In Obama’s, “Dreams from My Father — A Story of Race and Inheritance” we are introduced to a world of family, racial history, and the understanding/questioning of belonging. A large majority of the first chapter speaks to Obama’s family — he was raised by his grandparents and his mother. His father was an anomaly, a deadbeat who left him when he was a child. But interestingly, the divergence from the two worlds arrives at his family’s description of his father and the truth as to who he was. Specifically, in one example, Obama mentions a story that his grandfather once told him. One time, Obama’s father was once called a n**ger at a bar and was shunned by a white man who claimed that he didn’t want to have his good drink spoiled. The crowd turned, faced them, and expected a bar fight. However, to their surprise, his father meticulously explained to the man why the word n**ger projected unfaithful hatred towards those of African descent. He says in-depth, “…my father stood up, walked over to the man, smiled, and proceeded to lecture him about the folly of bigotry, the promise of the American dream, and the universal rights of man.”(Obama 10). This is just one occurrence of his family claiming that his father was a man of true integrity and pride when in reality his father had been gone since he was a young child. Although his father was — a scholar who had won scholarships, mastered western technology, and was the University of Hawaii’s first black student — he was no parent to Obama. Another major theme of the first chapter was the acceptance of black people and the significance of racial diversity. Obama speaks to this through the story of his grandfather, who had been raised in an environment where Africans were called n**gers and did not share equality as Caucasians did. His grandfather, however, decided to reject those notions and embraced the different cultures around him. Specifically, in one instance, Obama recalls, “ A Japanese-American man who called himself Freddy and ran a small market near our house would save us the choicest cuts of Aku for sashimi and give me rice candy with edible wrappers. Every so often, the Hawaiians who worked at my grandfather’s store as delivery men would invite us over for poi and roast pig, … [they] sic liked to play checkers with the old Filipino men who smoked cheap cigars and spat up betel-nut juice as if it were blood. And I still remember how, one early morning, hours before the sun rose, a Portuguese man to whom my grandfather had given a good deal on a sofa set took us out to spearfish off Kailua Bay” (Obama 18). He found that there was a divergence between the Caucasians which hated him for his color and the ones like a grandfather who embraced all types of people. Overall Obama is making a point in Chapter 1 that people should be judged not by appearances but rather who they are. For instance, his father, in books he was perfect — educated, inspiring, and self-driven, yet in reality, he was non-existent in Obama’s life. He was selfish for destroying his grandfather’s trust, and by abandoning his child/family. Yet his grandfather, born in an age of racism and extreme inequality, was a loving man who embraced people of all different backgrounds.