obama also tells us how “as an adult he sought inspiration” from the former Prime Minister of the Black Panthers, the vicious and violent Stokely Carmichael.
Obama tells us as well that the despicable, America-hating racist Jeremiah Wright was his “minister, adviser and virtual member of the family.”
Finally, in conclusion, since these touching memoirs are, after all, entitled Dreams from My Father, it seems appropriate to at least mention cursorily that Barack Obama’s father, Barack Senior, a man whom Junior in his memoirs makes clear he admires for the man’s so-called political acumen, in a now-infamous paper wrote, among many other things:
“There is no limit to taxation if the benefits derived from public services by society measure up to the cost in taxation which they have to pay.”
And:
“Theoretically, there is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100 percent of income so long as the people get benefits from the government commensurate with their income which is taxed.”
For everyone out there who supports Barack Obama, you have, I hope, at the very least read this beautiful and heart-rending autobiography. Yes, I’m sure you have. But if you have not, you may buy the paperback here.
It is, I might point out in closing, well worth reading, if for no other reason than that you’ll get a glimpse at what a catastrophe you’ve chosen to unleash onto the United States:
Barack Obama is without a close second the most explicitly anti-American candidate ever, in the entire history of this once-great nation.
I leave you with Obama’s own disgraceful words, which shows you in full how ignorant he is concerning the concept of individual rights:
The Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. And to that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as it’s been interpreted, and the Warren court interpreted it in the same way that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties … And one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was because the civil rights movement became so court-focused, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change … The Constitution reflected an enormous blind spot in this culture that carries on until this day … The Framers had that same blind spot … the fundamental flaw of this country.
– Barack Obama, ladies and gentlemen, 2001
Stumble it!
Topics: Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father, Laissez faire, Private property, Socialism |
November 1st, 2008 at 4:07 am
[...] Inspirational Quotes From Barack Obama’s Memoirs: Dreams of my Father In 1995, Barack Obama published a book entitled Dreams From My Father — A Story of Race and Inheritance. This book is a memoir of sorts, poorly written — or, rather, ghostwritten, by Obama’s friend and fellow Marxist, the terrorist … [...]
November 2nd, 2008 at 1:42 am
[...] Inspirational Quotes From Barack Obama’s Memoirs: Dreams of my Father In 1995, Barack Obama published a book entitled Dreams From My Father — A Story of Race and Inheritance. This book is a memoir of sorts, poorly written — or, rather, ghostwritten, by Obama’s friend and fellow Marxist, the terrorist … [...]
November 2nd, 2008 at 8:10 pm
Nice job, Thinking Man.
If this doesn’t say it all, what does? I’m blinded by rage at this piece of shit named Barack Obama.
November 3rd, 2008 at 3:01 pm
Bill, you’re a real pill. Thank you for dropping by.
If it’s any consolation, I too am blinded by rage at this, as you say, “piece of shit” named Barack Obama.
Please visit again soon.
November 4th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
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November 18th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
[...] Inspirational Quotes From Barack Obama’s Memoirs [...]
November 22nd, 2008 at 1:34 am
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November 24th, 2008 at 8:19 am
Supah!
November 24th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
I am so disgusted with those that Blindly voted for Obama. I know we’ve got our fair share of actual liberals and leftist, but so many Americans just voted for the Black guy with the cool name. He’s the Sanjay of Presidents.
November 24th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
Thank you, Buffoon. I do appreciate you dropping by.
And thank you, BiasedGirl. “The Sanjay of Presidents” — that’s not too bad. May I use it?
As a minor point of interest, I routinely hear people — young people in particular — in response to some of my articles (I write for a local newspaper), saying asinine things like “So what about all Barack Obama’s bad qualities. He’s brought this country hope. Don’t you get it? He makes people feel unified.”
That’s the sort of breathtakingly ignorant mentality we’re looking at.
I, for one, am up for the fight. It’s the overwhelming political-economic ignorance that must be combated — by educating people.
November 24th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Feel free to use the Sanjay line. Nothing would please me more than to hear it more often.:)
November 25th, 2008 at 2:15 am
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