Obama and Race

Obama recently said that what happened to Trayvon Martin could have happened to him. Lets take a look at that statement....

Obama was raised in Hawaii and went to The Punahou School, an elite private school. As a non-Hawaiian living in the islands he would have been called a "haole", a semi-derogative term for non-islanders. At the worst, he would have been called a "hapa haole" or half haole. Note that haole does not differentiate between white or black - it refers only to your Polynesian heritage. So, racially, he would have been lumped in with all the other white people on the island.

Also, as a student at Punahou, he would have been insulated from the racial tension between the Polynesians and haoles normally seen in high schools in Hawaii. When my father moved us to Pearl Harbor in the 60s, he was told that there only two schools for a white boy, Punahou or Radford HS. Radford because it had the majority of the military brats and was mostly white.

Finally, because he was in Hawaii during the era of racial strife in the south, he had no idea of what was going on and by his own admission he was stoned most of the time.

I wish someone would ask him how smoking weed at a prestigious private school in Hawaii means he has any knowledge of the black experience.