In Barack Obama's "biography", Dreams From My Father, he relates how he visits his extended family in Kenya and what they tell him of his biological grandfather, Onyango Obama. Onyango was an intelligent man who learned to read and write English, earned a living doing translating, and served in the British Army in WW2.
According to Obama's book, his grandfather made the following assessments of "the white man."
Page 407,. as related by Granny:
"I know that he respected the white man for his power, for his machines and weapons and the way he organized his life. He would say that the white man was always improving himself, whereas the African was suspicious of anything new. 'The African is thick,' he would sometimes say to me. 'For him to do anything, he needs to be beaten.'" 
[Emphasis added]
Page 417 as related by Granny:
"Your grandfather agreed with many of the demands of the early parties like KANU, but he remained skeptical that the independence movement would lead to anything, because he thought Africans could never win against the white man's army. 'How can the African defeat the white man,' he would tell Barack [Sr] 'when he cannot even make his own bicycle?' And he would say that the African could never win against the white man because the black man only wanted to work with his own family or clam, while all white men worked to increase their power. 'The white man alone is like an ant, [he] would say. 'He can be easily crushed. But like an ant, the white man works together. His nation, his business-these things are more important to him than himself. He will follow his leaders and not question orders. Black men are not like this. Even the most foolish black man thinks he knows better than the wise man. That is why the black man will always lose.'"
(Emphasis added)Obama said that after hearing his grandmother describe his Grandfather's attitudes, the following words flashed across his mind:
"Uncle Tom. Collaborator. House nigger." Perhaps it is natural that Barack Obama didn't like his grandfather. His grandfather opposed the marriage between Barack Sr. and Stanley Ann Dunham...he said white women were spoiled and didn't submit to being beaten like black women. (Obama's book tells how his grandfather purchased an African woman for 15 cows.)
