The world Obama’s family dreamed of living in was a world where the term racism didn’t exist. There was no mention or considerable thought that a melanated person was less than a person who lacked melanin and I say this in a way that they would want to see things. In a word like that, there wouldn’t be people calling people black or white or colored. They wanted to see people as people. The reality they encountered was one where they were frowned upon for encountering black people. They even get called these terrible names as well and it really affects how people view them and not in a good way. This is really why his family moved to Hawaii. This even has an impact on how he remembers his father because there is a lot of the story that is manipulated.

The last paragraph of this first chapter really stuck out to me. It reads, “I would not have known at the time, for I was too young to realize that I was supposed to have a live-in father, just as I was too young to know that I needed a race. For an improbably short span it seems that my father fell under the same spell as my mother and her parents; and for the first six years of my life, even as that spell was broken and the worlds that they thought they’d left behind reclaimed each of them, I occupied the place where their dreams had been.” It really shows his innocence and how concepts can only be taught. Barack knew that the color of his skin did not reflect who he was raised by. It is this constant reminder of who he is that, as he says, is really a reminder of what this world is and how people view others. That people do not accept this type of integration and will continue to be cruel which is a sad thing for this family especially for Barack and a real reflection of the world.