In addition to all of the weight that former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has lost, he must also be losing his mind, judging from the inane comments that he made about President Obama on talk-radio host Bryan Fischer's program, Focal Point, on American Family Radio on Wednesday. Huckabee said that "President Barack Obama has a 'different worldview' that was 'molded out of a very different experience' because 'most of us grew up going to Boy Scout meetings, and, you know, our communities were filled with Rotary clubs, not madrassas."
While Huckabee also used the opportunity to clarify that he "misspoke" when he confused Indonesia with Kenya, he also suggested that Obama may be anti-American because of his ties to his father and grandfather, who were Kenyan. When asked by Fischer to comment on the idea that there may be "some fundamental anti-Americanism in this president," Huckabee said of Obama, "That's exactly the point."
Take the needle off the record. Why conservatives keep insisting that President Obama is somehow an anomaly is beyond me. How many people in this country are raised by a parent born here and another born elsewhere? Obama only met his father once in his entire lifetime, so how much of an influence could he have been?
How many people in this country grew up living in places outside of the U.S.? Military families, anyone? That does not make you any less patriotic — it may very well have the opposite effect. Not to mention, Obama was raised by whites — first his mother and then his maternal grandparents.
President Obama's grandfather Stanley Dunham was a sergeant in the U.S. Army during World War II. Dunham — who was related to six U.S. presidents, including George W. Bush — and his wife, Madelyn, raised Obama in Honolulu. Obama has said that his grandmother would read the Declaration of Independence to him when he was growing up. His great-grandmother was part Native American.
President Obama is about as white culturally and racially as Mike Huckabee wishes he were. Using Huckabee's flawed logic about what Obama should be because of his Kenyan father — which borders on biological determinism, by the way — Obama should be president because he's related to six others.
This need to continue to question the motives of Obama because of his racial background must stop. He isn't any more mixed or likely to be anti-American than the rest of us, black, white or otherwise. We don't question white Americans who grew up overseas about their citizenship, so why question Obama?
What's so wrong with having a "different worldview"? That doesn't make you anti-American — it just might mean you're exposed or educated about something or someone other than yourself. Memo to Huckabee and conservative zealots: Black, biracial and multiracial people are Americans. Deal with it.
Read more at CNN.
In other news: CIAA: Black-Owned Firms Get Economic Boost From Tournament.