A few years ago my wife and I attended a conference at Hampton University, where then Senator Obama spoke. He cautioned his listeners not to forget, “…where they came from. That is, one day you black men may leave the Hood. But never forget that originally you were born and grew up in the Hood.”

What garbage! Barak Obama wasn’t born in the “Hood,” he never lived in the “Hood” and he never experienced first hand the drugs, violence and poverty of the “Hood.” He grew up in a “non-Hood” white family, attended private boarding schools not public schools, and went to two Ivy League colleges: Columbia and Harvard Law.  So isn’t it being dishonest for a man who has no experience living in the Hood to be admonishing others to revere their Hood experience?

Obama was born just as the civil rights struggle of the 60s was ending and never had to fight for his or anyone else’s civil rights. He never felt the full sting of racial segregation and is unable to identify with those of us who did, no matter what he says he dreamed about and no matter what he wrote about. The ancestors of America’s black population came to this country on slave ships, not on airliners from Kenya. It is therefore impossible for Obama to share in America’s black experience because none of his ancestors lived it nor were they ever slaves on America’s southern plantations.

He did not have the benefit of being reared by a black father so when he met the charismatic Reverend Wright it was only natural that Wright would become his surrogate father and mentor. Over the years I have been a father figure and mentor to many young men of all races, creeds and religious beliefs. Had I known Barak when he was a young man just starting out I’d have taught him that life is not always fair for Americans of any color or religious belief so don’t go around playing the race card.

Some Americans are born into rich and important families; others are born into poor minority families and others still into the middle class. Our success is not determined by where we start in the race of life but by when, where, how and in what condition we are when we cross the finish line. It is based on hard work, perseverance and overcoming life’s obstacles and challenges by making the most of playing the cards we’ve been dealt.

Obama expects us to believe that he sat through twenty years of Rev. Wright’s anti-American, anti-white rants but never once heard or internalized any of that negative and racial propaganda! It’s as though someone had attended Communist Party political meetings for twenty years and then claimed that since no one had ever publicly uttered the word “Communist” in one of the meetings they couldn’t possibly have been Communist meetings. Obama has yet to learn that American citizens are overly forgiving, but they are not stupid.

If President Obma were serving in the U.S. Military and the military discovered that for the last twenty years he’d been attending weekly meetings where the leader of the meetings was spewing hate filled anti-American, anti-white rhetoric, the military would immediately cancel his security clearance and unceremoniously kick him out of the service because such a man could never be trusted with the nation’s defense secrets.

Did Obama’s up-bringing, influences, indoctrination, environment and education adequately prepare him to loyally and faithfully perform the duties that are required of America’s Commander-in-Chief? In short, can he be trusted? It’s your call.