Dinesh D’Souza continues to say idiotic things about Barack Obama. He appeared on a radio show with Phyllis Schlafly and said that Obama doesn’t really care about civil rights for black people because he’s not really one of them and has never experienced discrimination. Also notice that the caller equates civil rights with being anti-white and anti-Western:
Caller: I got a question. Isn’t Obama’s thinking a product of civil rights…anti-white, anti-Western pro-equality? Isn’t Obama’s thinking actually civil rights philosophy?
D’Souza: That’s a good question, and I used to think so but I think the answer I have to give you now is no. Remember that Obama, I mean Obama yes he’s the first black, African American president, but he hasn’t had the African American experience. And by that I mean he’s never sat at a segregated lunch counter. He’s not even descended from anyone who has. He’s not descended from slaves. His father was, well I’m tempted to say an immigrant, but he wasn’t even an immigrant, I’m an immigrant, you know immigrants come to this country to stay. Barack Obama, Sr. came to America to study and go back home and he did. So, his father’s a Kenyan, his mom is a white girl from Kansas, you know, where’s the African American part?…
D’Souza: So what’s kind of strange is that a lot of African Americans say well I’m for Obama because he’s like me and so on, not realizing that first of all, Obama you know has had no interest in so-called civil rights or black issues, and second of his policies have actually been very harmful, economically harmful to be sure, for Black America.
Remember when Obama was first nominated? He was derided as merely a “community organizer” — that is, a civil rights activist — pushing the Black Liberation Theology agenda of Rev. Wright. Now suddenly he’s anti-civil rights and not really black. Hey, whatever it takes.
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jws1
September 18, 2012 at 12:42 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Conservatives attempting to define “blackness” sounds like another self-inflicted wound, in the form of some nasty soundbites, waiting to happen.
Dennis N
September 18, 2012 at 12:49 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
F you dude, a civil-rights philosophy is something to be damn proud of. Civil rights activities are big damn heroes of history. What kind of bizarro America do you come from? I’m guessing one where traitorous Confederate soldiers are heroes.
imrryr
September 18, 2012 at 12:50 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I should’ve just stopped reading right there. In no universe is that a good question.
chuckcain
September 18, 2012 at 12:57 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
That would be the part where his daughters are called monkeys and pickinninies, and his wife is compared to livestock. That would be the part where asshats say “2012: let’s not re-nig”. That would be the part where he’s called nigger-in-chief. That part, jackass.
shallit
September 18, 2012 at 12:59 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Not only is Obama actually descended from slaves, he’s descended from the very first African known to be enslaved for life in North America: John Punch.
dingojack
September 18, 2012 at 1:05 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
And of course, Dinesh D’Souza is eminently qualified to say who is ‘black-enough’ and who isn’t.
Dingo
reverendrodney
September 18, 2012 at 1:08 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
What the… anti-Western pro equality?
And:
“…his father’s a Kenyan, his mom is a white girl from Kansas, you know, where’s the African American part?”
I think that conversation was between inmates at a loony bin.
Captain Mike
September 18, 2012 at 1:10 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“…his father’s a Kenyan, his mom is a white girl from Kansas, you know, where’s the African American part?”
So having a father from Africa and a mother from America’s heartland doesn’t qualify someone as African-American? I would think it would.
Bronze Dog
September 18, 2012 at 1:19 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The racism continues. I’m reminded of another case where someone said he’s not really black because he’s not proficient at basketball or dance, thus he would be awkward attending “black” social events.
Of course, I’m insulted that civil rights and racial equality are considered “anti-western” and “anti-white” by these nuts. I guess that means I’m not really white or western despite learning those values growing up as a white person in the US from mostly white teachers.
Brett McCoy
September 18, 2012 at 1:34 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I thought Kenya was in Africa and Kansas was in America. African father, American mother… how is he not African American again?
steve84
September 18, 2012 at 1:39 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
They truly believe that rights are a zero sum game. That if you give one group rights that takes away rights from another group.
Michael Heath
September 18, 2012 at 1:45 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Let’s not forget Barack Obama taught constitutional law at the U. of Chicago; IIRC it was the aspect of the law that dealt with civil rights. In addition he was an attorney specializing in civil rights and neighborhood developments.
d cwilson
September 18, 2012 at 1:59 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’m going to remember this quote the next time I see some wingnut who ignores the Southern Strategy and tries to claim that it was conservatives in the GOP who deserve all the credit for the Civil Rights Act, thus pretending all the dixiecrats who migrated over the GOP after the passage of that law never happened.
This is how they really think and how they talk when they think no one outside of the cult is listening: The civil rights movement was a bad thing and equal rights for blacks means fewer rights for whites. Freedom is a zero-sum game.
Chris Hall
September 18, 2012 at 2:20 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
So let me get this straight: all the generations of black kids who grew up post-Jim Crow, who never sat at a segregated lunch counter thanks to the work of civil rights activists can’t claim to have had “the African American experience”? Should we have kept filthy little institutions like that so that future generations of African Americans could have a rite of passage and establish their authenticity?
