Ignorance is not bliss

If you're as "lucky" as me, you might have received an email forward at some point alleging that Barack Obama hates white people and so on. The email starts like this: "Think you know who this man is? This possible President of the United States !! Read Below and ask yourselves, is this REALLY someone we can see as the President of our great nation!!!"

It then goes on to (inaccurately) cite quotes from a couple of the books he has written. It's just so easy to misquote someone or quote something completely out of context and make it sound insidious. And because people are a bit lazy when it comes to verifying facts or doing a little research on their own, this kind of tripe gets bounced around the internet, eventually turning into "fact". Anyway, I got this email a couple of months ago (no offense to the person who forwarded it to me), but it really annoyed me, so I spent about half an hour finding the actual quotes and putting them in context. That work follows below. The information in the email forward (with the > next to it) is followed by the actual quote and then a summary of what the true quote means in context.

> ______________________________

__
> Subject: FW: Books

>
> If you don't read anything else, read the last statement Obama made.
>
> Think you know who this man is?
> This possible President of the United States !! Read Below and
> ask yourselves, is this REALLY someone we can see as the
> President of our great nation!!!!
>
> Below are a few lines from Obama's books; In his words!
>
> From Dreams of My Father: 'I ceased to advertise my mother's race at the age of 12 or 13, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites.'

True quote: "When people who don't know me well, black or white, discover my background (and it is usually a discovery, for I ceased to advertise my mother's race at the age of 12 or 13, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites) I see the the split-second adjustments they have to make, the searching of my eyes for some telltale sign." [Meaning: He didn't go around calling himself white just so he didn't get discriminated against by white people.]

> From Dreams of My Father : 'I found a solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against my mother's race.'

True quote: NONE. IT DOES NOT EXIST. COMPLETELY MADE UP.

> From Dreams of My Father: 'There was something about him that made me wary, a little too sure of himself, maybe. And white.'

True quote: "He was smart, I decided. He seemed committed to his work. Still, there was something about him that made me wary, a little too sure of himself, maybe. And white - he'd said himself that was a problem." [Meaning: The guy he was talking about admitted that the fact that he is white might be a problem for the project they were working on together in the Southside Chicago community.]

> From Dreams of My Father: 'It remained necessary to prove which side you were on, to show your loyalty to the black masses, to strike out and name names.'

True quote: This one hasn't been mis-quoted, but if you put it in context of the chapter of the book, he is just talking about his days in college (a time filled with political activism, radicals, etc.).

> From Dreams of My Father: 'I never emulate white men and brown men whose fates didn't speak to my own. It was into my father's image, the black man, son of Africa, that I'd packed all the attributes I sought in myself, the attributes of Martin and Malcolm, DuBois and Mandela.'

True quote: (in context, he is specifically addressing his earlier attitude towards his stepfather and grandfather): "...men I might love but never emulate, white men and brown men whose fates didn't speak to my own. It was into my father's image, the black man, son of Africa , that I'd packed all the attributes I sought in myself, the attributes of Martin and Malcolm, DuBois and Mandela." Later he writes, "Now...that image had suddenly vanished." "To think all my life I had been wrestling with nothing more than a ghost!" [In other words, he was talking about FATHER ISSUES and who doesn't have those?]

>
> And FINALLY the Most Damming one of ALL of them!!!
>
> From Audacity of Hope: 'I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.'

"Of course, not all my conversations in immigrant communities follow this easy pattern. In the wake of 9/11, my meetings with Arab and Pakistani Americans, for example, have a more urgent quality, for the stories of detentions and FBI questioning and hard stares from neighbors have shaken their sense of security and belonging. They have been reminded that the history of immigration in this country has a dark underbelly; they need specific reassurances that their citizenship really means something, that America has learned the right lessons from the Japanese internments during World War II, and that I will stand with them should the political winds shift in an ugly direction." [Meaning: he will stand by any Americans who are discriminated against]