Subscribe
NewsOne Featured Video
CLOSE

Dinesh D’Souza is a documentarian with the sensibility of a YouTube conspiracy theorist. Megyn Kelly is a FOX News anchor who infamously went on an on-air tirade about Santa Clause and Jesus being White (she’s since told New York Times magazine she was “joking”). Naturally, these are the people well-equipped to discuss the subject of President Barack Obama and the Black experience in America. I can barely contain my excitement analyzing what these two noted racial scholars have to say about a subject they couldn’t possibly know much about to an audience that couldn’t care any less.

RELATED: Valerie Jarrett: “The Nay Sayers In D.C. Have Been Proven Wrong” [VIDEO]

On the MLK edition of “The Kelly File,” D’Souza explained to Kelly that unlike Eric Holder, Al Sharpton, and Jesse Jackson, the President has not been a tremendous force on the issue of civil rights. D’Douza asserted that the other men possess a “completely different attitude toward the color-blind ideal, which they reject.” As for what that is, he argued Obama “hasn’t actually had the African-American experience.”

Kelly was taken aback and ultimately said in response, “He has Black skin and he grew up in America as a Black man!”

If you recall, D’Souza was behind the 2012 documentary “2016: Obama’s America,” which was based on his 2010 book “The Roots of Obama’s Rage.” In both works, D’Souza argued that Obama’s political ambitions and overall ideology were fueled by his father’s anti-colonialism and from some sort of psychological desire to fulfill his dad’s dream of diminishing the power of Western imperialist nations.

Never mind Obama’s memoir, “Dreams of My Father,” where he writes in great detail about the lack of relationship he had with said father.

D’Souza quipped back to Kelly, “Well, he grew up in Hawaii” to which she pointed out, “That’s America!”

This would’ve been the part where someone actually tapped a Black person to add more thoughtful commentary (not Ben Carson), but what can you do? Apparently nothing at FOX News. For the record, before this interview, D’Souza compared himself to MLK in the most-ridiculous tweet:

“AN INTERESTING PARALLEL: MLK was targeted by J. Edgar Hoover, an unsavory character; I was targeted by the equally unsavory B. Hussein Obama”

An Indian American invoking the name of racist Hoover to compare him to the country’s first Black president — with a clear dig at his Arabic name to boot. It’s a shame how well people are rewarded for this level of trolling. If only D’Souza was tackled by a trap door.

I do think there is something to be said about how Obama’s experience often affects the ways in which he speaks to Black people. Namely, his calls for Black parents to stop feeding their kids “cold Popeyes.” To not to “just sit in the house watching SportsCenter.” To stress the value of education at a Black college graduation as if the new degree earners didn’t already get the memo.

As Nia-Malika Henderson noted in the Washington Post last December, Obama has tamped down on that rhetoric, although one still wonders what the source of it stems from.

That, however, is not a question for D’Souza to ask. You cannot engage in xenophobic, propaganda-peddling films and then join another agenda-pushing news outlet to feign interest in whether Obama fits the standard for what being Black American means.

D’Souza doesn’t care and Megyn Kelly isn’t really that invested. Both should stick to what they know: White Jesus and political fantasy films.

RELATED: State Of The Union 2015: President Nails Key Issues But GOP Unlikely To Listen

Michael Arceneaux hails from Houston, lives in Harlem, and praises Beyoncé’s name wherever he goes. Follow him @youngsinick.