History Has Arrived Nine-year-old Barack Obama was looking through magazines. But the African-American boy was shocked by a series of photos. The pictures were of a black man who destroyed his skin with chemicals that promised to make him white. For the first time, the boy began to doubt who he was. "I stood in front of the mirror and wondered if something was wrong with me,"Obama said. However, now the boy who used to struggle with his identity doesn't see it as a problem any more, but an advantage for his career. Obama made history by being elected as the first black president of US. He defeated John Ma Cain in a landslide victory. Obama's story started in opposite corners of the world. His white mother was born in the heartland of the US. His black father grew up in a tiny village in Kenya. They met during in Hawaii, but his father left the family when Obama was just two years old and his mother moved to Indonesia. At 10, Obama moved back to live with his white grandparents in Hawaii where his sense that he didn't belong grew. At his class a white boy asked Obama if his father ate people. Out of embarrassment ,Obama lied to his classmates that his father was a prince. "I kept asking who I was and I ended up trying drugs and drinking,"Obama recalled. Things came to change after the young man made friends with those with a similar background at college. Their experiences back in Africa helped Obama to finally face up to his African origin. He worked hard to become a star at Harvard Law School and the third black senator in US history.  At the beginning of his campaign for the White House, few people viewed Obama favorably. Many doubted his unusual background, which left him neither black enough nor white enough. But Obama turned his pain of growing up into a tool to make Americans believe:"There is not a black America, an Asian America. There's the United States of America." Barack Obama's victory is"a historic vicotory that promised changes and overcame centuries of prejudice ."His success realised Martin Luther King's dream that a man should be judged not by the color1 of his skin, but by the content of his character. He lied to his classmates that his father was a prince because_.
he felt ashamed of his African origin he had unusual background--neither black nor white his black father deserted him when he was very young he didn't have the sense of belonging