I have said most of this before, but it's a timely observation in light of yesterday's events.
Barry Obama did not have to reckon with his blackness in the industrial strength version until he went off to college. I'm not saying Hawaii is without racism, but compared to Mississippi or East LA or Sanford, FL, it's on a different planet.
So he had a strong sense of self when he got the full force of his color reflected back at him. He was raised that way, first by his white mother and then by his white grandparents. His grandfather pulled strings to get him into a good prep school. He had a white girlfriend. He had a place where he fit.
Did you ever notice the man's ears? Every editorial cartoonist in the land has, and you knew they would go to town on that. He had to know as well.
I was fortunate to have a hair stylist as one of my major political supporters. Any of you Austinites remember Janet Maples? She would do my hair for free when I was in a contested election, and Fidel Estrada would clean my suits to keep up the necessary mask for the small town kid who had to stretch from "barber" to "hair stylist" and did not know how to tie a necktie and needed his suits cleaned often because he only had three.
Anyway, Obama's Janet Maples certainly must have told him what you do with ears like that. You hide them in your hair.
Obama can't do that.
He can't "conk" his hair because that's so out of style it would look goofy.
He can't just grow it out because black men who wear 'fros are dangerous and angry.
So he sports a high and tight that would make his Marine guards proud and his ears put Dumbo in the shade and make life as easy for editorial cartoonists as Sarah Palin makes life easy for late night comedy writers.
I have always been personally attracted to the arc of Obama's story because I identify with it on a visceral level. Indian kids from small towns in Oklahoma cannot realistically aspire to go the places I've been.
It's as unlikely as an African-American President.
It's why I continue in retirement to kick at the doors of opportunity to try to keep them open a just a crack, and why Obama has paid such attention to financial aid for college students and why he wants to see free universal pre-school.
When you beat the odds, you can tell yourself how swell you are or you can reflect on the things that made it happen for you. In my case, it was the GI Bill and the dirt cheap tuition at the University of Texas.
In Obama's case, it was the mother who rousted him before dawn to teach his English lessons in Indonesia, the grandfather who found a way to prep school, and the multi-racial society of Hawaii that allowed Barry Obama, unlike Trayvon Martin, to be a child.