Introduction

This chapter traces Barack Obama's commitment to a multiracial, multiethnic, and multicultural society. It recounts many different cultures and societies he encountered, and follows how he searched for his own racial identity. The chapter also looks at Obama's economic conservatism. It then emphasizes Obama's purpose: to maintain the nation's existing free enterprise system rather than replace it with a more powerful centralized government being proposed by a more radical wing of his party. The chapter highlights his efforts to expand opportunities to enter the middle class for those he regarded as not yet part of it. It examines how Obama's commitment to conservative values materialized in other ways, and analyses the result of the nation's economic recession and Obama's conduct of foreign policy.