To his classmates, the skinny kid with a modest afro had comfortably taken his place in the ethnic rainbow of Punahou, an elite prep school.

Today, Obama is a campaign-trail sensation, in part because he is seen as the first black presidential candidate who might be able to reach beyond race, building support among Americans of all backgrounds. That capacity does not surprise the students who knew Obama at Punahou, which carefully nurtured a respect for diversity.

“We had chapel sessions on the Baha’i faith, Islam, Judaism, and all forms of Christianity. The message was that diversity made for a richer community,” said Bernice G. Bowers, a classmate.

Dressed like other boys in the required collared shirts and khaki pants, Obama was one of a small number of blacks, but the student body included large numbers of kids with Chinese, Japanese, Samoan and native Hawaiian ancestry, as well as many whites. “We didn’t think about his blackness,” said Mark Hebing, who went to school with Obama for eight years

As a candidate, Obama is also trying to show that he understands the indignities of racism and the economic troubles that many believe continue to flow from the legacy of slavery.

And it was at Punahou that Obama first came to awaken to these issues, and to the complexities of being black in America. In his best-selling memoir, “Dreams from My Father,” he wrote that during his time at the school — from fifth grade through his high school graduation in 1979 — he felt the first stirrings of anger toward whites. He said he also delved into black nationalism.

He also experimented with marijuana and occasionally cocaine, which were ubiquitous in the 1970s but presented what, in his book, Obama called special dangers for young black men.

Obama’s father was a black Kenyan; his mother a white American from Kansas. He was born in Hawaii and spent part of his childhood in Indonesia before returning to Honolulu and enrolling at Punahou.

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