[ OUR OPINION ]
Hawaii can take pride
on Obama’s valuesTHRUST into the nation's political spotlight at a dizzying speed, an Illinois state senator who traces his world view to his Hawaii upbringing is the buzz of the Democratic Party. U.S. Senate candidate Barack Obama is considered a shoo-in, was last night's keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention and is talked about as future presidential material. Hawaii stands to gain due respect for ethnic diversity and tolerance from Obama's success.
THE ISSUE
Hawaii-born Barack Obama, favored to win a U.S. Senate race in Illinois, received rousing support during his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention.
Obama, who loves to body surf, now is riding the biggest wave of his life but is cautious about the future. "If you're on a wave, you ride it," he says. "You figure at some point you're going to get a mouthful of sand. It doesn't last forever."
The 42-year-old Hawaii-born Punahou graduate won 53 percent of the vote in a seven-person Democratic Senate primary in March after a millionaire front-runner cascaded from a divorce with allegations of spousal abuse. Then the withdrawal of millionaire Republican Jack Ryan after being blamed in a divorce for dragging his actress wife to sex clubs left Obama unopposed.
"I guess they thought there was no way a skinny little guy from the South Side (of Chicago) with a funny name like Barack Obama could ever win a statewide race," he told supporters after winning the primary. His election will make him the only African American in the Senate and the third black senator since Reconstruction.
Actually, Obama is half-black, the son of a Kenyan economist who was the first African to study at the East-West Center and a white woman from Kansas who attended the University of Hawaii-Manoa. The couple divorced when Obama was 2 years old, and his mother married an Indonesian. After two years in Jakarta, Obama's mother sent him back to Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents and go to school.
Obama graduated from Punahou in 1979 and wrote in the school's bulletin 20 years later, "I realize how truly lucky I was to have been raised here. Hawaii's spirit of tolerance might not have been perfect, but it was -- and is -- real. The opportunity that Hawaii offered to experience a variety of cultures in a climate of mutual respect became an integral part of my world view, and a basis for the values I hold most dear."
Obama left Hawaii to earn a degree at Columbia University and gain his law degree from Harvard, where he was elected the first black president of the school's law review. He then joined a Chicago civil-rights law firm and began teaching part-time at the University of Chicago's law school. He was elected to the state Senate in 1996.
He is a frequent visitor to Hawaii, where his sister, Maya Soetoro, teaches history and social studies at the UH Lab School. "It's where my parents met, where I was born and where I was raised," he says. "But most important it's the place where I learned the ability to relate to a lot of different people."
"Barack is everything he is accused of being, which is a rising star," says Sen. Jon Corzine, D-N.J. "He's an exceptional human being. It's terrific that a role model for diversity is such an extraordinary talent." It's also terrific that Obama credits Hawaii for those values.
