April 02, 2008 News+Opinion » Chris Haire

Obama's private school years 

Punahou-hum

by Chris Haire
mediadog.jpg

Latest in Chris Haire

It's a tale that we've all heard before — a smart black student from a modest background gets a scholarship to a private high school where his skin color immediately brands him an outsider. However, his skills on the basketball court help win over his classmates, and by the end everyone learns a valuable lesson. Will Smith scores the winning basket at the state championship and aces the SAT, Julia Stiles is crowned homecoming queen alongside her date, homecoming king Mekhi Phifer, and the racist rich boy, played by Ryan Phillippe, is caught on tape stealing the rival school's mascot and doing a number of unspeakable things to it, like making it watch Love Always, Charleston for hours on end.

There's a new version of this story being spun out in media land, one that concerns presidential candidate Barack Obama and the time that he spent at the Punahou School in Honolulu. According to a recent AP report, Obama attended a school where "most of his classmates lived in 'split-level homes with swimming pools'" while he "lived in an apartment."

For folks living in the Lowcountry, it may not be a sign of privilege to live in a split-level home and have a pool in the backyard. Here it's actually fairly common. But in Hawaii, that's a different story entirely. A one-bedroom condo, no larger than an extended-stay hotel room, might house a family of four or more and cost somewhere in the $200,000 to $250,000 range. And chances are, it would be a good mile or so from the beach and offer a stunning view of a neighboring high-rise. The typical home in a prefab Summerville subdivision would be the sort of pad that only Hawaii's wealthy could afford. These are the kind of houses that many Punahou students call home.

Of course, money wasn't the only thing that separated Obama from his classmates. According to the AP, "Obama's feelings of not fitting in were heightened by his race. As one of the few black students at Punahou, he remembered in his memoir someone wanting to touch his hair and being asked whether his father ate people on his first day of school. He wrote about struggling with his racial identity and turning to marijuana to block out the questions."

Finally, the issue of race rears its head. We knew it was coming. It's a necessary component to stories like these. But here's the thing: This tale is different than the others you've heard, and it's this difference that the article ignores. See, Barack Obama was a minority student at a school where the overwhelming majority of the population is now of Asian or Pacific Island descent. Maybe Punahou was different when Obama attended. If so, I doubt it was by much.

The AP article also doesn't bother discussing Hawaii's unique status as the only state where Asians are the majority population and one of three where whites are a minority. Instead, it sticks to the formula, mentioning that Obama went to Punahou around the same time as Steve Case (white boy and future AOL head) and Kelly Preston (white gal and future wife of John Travolta), and quotes former classmates with names like Bart Burford and Tom Boyle.

Now, why does this article fail to point out Punahou's unique demographics? My guess is that it's designed to give readers some insight into how being a black student at what readers assume is an exclusive white school eventually led Obama to associate with his future religious advisor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a preacher with a very strong pro-black stance and, some might say, an anti-white, anti-American point of view. There's a script to adhere to here, and adhere it does, at least partially; the student who wanted to touch Obama's hair and the other who questioned his father's dining habits were reportedly white.

However, when it comes to racial matters at Punahou, things aren't as simple as black and white. They're far more complex than that, much like Obama's relationship with Wright.

Comments (11) RSS

Showing 1-5 of 11

Add a comment | All comments »

I also remember the media fanning the evil white man hysteria over the Bob Jones university "controversy" during GW Bush's running for his first term. The media freaked out when it was discovered that Bob Jones bans interracial marriage. Of course the media assumed this meant evil rich WHITE redneck parents were forcing the university to prevent the large percentage of blacks and Asians attending the college from dating Daddy's Little Princess or Buba Jr. If the media dared to delve deeper into this story and wasn't so blind sighted by an agenda, reporters would have discovered that it was the wealthy Asian and black families that insisted BJU ban interracial marriage. Many whites families were actually against it. Demographically, wealthy whites, even those in the deep deep pit of the south, are far more socially liberally than their black, hispanic or Asian counterparts. But let this not get in the way of the media's drive to start a race war in the US.

Posted by marioS on September 10, 2009 at 10:42 AM | Report this comment

"A one-bedroom condo, no larger than an extended-stay hotel room, might house a family of four or more and cost somewhere in the $200,000 to $250,000 range."

Yeah NOW it does - but do you really think it cost that much 40 years ago you buffoon?

Posted by ninedogsten on September 9, 2009 at 12:50 PM | Report this comment

I attended four years of school in Honolulu at Kawananakoa, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Radford High School. I was the only white student in most classes. The first two schools above were inner city schools where racial threats and violence were a daily challenge. Every day was like living in a war zone. I had post traumatic stress disorder for years afterward. Obama had it easy going to Punahou regardless of his race.

Posted by haolepunk on July 3, 2009 at 11:42 PM | Report this comment

haole2-When you say "Japanese arguing that Hawaii should just a part of Japan," are you implying that the third and fourth generation Americans of Japanese descent were saying this? I grew up in Hawaii and I never once heard any AJA say that. Hell, a lot of AJAs don't even speak Japanese! I have heard other racial groups make such comments and your statement is mean spirited and patently false. I''m not going to deny that people like you, Americans of European descent, probably had a hard time but I knew quite a lot of European Americans at Roosevelt High School who had no such problems.

Posted by jim@yahoo.com on February 12, 2009 at 2:09 AM | Report this comment

I just want to say that I'm a 1979 graduate of a private school that's a block away from Punahou, and let me tell you that it's not only the rich that go to that school. Kids from all different backgrounds go to Punahou. I have friends, who believe me don't come from money, who have graduated from Punahou and they all had to work hard for scholarships to attend school. Unfortunately, Punahou has the reputation that unless you come from money you don't go to that school, but that's not true.

Posted by kamana on January 24, 2009 at 4:56 PM | Report this comment

Add a comment

Classified Listings
Most Viewed


Powered by Foundation   © Copyright 2010, Charleston City Paper   RSS