Posted on 03/23/2008 9:27:03 AM PDT by TornadoAlley3
Newsweek Reconstructs Time When Obama Moved from Using 'Barry' to Formal Barack and Impact it Made on Him 'It was when I Made a Conscious Decision: I Want to Grow Up,' Obama Says
NEW YORK, March 23 /PRNewswire/ -- When Sen. Barack Obama moved from using the name Barry to Barack, his formal name, it was part of his almost lifelong quest for identity and belonging -- to figure out who he is, and how he fits into the larger American tapestry. Part black, part white, raised in Hawaii and Indonesia, with family of different religious and spiritual backgrounds -- seen by others in ways he didn't see himself -- the young Barry was looking for solid ground. At Occidental College, he was feeling like he was at a "dead end," he tells Newsweek, "that somehow I needed to connect with something bigger than myself."
(Newsweek: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20080323/NYSU001 )
The name Barack tied him more firmly to his black African father, who had left him and his white mother at a young age and later returned home to Kenya. But that wasn't the primary motivation. In the March 31 Newsweek cover, "When 'Barry' Became Barack" (on newsstands Monday, March 24), Senior White House Correspondent Richard Wolffe reports on that time in Obama's life when he began using the name Barack. It happened in a period when he was at Occidental College in California and heading to New York, to finish college at Columbia. He was trying to reinvent himself. "It was when I made a conscious decision: I want to grow up," Obama tells Newsweek.
Newsweek reconstructs Obama's journey from one name to another and explores what light that journey sheds on his character. The identity quest, which began before he became Barack and continued after, put him on a trajectory into a black America he had never really known as a child in Hawaii and abroad, Newsweek reports. In the end, he would come to see and accept that he was in an almost unique position as an American -- someone who had been part of both the white and the black American "families," able to view the secret doubts and fears and dreams of both, and to understand them. He could be part of a black world where his pastor and spiritual mentor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., expressed paranoid fantasies about white conspiracies to spread drugs or HIV, because he understood in his gut the history of racism that stoked those fears. He could, for a time, shrug off Wright's more incendiary views, in part because he knew that whites, in their private worlds, often expressed or shrugged off bigotry themselves, partly because of fears that might seem irrational to African-Americans.
Obama's friend at Occidental, Wahid Hamid, tells Newsweek that even before he became Barack, most friends simply called him "Obama." "It wasn't surprising to me that he decided to embrace that identity because 'Barry' could be perceived as trying to run away from something and trying to fit in, rather than embracing his own identity and, in many ways, kind of opening himself to who he is." For Wahid, an immigrant from Pakistan also trying to find his way in America (he is now a corporate executive in New York), the name Barack was perfectly natural and "somewhat refreshing."
For friend Eric Moore, Obama struck him as a person who could glide in and out of any social circle on campus. This was the thing about being of "mixed race," Moore says. "You have the benefit of knowing both cultures firsthand and it opens your eyes."
Occidental -- like Hawaii before -- became too small for Obama. "I think the Oxy environment and L.A. in general seemed not to be enough for him," Moore says. He remembered asking Obama when he was a sophomore what he planned to do the following year, since many upper-class friends of Obama's were graduating. Obama told him he was planning to transfer to Columbia University. "I remember trying to convince him to stay at Oxy," Moore says. But Obama had made up his mind that he wanted to move to a more urban, intense and polyglot place. "He said something to the effect that he needed a bigger and more stimulating environment intellectually."
Obama wanted a clean slate. "Going to New York was really a significant break. It's when I left a lot of stuff behind," he says. "I think there was a lot of stuff going on in me. By the end of that year at Occidental, I think I was starting to work it through, and I think part of the attraction of transferring was, it's hard to remake yourself around people who have known you for a long time." It was when he got to New York that, as he recalls it, he began to ask people to call him Barack: "It was not some assertion of my African roots ... not a racial assertion. It was much more of an assertion that I was coming of age. An assertion of being comfortable with the fact that I was different and that I didn't need to try to fit in in a certain way."
(Read cover story at http://www.Newsweek.com)
http://www.newsweek.com/id/128633
Where’s the Barf Alert. I am so sick of this Newsweak Obama-worship.
Barry is to Barack
as
Malcom Little is to Malcom X
I think you forgot the “Barf Obama loving media alert...”
OBAMA HATES WHITE PEOPLE !!!
How about something a little more practical being explored in the article? Who foot the bill for his expenses while he found himself? Lemme’ guess - his racist Grandma?
What about his middle name, the name that can not be mentioned?
This article represents the glum realization by the editors at New-speak that they may be stuck with Obamanation. It is a lame attempt to rehabilitate him after the humiliating kick-in-the-crotch Barry-Obamanation (B.O.) took this week because of Reverernd Wright.
Minorities are over represented in our media and it shows.
"For a time?"
