“Perhaps he came to see himself as black because others saw him as black.”
Maybe I’m made of sterner stuff, or maybe he resents his mother for abandoning him as well. But if I was half-white and half-black, and my white family had cared for me and sent me to the best schools at considerable sacrifice, I think I would view myself as primarily white. Particularly if my black father had never done squat for me!
In any case, I would NOT consider myself to be totally black, as Obama claimed on his census form.
Maybe you would consider yourself primarily white, but people around you would treat you as if you were black because you looked black.