By Juanell Garrett, Midwest Voices Columnist 2008

Change was Sen. Barack Obama's mantra long before he entered the Presidential race. He would tell his classmates about the need for change when they asked him about the role of a community organizer. "Change in the White House, where Reagan and his minions were carrying on their dirty deeds. Change in the Congress, compliant and corrupt. Change in the mood of the country, manic and self-absorbed."

The man who hired Obama as a community organizer said, "...anger's a requirement for the job. The only reason anybody decides to become an organizer. Well-adjusted people find more relaxing work." Marty identifies churches as the institutional base, telling Obama, "Churches won't work with you, though, just out of the goodness of their hearts...if push comes to shove, they won't really move unless you can show them how it'll help them pay their heating bill."

Rev. Philips, the elderly preacher who first told him about Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr., pointed out that being part of a church might help him in his efforts as a community organizer and added, "It doesn't matter where, really."

When Obama met with Rev. Wright, whose father had been a Baptist minister in Philadelphia, the minister told him that he had been involved with Islam and black nationalism in the '60s. In the reception area of the Trinity United Church of Christ, Rev. Wright's church, Obama picked up a brochure. Inside was information on a "Black Value System" and "A Disavowal of the pursuit of Middleclassness." The latter said, "While it is permissible to chase 'middleincomeness' with all our might, those who achieve success must avoid 'middleclassness.'"

"For them (Rev. Philips and Rev. Wright)," Obama writes, "the
principles in Trinity's brochure were articles of faith no less than belief in the Resurrection."

"The Audacity of Hope" was the first sermon that Obama heard at Trinity. One notable phrase from the sermon was "where white folks' greed runs a world in need."

When Obama made his first trip to Kenya, the home of his deceased father, he referred to himself as "a Westerner not entirely at home in the West, an African on his way to a land full of strangers."

In Nairobi, Obama was resentful of white and Asian tourists, considering them imperial encroachments. At an outdoor cafe, he and his sister were overlooked while white American tourists were fawned over by African waiters. Obama suggests that tourists came to Kenya because it "offered to recreate an age when the lives of whites in foreign lands rested comfortably on the backs of the darker races."

Speaking of his reaction to hearing the story of his Kenyan grandfather that was overly neat and clean and worked for white people, Obama said that he "felt betrayed." He had imagined him as "a man of his people, opposed to white rule." He began to think of his grandfather as "Uncle Tom. Collaborator. House nigger."

Is the senator like his black grandfather who one of his wives described as looking away when he talked to people for fear the listeners would know his thoughts and whose attitude towards white people vacillated from day to day? Will we ever get to know the real Obama, or will he always be giving us reassuring smiles as he pats our hands and tells us not to worry?