Why Barack Obama listed his birthplace as Kenya

The biography provided by Barack Obama to his literary agent specified his birthplace as "Kenya". And, over the course of 17 years, despite multiple revisions by Obama, the Kenyan birthplace remained a fundamental part of the bio on the agent's website.

Was Barack actually born in Kenya? I seriously doubt it, even though Michelle Obama has publicly stated that Kenya is her husband's "home country". Contemporary newspaper listings in Honolulu, for example, list the time and place of his birth. While this isn't ironclad proof, to be sure, it's good enough for me.

No, my suspicion is that Mr. Obama manipulated his birthplace intentionally (and cynically) to take advantage of certain benefits unavailable to those born in the United States.

Bookworm Room describes why that might have been. We need to set the Wayback Machine to 1978, when young Obama was seeking admission to college.

1978 isn’t just any year. It’s a very special year. It was the year that the Supreme Court decided Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978) 438 U.S. 265... [and] held that [the] race-based admission process was unconstitutional.

With that decision, Obama, who was a self-confessed slacker in high school, suddenly lost his e-ticket to a good college. He couldn’t know then (nor would it have mattered) that the various concurrences in this deeply divided opinion would eventually open the door to colleges and universities making race a “factor” in admission, so much so that this “factor-ness” eventually created a whole new quota system.

My best guess is that, denied an opportunity to use quota systems to parlay a lousy academic record into a quality college admission, Obama searched around for other means of bypassing his academic failings. It was this search that led him to announce that he was Kenyan. I’m sure that a certain amount of digging will reveal that, just when the Bakke decision came down, American universities were engaged in some sort of pro-active policy involving increasing the number of African nationals on America’s college campuses. Obama was happy to oblige the universities in this effort by co-opting his father’s nationality, and burying the fact that he was a garden-variety American black kid.

There’s the nexus — In 1978, Obama, who already then was willing to lie to achieve his goals, created a false identity to deal with the changes the Bakke decision wrought on college admissions.

This appears to be an extremely plausible explanation for Obama's refusal to release any of his college transcripts.

My guess is that this scenario -- or one similar to it -- helps explain why Obama enjoys the company of race-hustlers like Al Sharpton.

And where was the media for lo these many years? Busy investigating Sarah Palin's elementary school chums?