Monday, May 05, 2008

BARACK OBAMA

Identifying the "Frank" in Young Obama's Life

In today's piece on the various potential mentors in Obama's life, I noted the candidate mentioned one semi-mentor in Dreams From My Father, a heavy-drinking, rather bitter elderly African-American friend of his maternal grandfather's named Frank.

One of his grandfather’s drinking buddies, an elderly black man named Frank who lives in a rundown section of Waikiki, mostly seems to impart . . . well, more bitterness and a sense of being defeated by life, along with a clear warning that his white grandfather will never really relate to young Obama’s problems.

“You can’t blame Stan [Obama’s maternal grandfather] for what he is,” Frank said quietly. “He’s basically a good man. But he doesn’t know me. Any more than he knew that girl that looked after your mother. He can’t know me, not the way I know him. Maybe some of these Hawaiians can, or the Indians on the reservation. They’ve seen their fathers humiliated. Their mothers desecrated. But your grandfather will never know what that feels like. That’s why he can come over here and drink my whiskey and fall asleep in that chair you’re sitting in right now. Sleep like a baby. See, that’s something I can never do in his house. Never. Doesn’t matter how tired I get, I still have to watch myself. I have to be vigilant, for my own survival.”

A reader sends me to this link which explains who Frank is, Frank Marshall Davis, identified in the 1950s as a member of the Communist Party of the United States of America.

Cliff Kincaid from Accuracy In Media calls Davis Obama's "childhood mentor." I would caution Obama-watchers not to overstate the importance of Frank in Obama's life; I read the sections describing Frank not as a wholehearted endorsement of Davis and his views (although obviously if Obama knew of Davis' communist ties, he chose not to include that in his book); but as something of a cautionary tale. What teenager would want to grow up to be an elderly, embittered drunk, going on at length at life's injustices in a run-down house in Waikiki?

The one way in which "Frank" seemed to really impact Obama was in his racial suspicion, his sense that no white man could truly relate to his experiences. Obama describes feeling "truly alone" after hearing the above monologue from Frank; he's been offered a disturbing opinion that his grandfather (and, implictly, his mother and grandmother) may love him, but will never understand him.

05/05 11:30 AMShare