For 20 years - and is only admitting them in the light of day now - but still not leaving the environment or his surrogate daddy, Rev. Bullfrog.
He still isn't his own man. He's a puppet under the Svengali influence of a American hating, twisted Black Activist..and he has repudiated his white side - tho' he'll never say that publicly.
He thought he was looking to grow up = in reality, he was desperately seeking acceptance, seeking a daddy figure.
PROJECTILE Barf Alert REQUIRED!!!
You know what I’d like to see instead of this drivel where they romanticize the inner turmoil of a black man “trying to find himself”?
A comparison to the relationship Republicans have with their families and how it shapes their attitudes vs what democrats have would be interesting. Seriously, we all know Bush is still fishing with his dad. Clinton & Obama didn’t have a relationship with their fathers growing up and are rather angry at traditional values in general. Clinton found solace in the protest movement of the left as an outlet for his rage. For all the rejection his parents gave him and his nomadic lifestyle, Obama’s longest and most consistent relationship in his life just may be Reverend Wright. Why isn’t anyone exploring Wright’s role as Obama’s father figure?
u so funny. lol
There is something wimpy, limp, slippery about the psychology of males in the Democrat party.
Of course Hitlery was Hillary-Rodham, or Hillary. Back and forth.
These people can not even be true to their own name. We know they F’over their own married partners.
So what is the chicken and egg with democrats? Are they sick, as I believe and then attracted to the Democrat party, or does that then make them sick.
I think this is worth exploring. Absent father, name changing...struggle to find themselves and reinvent themselves other than planning for the future and staying the course.
I am sure a psychologist could have a field day with this.
I wonder why he needed a fresh start.
Other than his admitted drug problem?
Why not? Because it might lead to conclusions. And conclusions are the bane of the charlatan.
It amazes me how someone thinks a name change can change the person inside.
Barrack needs to grow up!
I am about “BURIED” up to my eyeballs in his philosophies.
f he's got time to think about this kind of crap, he needs a life, not a name change.
Osama! Obama! He’ll make Big Gov yo’ Momma!
I had the same problem. Was I German, English, Irish, Scots-Irish, Dutch, French or Scandinavian? Finally I settled on “American.” It seemed the only sensible thing to do.
B. H. Obama is a racial media creation served up for use by guilty white voters.
It's the cringe factor.
Another note, he is always half black, half white.
How much Arab is he from his father's linage?
I guess he is 1/2 Black, 1/2 White, and 1/2 half Arab.
....when did he drop he’s middle name?
"THE BOSTON CONSULTING GROUP 4 Making the Right Decisions
As these examples demonstrate, winning in China requires original strategies. To create them, MNCs first must be sure that the appropriate people are involved. Local managers often don’t have enough time: they have their hands full just handling day-to-day operations. And even if they do have the time, they often need help getting the critical constituents to understand the need for a radical shift in strategy. To that end, many successful companies have brought in managers from their headquarters and regional organizations.
Second, companies usually develop breakthrough strategies by starting with a blank slate rather than by benchmarking the few successful players. The latter approach will produce a metoo strategy, not an original plan.
Third, decision-makers should use the strategic options framework to create customized strategies. To apply the framework and identify the right strategic options, a company must be able to answer some specific questions about its categories and markets:
How attractive are our category’s economics?
• Is regional scale or national scale more important for increasing profits? • How important is the breadth of our portfolio in achieving scale? • Will current prices and costs allow us to make money soon? If not, will there be a shakeout?
When? Can we stick it out?
• How profitable and sustainable is a focused strategy? Could the category be redefined to shift the playing field? • Could our product be used in different ways? • Could we create a trend in how our product is used and perceived? What is our competitive position? • Is a me-too strategy feasible? • If we can compete, in what regions? What channels? For what kinds of consumers? • Would we be better off making an acquisition or an alliance? With whom? • Can we lobby the government for competitive advantage or to improve the economics of the category?
MNCs can avoid a stalemate in China. There are excellent long-term opportunities. Identifying and exploiting them, however, will require deep analysis, original thinking, and the courage to break away from the pack.
Wahid Hamid Hubert Hsu
Wahid Hamid is a vice president in the Hong Kong office of The Boston Consulting Group and head of the firm’s Consumer and Retail practice in East Asia. Hubert Hsu is a vice president in BCG’s Hong Kong office.
You may contact the authors by e-mail at: hamid.wahid@bcg.com hsu.hubert@bcg.com © The Boston Consulting Group, Inc. 2000 BCG
Baloney. I've attended churches all over this country, many with mixed race attendance. In not one was such venom and hate expressed. Do African-Americans not realize that our pastors do not preach from the pulpit in that way? Were I, a white woman,to casually enter Wright's church just looking for spiritual food as he is preaching this "sermon", I would be horrified and terrified and running out the door. (Of course, from the video we've all seen, I don't think I would get in). I can think of no church I have ever entered (many while visiting during business trips) that a similar experience would happen to an African American. When I saw that video the first thought running through my head was "madrasah".
