by Barack Obama
And what about Kyle: How did one explain what he was going through? I leaned back in my chair, thinking about Ruby’s son. He had just turned sixteen; the two years since my arrival had given him several inches, added bulk, and the shadow above his upper lip, first efforts at a mustache. He was still polite to me, still willing to talk about the Bulls—this’d be the year Jordan took ’em to the finals, he said. But he was usually gone whenever I stopped by, or on his way out with his friends. Some nights, Ruby would call me at home just to talk about him, how she never knew where he was anymore, how his grades had continued to drop in school, how he hid things from her, the door to his room always closed.
Don’t worry, I would tell her; I was a lot worse at Kyle’s age. I don’t think she believed that particular truth, but hearing the words seemed to make her feel better. One day I volunteered to sound Kyle out, inviting him to join me for a pick-up basketball game at the University of Chicago gym. He was quiet most of the ride up to Hyde Park, fending off questions with a grunt or a shrug. I asked him if he was still thinking about the air force, and he shook his head; he’d stay in Chicago, he said, find a job and get his own place. I asked him what had changed his mind. He said that the air force would never let a black man fly a plane.
I looked at him crossly. “Who told you that mess?”
Kyle shrugged. “Don’t need somebody to tell me that. Just is, that’s all.”
“Man, that’s the wrong attitude. You can do whatever you want if you’re willing to work for it.”
Kyle smirked and turned his head toward the window, his breath misting the glass. “Yeah, well…how many black pilots do you know?”
The gym wasn’t crowded when we arrived, and we had to wait only one game before we got onto the court. It had been at least six months since I’d even seen a basketball, and the cigarettes had taken their toll. On the first play of the game, the man guarding me stripped the ball clean out of my hands and I called a foul, causing the players on the sidelines to hoot with derision. By the second game I was walking across the half-court line, feeling slightly dizzy.
To spare myself further embarrassment, I decided to sit out the third game and watch Kyle play. His game wasn’t bad, but he was guarding a brother a few years older than me, an orderly at the hospital—short but aggressive, and very quick. After a few plays, it became clear that the man had Kyle’s number. He scored three baskets in a row, then started talking the usual talk.
“You can’t do no better than that, boy? How you gonna let an old man like me make you look so bad?”
Kyle didn’t answer, but the play between them became rough. The next time down the floor, as the man made his move for the basket, Kyle bumped him hard. The man threw the ball at Kyle’s chest, then turned to one of his partners. “You see that? This punk can’t guard me—”
Suddenly, without any warning, Kyle swung. His fist landed square on the man’s jaw, dropping him to the floor. I ran onto the court as the other players pulled Kyle away. His eyes were wide, his voice trembling as he watched the orderly struggle to his feet and spit out a wad of blood.
“I ain’t no punk,” Kyle muttered. And then again, “I ain’t no punk.”
We were lucky; somebody had called the security guard downstairs, but the orderly was too embarrassed to admit to the incident. On the drive back, I gave Kyle a long lecture about keeping his cool, about violence, about responsibility. My words sounded trite, and Kyle sat without answering, his eyes fixed on the road. When I was finished he turned to me and said, “Just don’t tell my momma, all right?”
I thought that was a good sign. I said I wouldn’t tell Ruby what had happened so long as he did, and he grudgingly agreed.
Kyle was a good kid; he still cared about something. Would that be enough to save him?
The week after Johnnie’s and my adventure in Hyde Park, I decided it was time to take on the public schools.
It seemed like a natural issue for us. Segregation wasn’t much of an issue anymore; whites had all but abandoned the system. Neither was overcrowding, at least in black neighborhood high schools; only half the incoming students bothered to stick around for graduation. Otherwise, Chicago’s schools remained in a state of perpetual crisis—annual budget shortfalls in the hundreds of millions; shortages of textbooks and toilet paper; a teachers’ union that went out on strike at least once every two years; a bloated bureaucracy and an indifferent state legislature. The more I learned about the system, the more convinced I became that school reform was the only possible solution for the plight of the young men I saw on the street; that without stable families, with no prospects for blue-collar work that could support a family of their own, education was their last best hope. And so in April, in between working on other issues, I developed an action plan for the organization and started peddling it to my leadership.
The response was underwhelming.
Some of it was a problem of self-interest, constituencies misaligned. Older church members told me they had already raised their children; younger parents, like Angela and Mary, sent their children to Catholic schools. The biggest source of resistance was rarely talked about, though—namely, the uncomfortable fact that every one of our churches was filled with teachers, principals, and district superintendents. Few of these educators sent their own children to public schools; they knew too much for that. But they would defend the status quo with the same skill and vigor as their white counterparts of two decades before. There wasn’t enough money to do the job right, they told me (which was certainly true). Efforts at reform—decentralization, say, or cutbacks in the bureaucracy—were part of a white effort to wrest back control (not so true). As for the students, well, they were impossible. Lazy. Unruly. Slow. Not the children’s fault, maybe, but certainly not the schools’. There may not be any bad kids, Barack, but there sure are a lot of bad parents.
