Nine-year-oldBarackObamawaslookingthroughamagazine.ButtheAfrican-Americanboywasshockedbyaseriesofphotos.Thepictureswereofablackmanwhodestroyedhisskinwithchemicalsthatpromisedtomakehimwhile.Forthefirstti

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Nine-year-old Barack Obama was looking through a magazine. 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 while.

For the first time the boy began to doubt who he was.

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 successful career. Last week Obama made history by being elected as the first black president of the United States. He defeated John McCain in a landslide victory.

Obama’s story starts 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 college 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. 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 am 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 and a white America a Latino America and Asian America. There is the United States of America.”

Barack Obama’s victory is a historic victory that promised change and overcame centuries of prejudice. His success fulfilled Martin Luther King’s dram that a man be judged not by the color of his skin but by the content of his character” wrote ABC news.