Obama’s issues would be better resolved in a psychotherapists office, than in the Oval Office.
I appeciate your sarcazm, right on.
Obama disagrees with the IrReverent Wright politically, but his White Grandmother exercizing the Jesse Jackson fear of Balck men syndrome makes Obama cringe.
Wright is the father he never had.
Who cares?
i thought it was spelled Borat...
Barry embraced the “African” of the “father” who had functioned as nothing more than a sperm donor, abandoning young BO at age 2. So all of his adult life he has been distancing himself from the white family that actually raised him and working for a tighter embrace with the “African” family that had nothing to do with his actual upbringing. I suppose he would say his skin color forced him to explore his “African” roots but I still find it strange that any adult can be so much more concerned with a “father” that abandoned him than with the white grandparents who actually raised him and gave him his opportunities in life.
Yeah, right up until people outside of his "church" became aware of what Wright was saying.
Is there there a joke or sarcasm in there that I'm missing?
He was abandoned by his black father at age two - mother remarries and a few years later she, too, abandons him to his white grandparents.
Combined with moving from country to country, attending Muslim Schools, attending Muslim prayers, attending Catholic school, etc etc
It seems he grew up conflicted, at sea, and in a quandary about where he belonged = so at about age 13 he went searching for his "blackness." - -And, for a parent figure, one can easily conjecture. Eventually, his search took him to Chicago....
He found it all under the wing of REv. Bullfrog = from whom he cannot extricate himself.
A man this conflicted and easily led is not CIC material...
Oh Pleeeeeeeeeeease...talk about a rationalization.
It's ok to hang with racist because others are racist too.
IS IT EVER A LIBERALS FAULT?
I always thought that the argument that Barack had some intellectual ability to absorb only the useful part of the offensive messages of Wright (where are the videos of useful part of his messages?) and ignore the racist part were exposed as false when it was explained that he took his children to his sermons. No kid has an ability to distinguish between rhetoric and a closely held belief, especially when he’s shouting, pounding the podium and those two guys are running up behind him to brush his shoulders off. (What’s up with that??)
And this is the biggest part of the whole picture. I have said it for years. A child, to grow up balanced, must have at LEAST one stable parent who is there for them ALWAYS - Without it, they have far less chance to grow up into stable adults.
the "O" man was abandoned by both parents - to his white grandparents = he moved constantly, went to Muslim schools, prayed the daily Muslim prayers, went in search of his 'blackness' and came under the influence of a Svengali racist preacher who took him under his wing = who became his surrogate father...and the "O" man can't cut away from 'daddy'.
This man is far to conflicted to become CIC
...
“I am sure a psychologist could have a field day with this.”
No doubt. However, he carries it over into who he would be as President. The dems are running a guy who needs to be on the couch instead of in the Oval Office.
I gotta say I hope your tagline is wrong about the presidency...
This is just what gang bangers do. Their name is Luis, Henry, Solon or Ricardo, they join a gang and become Silent, Puppet, Sleepy or whatever.
It occurs to me that Michelle probably wouldn’t date Barry until he changed it.
Retch.
It happened in a period when he was at Occidental College in California and heading to New York, to finish college at Columbia. He was trying to reinvent himself. “It was when I made a conscious decision: I want to grow up,” Obama tells Newsweek.
What Obama says (In "Dreams..."):
Obama wanted a race to belong to, a team whose accomplishments would reflect well upon him. Of course, it was unthinkable in his liberal white family to take pride in the achievements of his mother’s race, so Obama gloried in being part of his absent father’s race.
From the age of ten onward, though, Obama desperately wants to be black. In “Dreams,” he writes, “I was trying to raise myself to be a black man in America, and beyond the given of my appearance, no one around me seemed to know exactly what that meant.” Honolulu’s paucity of African-Americans means he has to learn to be black from the media: “TV, movies, the radio; those were places to start. Pop culture was color-coded, after all, an arcade of images from which you could cop a walk, a talk, a step, a style.”
He cherishes every cause for complaint he can discern against white folks. He is constantly distressed at being half-white. Obama says he “ceased to advertise my mother’s race at the age of twelve or thirteen, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites.”
As a teenager, Obama sought out gatherings on military bases or at the University of Hawaii that were mostly attended by blacks.
When Obama entered Occidental College in California, it was the autobiography of militant Malcolm X that grabbed his attention more than any other black writer. “His repeated acts of self-creation spoke to me,” Obama has said. This also was the period when Obama stopped using the nickname “Barry” in favor of his full name.
The Obama File
I see. When he wanted to grow up Barry went back to using his formal name, Barack Hussein Obama, Junior
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