In my mind, these conversations came to serve as a symbol of the unspoken settlement we had made since the 1960s, a settlement that allowed half of our children to advance even as the other half fell further behind. More than that, the conversations made me angry; and so despite lukewarm support from our board, Johnnie and I decided to go ahead and visit some of the area schools, hoping to drum up a constituency beyond the young parents of Altgeld.
We started with Kyle’s high school, the one in the area with the best reputation. It was a single building, relatively new but with a careless, impersonal feel: bare concrete pillars, long stark corridors, windows that couldn’t be opened and had already clouded, like the windows in a greenhouse. The principal, an attentive, personable man named Dr. Lonnie King, said he was eager to work with community groups like ours. Then he mentioned that one of his school counselors, a Mr. Asante Moran, was trying to start a mentorship program for young men at the school and suggested that we might want to meet him.
We followed Dr. King’s directions to a small office toward the rear of the building. It was decorated with African themes: a map of the continent, posters of ancient Africa’s kings and queens, a collection of drums and gourds and a kente-cloth wall hanging. Behind the desk sat a tall and imposing man with a handlebar mustache and a prominent jaw. He was dressed in an African print, an elephant-hair bracelet around one thick wrist. He seemed a bit put off at first—he had a stack of SAT practice exams on his desk, and I sensed that Dr. King’s call had been an unwelcome interruption. Nevertheless, he offered us seats, told us to call him Asante, and as our interest became more apparent, began to explain some of his ideas.
“The first thing you have to realize,” he said, looking at Johnnie and me in turn, “is that the public school system is not about educating black children. Never has been. Inner-city schools are about social control. Period. They’re operated as holding pens—miniature jails, really. It’s only when black children start breaking out of their pens and bothering white people that society even pays any attention to the issue of whether these children are being educated.
“Just think abo
ut what a real education for these children would involve. It would start by giving a child an understanding of himself, his world, his culture, his community. That’s the starting point of any educational process. That’s what makes a child hungry to learn—the promise of being part of something, of mastering his environment. But for the black child, everything’s turned upside down. From day one, what’s he learning about? Someone else’s history. Someone else’s culture. Not only that, this culture he’s supposed to learn is the same culture that’s systematically rejected him, denied his humanity.”
Asante leaned back in his chair, his hands folded across his belly. “Is it any wonder that the black child loses interest in learning? Of course not. It’s worst for the boys. At least the girls have older women to talk to, the example of motherhood. But the boys have nothing. Half of them don’t even know their own fathers. There’s nobody to guide them through the process of becoming a man…to explain to them the meaning of manhood. And that’s a recipe for disaster. Because in every society, young men are going to have violent tendencies. Either those tendencies are directed and disciplined in creative pursuits or those tendencies destroy the young men, or the society, or both.
“So that’s what we’re dealing with here. Where I can, I try to fill the void. I expose students to African history, geography, artistic traditions. I try to give them a different values orientation—something to counteract the materialism and individualism and instant gratification that’s fed to them the other fifteen hours of their day. I teach them that Africans are a communal people. That Africans respect their elders. Some of my European colleagues feel threatened by this, but I tell them it’s not about denigrating other cultures. It’s about giving these young people a base for themselves. Unless they’re rooted in their own traditions, they won’t ever be able to appreciate what other cultures have to offer—”
There was a knock on the door, and a gangly young man peeked into the office. Asante apologized; he had another appointment but would be happy to meet with us again to discuss possible youth programs for the area. Walking Johnnie and me to the door, Asante asked me about my name, and I told him about my background.
“I thought so!” Asante smiled. “You know, that’s where I went for my first trip to the continent. Kenya. Fifteen years ago, but I remember that trip like it was yesterday. Changed my life forever. The people were so welcoming. And the land—I’d never seen anything so beautiful. It really felt like I had come home.” His face glowed with the memory. “When was the last time you were back?”
I hesitated. “Actually, I’ve never been there.”
Asante looked momentarily confused. “Well…” he said after a pause, “I’m sure that when you do make the trip, it’ll change your life, too.” With that, he shook our hands, waved in the young man waiting in the hall, and shut the door behind him.
Johnnie and I were quiet for most of the ride back to our office. We hit a patch of traffic, and Johnnie turned and said, “Can I ask you something, Barack?”
“Sure.”
“Why haven’t you ever gone to Kenya?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I’m scared of what I’ll find out.”
“Huh.” Johnnie lit a cigarette and rolled down the window to let out the smoke. “It’s funny,” he said, “how listening to Asante back there made me think about my old man. I mean, it’s not like my old man is real educated or nothing. He doesn’t know anything about Africa. After my mother died, he had to raise me and my brothers on his own. Drove a delivery truck for Spiegel’s for twenty years. They laid him off before his pension vested, so he’s still working—for another company, but doing the same thing every day. Lifting other people’s furniture.
