Anecdotally, in Ohio yes, plenty of people I know hold the belief that if your parents or grandparents were immigrants, you can’t be president. Which is of course why they had a problem with “Barack Hussein Obama” (they always have to add emphasis on the middle name for some reason) and had nothing to do with him being black.
It’s mental gymnastics all the way down, I stopped trying to understand.
Personally, I think it’s partly that, partly just the knee-jerk “OMG THAT’S A MOOSE-LIMB NAME REEE” they feel when they hear any sort of foreign sounding name that has any vague “middle eastern” sound to it.
And of course the actual origin of names doesn’t matter, I’ve seen plenty of people assume traditional celtic or even scandanavian names are “from Africa”
Are MAGAs saying that?
Anecdotally, in Ohio yes, plenty of people I know hold the belief that if your parents or grandparents were immigrants, you can’t be president. Which is of course why they had a problem with “Barack Hussein Obama” (they always have to add emphasis on the middle name for some reason) and had nothing to do with him being black.
It’s mental gymnastics all the way down, I stopped trying to understand.
Its because of Sadam Hussein as if he was somehow named after Iraq’s dictator.
Personally, I think it’s partly that, partly just the knee-jerk “OMG THAT’S A MOOSE-LIMB NAME REEE” they feel when they hear any sort of foreign sounding name that has any vague “middle eastern” sound to it.
And of course the actual origin of names doesn’t matter, I’ve seen plenty of people assume traditional celtic or even scandanavian names are “from Africa”
Both points summed up: racism
There was a dude I liked and kinda respected up until about 2008. His entire argument was “OBAMA OSAMA!”
No joke, the first time I ever heard my mother say anything about a politician, it was “Huh. Sounds like Osama…”
Of course her entire worldview is religion based, so no surprise how she votes.
And of course all the small town Bible belt highschoolers would say “Obama Bin-Laden” like they were just oh-so-clever.