46 Barack H. Obama: The Unauthorized BiographyObama’s admissions are rare for a politician (his book, Dreams from My Father, was written before
he ran for office.) They briefly became a campaign issue in December when an adviser to Senator
Hillary Rodham Clinton, Mr. Obama’s chief Democratic rival, suggested that his history with drugs
would make him vulnerable to Republican attacks if he became his party’s nominee. Mr. Obama, of
Illinois, has never quantified his illicit drug use or provided many details. He wrote about his two
years at Occidental, a predominantly white liberal arts college, as a gradual but profound awakening
from a slumber of indifference that gave rise to his activism there and his fears that drugs could lead
him to addiction or apathy, as they had for many other black men.” It was doubtful that the GOP’s
Karl Rove attack machine would be so charitable with Obama.
Occidental black students self-segregated themselves; Obama writes that they were “like a
tribe.” (Dreams 98) They attempted to enforce conformity on students they considered non-white.
Obama recounts the story of Joyce, a smart young multiracial woman. Joyce complains that it is
“black people who always have to make everything racial. They’re the ones making me choose.
They’re the ones who are telling me that I can’t be who I am.” (Dreams 99) Obama comments that
“Only white culture had individuals.” (Dreams 100) His obsession with race and identity remains
constant throughout.
OBAMA’S “I DIDN’T INJECT’ MOMENT
At Occidental College near Los Angeles, Obama began to experiment intensively with illegal
narcotics. He claims that he dabbled with marijuana and cocaine, but stopped short of shooting up
heroin. Obama himself writes: “I blew a few smoke rings, remembering those years. Pot had helped,
and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it. Not smack, though – Mickey, my potential
initiator, had been just a little too eager for me to go through with that.” (Dreams 93) Obama says
he was confronted with “the needle and the tubing” and then got cold feet (while standing in a meat
freezer in a deli) and backed out. He had been on his way to the life of an addict, like his friend
Ray: “Junkie. Pothead. That’s where I’d been headed: the final, fatal role of the young would-be
black man.” (Dreams 93) So Obama was on the verge of heroin but did not inject, a familiar refrain.
As a freshman at Occidental, Obama had an international circle of friends — “a real eclectic sort
of group,” recalled Vinai Thummalapally from Hyderabad, India. Obama became especially
friendly with Mohammed Hasan Chandoo and Wahid Hamid, two wealthy Pakistanis.
Thummalapally also recalls a French student, plus black and white Americans. One of these was
Jon K. Mitchell, who later played bass for country-swing band Asleep at the Wheel. Mitchell says
he remembers that Obama wore puka shell necklaces all the time, even though they were not in
style, and that “we let it slide because he spent a lot of time growing up in Hawaii.”) (Adam
Goldman and Robert Tanner, “Old friends recall Obama’s years in LA, NY,” AP via Newsday, May
15, 2008) Later, these friendships would make it possible for Obama to visit Pakistan in 1981. At
that time Obama traveled to Pakistan and spent “about three weeks” with Hamid, and staying in
Karachi with Chandoo’s family, said Bill Burton, Obama’s press secretary. “He was clearly
shocked by the economic disparity he saw in Pakistan. He couldn’t get over the sight of rural
peasants bowing to the wealthy landowners they worked for as they passed,” commented Margot
Mifflin, who has a bit part in Obama’s memoir. Obama often claims that the fact he has traveled
abroad makes him better able to understand international relations; his trip to Pakistan appears to
have prepared him above all to make his outrageous demand for the unilateral US bombing of
Pakistan, with all the inevitable slaughter, in search of “al Qaeda.” There is also some suggestion
that Obama may have been visiting gay friends on this trip.