White Like Me: Thoughts on Young Obama's Prom Photos

TIME published pictures from Barack Obama's prom night in 1979. For me, these photos are more evidence of something I have thought for a long time - young Obama seemed like a white guy.

Greg Orme, Kelli Allman, Barack Obama and
Megan Hughes at Allman’s parents’ house in Honolulu.

Despite the Obama mythology, these new photos show that the young Obama was dating a white girl named Megan Hughes and hanging out with other white people including his basketball teammate Greg Orme and fellow student Kellie Allman. It was Kelli Allman (née McCormack) who provided these new photos to Time. She is pictured second from the left.

One of the most puzzling things to me about contemporary politics is the way so many people seem to think that Barack Obama is a black man. As one of the folks who got to know him while he was at Occidental College, I can report that I thought of Obama as an average white guy in terms of his IQ and his cultural inheritance. This, of course, should not be so surprising since Obama was raised by his white mother and his white grandparents nearly his entire life.

The young Obama that I knew was mainly interested in hanging out with white guys and white girls (like me and my radical girlfriend) or with his radical Muslim friends. I interacted with young Obama on various occasions between 1980-1981 and I can report that I never saw him hanging out with black students. Never.

Obama, of course, has done a lot of work to create a politically and socially advantageous black image for himself. In his autobiography, for example, I have called attention to how Obama converted my white college era girlfriend into a big black woman.

This ruse needs to end. The young Obama I knew was nothing like the young black people I knew at Occidental College. He did not come from an underprivileged background. He did not have any of the hostility to white people that I sometimes saw among blacks at Occidental College. All the reports we have so far indicate that young Obama was dating white women, hanging out with his white roommate - Phil Boerner - at Columbia, and generally living a white lifestyle imbued with radical, socialist ideology.

I remain amazed that a guy as white as me managed to game the affirmative action system all the way into the White House. I expect future generations, however, will see through this ruse and render judgments that reflect the actual evidence of Obama's life including these new photos.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Looking Forward to My Audit: Dr. Drew Jokes About Strapping Young Muslim Socialist Obama

Thank you, Conan. That was a great intro. Let’s give him a hand. (Applause.) You have come a long way for a guy with no eyebrows.

As an Armenian-American, I know a great deal about roasting things. Oddly enough, I am also half Scottish. This means that I like to cook shish kabobs on a golf stick. By the way, I do not want to hear anything from the press about my being overweight. If you ever need to hold a hot air balloon to the ground, then you will be grateful for my assistance.

Now that the campaign is over, I want to correct some of my earlier comments regarding the young Obama. First, I should never have said your roommate, Hassan Chandoo, was a Muslim. I should have said he was differently Christian.

David Maraniss verified that you and the wealthy Chandoo were in the San Francisco area exactly when I said I first debated you over Christmas break 1980. I should have reported that what I really did that evening was discuss the topic that was closest to my heart – hoops. My radical girlfriend and I were obsessed with basketball. We could not stop talking about it. I do not remember anything you said about hoops, but I am sure we were obsessed about it.

NOT.

In truth, I beat you up intellectually so bad that night that by the time I was done you were like my puppy. You were agreeing with me that there would be no communist revolution in the U.S. You reversed your thinking faster than Bill Ayers fleeing a bomb scene. You fled faster than the original Benghazi talking points.

People always ask me for my first impression of you. I cannot help it that they do not like my answer. Rachel Maddow has attacked me for saying I thought you were in a gay relationship with Chandoo. What I really meant to say is that you were so much better looking than Chandoo that I thought you were in a “pay” relationship.

You two looked so gay together that my radical girlfriend said, “THEY ARE NOT GAY.”

I thought you were gay because you and Chandoo were very close to each other physically. I thought your behavior was unusual because when I am out walking with one of my male friends - I keep a good neighborly distance.

As a young man you were a committed Marxist-Leninist. I have three things to say about that 1) you would have fit in well with an all out Communist like Frank Marshall Davis, 2) you would have been right at home with a socialist politician like Alice Palmer, and 3) a real moderate would share his conversion story with the rest of us.

Now I have made some jokes about Obama, I will repeat what Conan said: “I'm looking forward to my audit.”

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.