It sounds like he thinks that having a cross burned on the lawn or watching your relatives get lynched is kind of like a bar mitzvah for black people.
fifthdentist
September 18, 2012 at 2:55 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
This is going to be a surprise for Irish-Americans that they really aren’t Irish-Americans. I mean, they haven’t been denied jobs just because they are Irish or had to ride in paddy wagons or been forced to do menial jobs just because of their country of origin. They have it too good to sully the name of “legitimate” Irish-Americans.
Area Man
September 18, 2012 at 2:58 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
It’s a great thing that racism and discrimination are dolled out only to those black people whose ancestors lived through Jim Crow or were immigrants. Bigots are so careful to make that distinction.
lofgren
September 18, 2012 at 3:09 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I would accept suitably low-riding jeans, an alarm clock on a chain worn as necklace, and breakdancing on a cardboard box while an oversized boom box plays 1980′s hip hop as a fair substitute for sitting at a segregated lunch counter.
dingojack
September 18, 2012 at 3:10 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Further to mine #5 Dinesh D’Souza has had to sit at the back of bus, drink at the ‘coloured’ water fountain, use ‘coloured’ facilities and been denied service at a lunch counter himself, therefore he knows exactly what the African-American experience in the ‘Jim Crow Era’ was like and who, having experienced this discrimination, is ‘black enough’ or not – just like I do. @@
Dingo
Nepenthe
September 18, 2012 at 3:14 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
While I think that the distinction between African Americans and more recent African immigrants is sometimes a useful one, it means precisely fuck-all when it comes to racial discrimination from outside the group. A klansman or a sales clerk can’t tell the difference between a 4th generation Chicago South Side African American, a Nigerian foreign exchange student, and Barack Obama.
TGAP Dad
September 18, 2012 at 3:22 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
WHERE’S THE BLACK CERTIFICATE????
Loqi
September 18, 2012 at 3:32 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“..where’s the African American part?”
Well, I started this math problem with a 1 and a 3, where does the 4 come from?
Die Anyway
September 18, 2012 at 4:14 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
If Obama’s parentage is 50-50 and one side gets to claim him, then I say that the white side should claim him. Or, maybe we could all just put aside the black & white distinction and treat everybody civilly like it didn’t matter about skin.
Yeah, yeah, I know… We’re in America and I’m dreaming.
footface
September 18, 2012 at 4:16 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I think some of you are being disingenuous. African American, in typical usage, doesn’t mean an American citizen with African ancestry. A white South African who immigrates to the US would not typically be called an African American. Nor would a recent immigrant from Somalia. (Well, the recent immigrant from Somalia might be, but only by people who didn’t know—or care—about his particulars.)
baal
September 18, 2012 at 4:50 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I had a religious and conservative African-American co-worker assert one day that since the historical discrimination was so bad, the modern issues are too little to worry about. I was tempted to ask her about her wages, number of times she’s been pulled over and mortgage interest rate but thought better of it.
I strongly suspect that Obama has gotten irrational flack merely based on his skin color and was aware of it. I also don’t think that being the target of discrimination is relevant a sole determinant of someone being black or not. D’Souza’s feeding the right wing talking point that says Obama is not what he appears to be (which is a non-white, non-black, secret Kenyan Indonesian colonialist Muslim atheist, of course).
lofgren
September 18, 2012 at 5:20 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
News to me.
True. The phrase is usually limited to those whose ancestors never left Africa to return millennia later with ships and guns to slaughter the natives. I.E., black or beige Africans.
News to me. What would you call a recent immigrant from Somalia?
I really can’t see how a black American, raised in America on American values, experiencing the world as a black person, with recent ancestors from Africa could be fairly called anything but an African American.
lofgren
September 18, 2012 at 5:23 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
And yes, I realize that there are plenty of historical massacres of black or beige Africans by other black or beige Africans. That’s really not the point.
Area Man
September 18, 2012 at 5:36 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Obama is neither white nor is he an immigrant. He’s a mixed-race guy who spent significant parts of his life in places like Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago, places that have lots of “African Americans” (one of whom he married) and a long history of racial tension. Mixed-race people have always been regarded as “black” in America, so his experience would have been scarcely different from that of a descendent of share-croppers, all else being equal. He’s as African American as it gets.
kermit.
September 18, 2012 at 5:46 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Ed: He was derided as merely a “community organizer” — that is, a civil rights activist — pushing the Black Liberation Theology agenda of Rev. Wright. Now suddenly he’s anti-civil rights and not really black. Hey, whatever it takes.
Why can’t he be both? If he can be an atheist Muslim, a liberal fascist, and a socialist friend of Wall Street, he can be a Black Liberationist without a clue on how to be properly colored. But however we describe it, he’s still stealing Real Americans’ freedoms for himself.
chuckcain
September 18, 2012 at 6:48 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
footface: your sobriquet is apropos.
Chiroptera
September 18, 2012 at 9:42 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
So remember African Americans, Obama really isn’t one of you…so you’d better vote Republican, the party that truly understands your needs.