Dreams from My Father: Chapter 4 Summary & Analysis

Barack, now a high school sophomore, grouses with his friend Ray about the “bullshit Punahou parties.” Ray, a senior, moved to Hawaii from L.A. a year ago and talks often about the lush city life he used to lead. Ray introduces Barack to the Black parties on the island and Barack listens to Ray gripe in return. Today, Ray moans that no girls will date him because they’re all racist. Ray insists that this is also why Barack is single and why he doesn’t get a ton of playing time on the basketball team. Barack counters that white people here just want people who look and play like them, but that doesn’t make them racist.

It’s been five years since Barack’s father visited, and Barack is thrilled that his social standing at school has steadily risen. He lived with Ann and Maya for three years, but when Ann had to return to Indonesia for fieldwork for her degree, Barack decided to stay with his grandparents. They mostly leave him alone, which suits Barack fine. However, Barack is struggling internally to figure out how to be a Black man in America, and his father’s letters aren’t helpful. For a time, Barack occasionally accompanies Gramps to play poker with Gramps’s Black friends. One of these men, Frank, used to be a well-known poet, and he fascinates Barack while making Barack vaguely uncomfortable. He has this same feeling whenever Gramps takes him to a bar in the red-light district, and he senses that Gramps—the only white person there—is possibly the only one there by choice.

Barack turns to pop culture to figure out how to be a Black man. He plays basketball and by the time he’s in high school, he plays for Punahou and on the university courts. There, Black men teach him respect, follow-through, and companionship. Basketball gives him a community and introduces him to Ray and other Black boys who are also angry and confused. They talk often about “white folks,” and Barack thinks through the many racist incidents he’s experienced. He learns that Black people can be mean, but white people seem to be arrogantly ignorant and cruel. The term “white folks” feels weird to Barack, since Gramps, Toot, and Ann are white, but they’re not “white folks” as Ray means it. Barack decides that for Ray, “white folks” is just shorthand for “bigot.”

However, Barack and Ray still disagree about some things. Ray seems to imply that they can switch their rage at the white world on and off whenever they feel like it, but Barack argues that they live in Hawaii, not the Jim Crow South—their white friends love them. Ray always reminds Barack that he’s biracial, thereby ending the argument. Barack moves between his Black and white worlds, assuming that someday, they’ll coalesce. Whenever people ask if he plays basketball or mention liking Stevie Wonder, Barack feels a bit tricked—but he can’t figure out how.

One afternoon, Barack refuses a high five from a white football player because he thinks that the guy was speaking in a dialect meant to mock them. Ray is incensed, insisting that the guy didn’t mean anything by it and saying that giving the high five is just “getting along,” the same thing that Barack does whenever he sucks up to white teachers. The next day, Ray suggests that Barack bring their white friends Jeff and Scott to a party at Ray’s house. This will mark the first time their white friends attend a Black party. Jeff and Scott are fine at first, but they seem self-conscious and ask to leave after an hour. When Barack tells Ray, they lock eyes steadily. Outside, Jeff says he gets how tough it must be for Ray and Barack at school parties. Part of Barack is enraged. Within an hour, he has a new view of the world: white men are in power and the only thing Black people have of their own is anger.

Barack spends the next few months reading Black authors. Seemingly every author eventually admits defeat and retreats, bitter and angry. Malcolm X seems to be the only one who did better—but Barack is concerned by Malcolm’s wish that his white blood would “be expunged.” Barack knows he’ll never get rid of his own white blood, and he wonders what he would give up if he abandoned his white family. Malcolm didn’t discover until late in life that white people can be brothers in Islam, so Barack decides that reconciliation is possible, but far off. Barack and Ray meet a Nation of Islam follower at the basketball court, but he admits he’s not moving to Africa or giving up ribs and women. Barack scolds Ray for laughing and reminds Ray he’s never read Malcolm, but Ray insists that he doesn’t need a book to learn how to be Black.

A few weeks later, Barack wakes up to find Gramps and Toot fighting. Toot tells Barack that Gramps doesn’t want to drive her to work, and Gramps tells Barack that Toot wants him to feel bad. After going back and forth between them, Barack learns what’s up: a Black panhandler harassed Toot yesterday at the bus stop—understandably scaring her—but Gramps is incensed that Toot was afraid of a Black man. When they’re gone, Barack is sad. His grandparents love him, but he knows they’re easily scared of men who could be Barack’s brothers. That night, Barack seeks out Frank for the first time in years.

After pouring whiskey, Frank shares that he and Gramps grew up 50 miles apart. He suggests that Gramps has never told Barack how Black people had to step off the sidewalk for whites, even in Kansas. He says that Gramps once told him about a Black girl they hired to look after Ann, insisting the girl was a “regular part of the family.” Frank scoffs at this. Quietly, he says that Gramps can’t know what it’s like to be Black. He doesn’t understand that Black people never get to relax—they have to stay vigilant to survive. Frank also says that Toot is right to be afraid; she gets that Black people have reasons to hate. Barack leaves, feeling entirely alone.