“Foreign Country.†Hawaii is a group of Pacific islands 2500 miles from San Diego. Honolulu is as close to Tokyo as from Washington, DC.It has a large Japanese-American population as well as a minority population consisting of (largely mutiracial) descendents of the Polynesians. A white minority. A place as different from Kansas as Puerto Rico is. Obama is essentially a colonial and because of his family background less friendly to American culture than a middle-class native of the Philippines would be.
Yes, that was his “American experience.” Which was liberally supplemented by his most impressionable learning years spent in Indonesia. Possibly elsewhere too as he has said he lived in other countries without ever saying where or when.