“Never seemed like he really enjoyed life, you know what I mean? On weekends, he’d just hang around the house, and some of my uncles would come over and they’d drink and listen to music. They’d complain about what their bosses had done to ’em this week. The Man did this. The Man did that. But if one of ’em actually started talking about doing something different, or had a new idea, the rest of ’em would just tear the guy up. ‘How’s some no-’count nigger like you gonna start himself a business?’ one of ’em’d say. And somebody else’d say, ‘Take that glass away from Jimmy—that wine done gone to his head.’ They’d all be laughing, but I could tell they weren’t laughing inside. Sometimes, if I was around, my uncles’d start talking about me. ‘Hey, boy, that sure is a knobby head you got.’ ‘Hey, boy, you starting to sound just like a white man, with all them big words.’”
Johnnie blew a stream of smoke into the hazy air. “When I was in high school, I got to feeling ashamed of him. My old man, I mean. Working like a dog. Sitting there, getting drunk with his brothers. I swore I’d never end up like that. But you know, when I thought about it later, I realized my old man never laughed when I talked about wanting to go to college. I mean, he never said anything one way or the other, but he always made sure me and my brother got up for school, that we didn’t have to work, that we had a little walking-around money. The day I graduated, I remember he showed up in a jacket and tie, and he just shook my hand. That’s all…just shook my hand, then went back to work….”
Johnnie stopped talking; the traffic cleared. I started thinking about those posters back in Asante’s office—posters of Nefertiti, regal and dark-hued in her golden throne; and Shaka Zulu, fierce and proud in his leopard-skin tunic—and then further back to that day years ago, before my father came for his visit to Hawaii, when I had gone to the library in search of my own magic kingdom, my own glorious birthright. I wondered how much difference those posters would make to the boy we had just left in Asante’s office. Probably not as much as Asante himself, I thought. A man willing to listen. A hand placed on a young man’s shoulders.
“He was there,” I said to Johnnie.
“Who?”
“Your father. He was there for you.”
Johnnie scratched his arm. “Yeah, Barack. I guess he was.”
“You ever tell him that?”
“Naw. We’re not real good at talking.” Johnnie looked out the window, then turned to me. “Maybe I should though, huh.”
“Yeah, John,” I said, nodding. “Maybe you should.”
Over the next two months, Asante and Dr. Collier helped us develop a proposal for a youth counseling network, something to provide at-risk teenagers with mentoring and tutorial services and to involve parents in a long-term planning process for reform. It was an exciting project, but my mind was elsewhere. When the proposal was finished, I told Johnnie that I’d be gone for a few days but that he should go ahead with some of the meetings we’d scheduled, to start lining up broader support.
“Where’re you going?” he asked me.
“To see my brother.”
“I didn’t know you had a brother.”
“I haven’t had one that long.”
The next morning, I flew down to Washington, D.C., where my brother Roy now lived. We had first spoken to each other during Auma’s visit to Chicago; she had told me then that Roy had married an American Peace Corps worker and had moved to the States. One day we had called him up just to say hello. He had seemed happy to hear from us, his voice deep and unruffled, as if we had talked only yesterday. His job, his wife, his new life in America—everything was “lovely,” he said. The word rolled out of him slowly, the syllables drawn out. “Looove-leee.” A visit from me would be “fan-taaas-tic.” Staying with him and his wife would be “nooo prooob-lem.” After we got off the phone, I had told Auma that he sounded well. She looked at me doubtfully.
“Yah, you never know with Roy,” she had said. “He doesn’t always show his true feelings. He’s like the Old Man in that way. In fact, although they didn’t get along, he really reminds me of the Old Man in many ways. At least that’s how he was in Nairobi. I haven’t seen him since David’s funeral, though, so maybe marriage has settled him down.”
She didn’t say much more than that; I should get to kn
ow him for myself, she said. And so Roy and I had arranged a visit; I would fly to D.C. for the long weekend, we would see the sights, it would be a wonderful time. Only now, as I searched the emptying gate at National, Roy was nowhere to be found. I called his house and he answered, sounding apologetic.
“Listen, brother—you think maybe you can stay in a hotel tonight?”
“Why? Is something wrong?”
“Nothing serious. It’s just, well, me and the wife, we had a little argument. So having you here tonight might not be so good, you understand?”
“Sure. I—”
“You call me when you find a hotel, okay? We’ll meet tonight and have dinner. I’ll pick you up at eight.”
I checked into the cheapest room I could find and waited. At nine, I heard a knock. When I opened the door, I found a big man standing there with his hands in his pockets, an even-toothed grin breaking across his ebony face.
“Hey, brother,” he said. “How’s life?”
In the pictures I had of Roy, he was slender, dressed in African print, with an Afro, a goatee, a mustache. The man who embraced me now was much heavier, over two hundred pounds, I guessed, the flesh on his cheeks pressing out beneath a thick pair of glasses. The goatee was gone; the African shirt had been replaced by a gray sports coat, white shirt, and tie. Auma had been right, though; his resemblance to the Old Man was unnerving. Looking at my brother, I felt as if I were ten years old again.
“You’ve gained some weight,” I said as we walked to his car.
Roy looked down at his generous belly and gave it a pat. “Eh, it’s this fast food, man. It’s everywhere. McDonald’s. Burger King. You don’t even have to get out of the car to have these things. Two all–beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese. The Double Whopper with cheese.” He shook his head. “They tell me I can have it right away. My way! Fantastic!”