Ben Carson: President Obama was "raised white"
Ben Carson said in a new interview that President Obama was "raised white."
"He's an 'African' American. He was, you know, raised white. Many of his formative years were spent in Indonesia. So, for him to, you know, claim that, you know, he identifies with the experience of black Americans, I think, is a bit of a stretch," Carson said in an interview with Politico's Glenn Thrush published Tuesday.
Thrush asked Carson, the only black presidential candidate in the 2016 race, whether he had any sense of pride when Mr. Obama was first elected.
"You know, I did not," he said. " I mean, like most Americans, I was proud that we broke the color barrier when he was elected, but I also recognize that his experience and my experience are night-and-day different. He didn't grow up like I grew up, by any stretch of the imagination."
Asked if he has ever experienced racism in his life, Carson accused the left of acting racist toward him.
"Well, you don't have go too far. I think the way that I'm treated, you know, by the left is racism," he said. "Because they assume because you're black, you have to think a certain way."
Carson said it hasn't been a problem for him as a black person in the Republican Party.
"I know that in the progressive side of things, they like to say that the Republicans are racist. I know that. I haven't experienced that," he added.
The president's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was a white woman who was originally from Kansas. His father, Barack Obama, Sr., who was black, was from Kenya. They eventually divorced and his father died in a car accident in 1982. Mr. Obama moved to Indonesia with his mother and stepfather and lived there from 1967 to 1971.