After much deliberation, Obama’s mother made the Decision to send Obama back to Hawaii to live with his grandparents, Stanley Armour Dunham and Madelyn lee Payne Dunham. Stanley was a World War II veteran. Madelyn worked at a bank. Barrack would later describe his Grandparents as the “typical white" grandparents, for which eyebrows were raised. He would later explain the meaning behind the comment and what "typical white" meant to him.
Obama’s Grandparents were extremely open minded, loving and most of all fair people. When Obama was 10, his father came to visit him. Obama remembers feeling torn between two worlds. Of both he really knew little about. Obama recalls in his book, Memoirs of my father, he often made up stories about his father who reminds in Kenya and frequently traveling for business purposes. He would tell the children that his father was a prince and his Grandfather was a chief. He told them his family name, translated in English, mean “burning spear".
He was teased by classmates and was constantly paired with a black girl on his grade. The kids would say she was his girlfriend; presumably because they were the same colour. Obama made an effort to disassociate himself with her, even shoving her at one point. Perhaps he was trying to step outside of the stereotypical box of how things should be. Perhaps he was denying himself hoping to avoid the cruelty which he would later be forced to face. While at Punahou School, he befriended Keith Kakogawa, whom he based the character" Ray "in his book, Kakogawa of mixed ethnicity himself, recalls Obama’s inner struggle with black and white society.
Obama scoured through many books by famous black authors such as James Baldwin and Langston Hughes. Kakogawa and Obama had a disagreement one afternoon at a public library. Barrack had come across a book entitled Malcolm X at which point he became enthralled. His eyes scanned the book with such purpose, such enlightenment; that Kakogawa had to ask if he too was going to change his name to something Muslim. Barrack answered that his name was “Barrack Obama", as if stating the obvious. Both boys argued about this until they were quieted by a librarian.
Kakogawa remembers Obama making a lot of issues or incidents more racially motivated than he thought it was. Although Obama was mixed, he was still very much aware that he was black. He told Kakogawa that he believed that there might have been racially based reasons why he did not make it onto the basketball team. Kakogawa remembers his father telling Obama that the reason was because he missed two shots in a row. Obama remembers the reverse in character, according to his book of memoirs. Keith was the one obsessed with being discriminated against.
Another friend named Darin Maurer, who was white, does not recall Barrack as a tortured soul. He and his mother Suzanne Maurer remember a well adjusted, extremely integrated individual. Darin Maurer felt the sometimes racial tension in Hawaii. He and Barrack never internalized it as they got older because it was not exclusive to blacks but also whites were disliked. There was a well knit society of locals and then they were the outsiders. Since both boys were considered outsiders they were equal in their exile from the feeling of belonging.
