Carson says Obama was 'raised white'

WASHINGTON - Ben Carson is trying to reinvigorate his campaign for the Republican nomination by becoming the latest to question President Obama's blackness ahead of critical balloting.

The retired neurosurgeon, hovering near the bottom of the GOP field, said in a series of recent interviews that Obama was "raised white" and doesn't represent the "black experience" in the United States.

"He didn't grow up like I grew up," Carson, the only black major party candidate in the 2016 presidential race, said on MSNBC. "Many of his formative years were spent in Indonesia. So, for him to, you know, claim that, you know, he identifies with the experience of black Americans, I think, is a bit of a stretch."

He also told Politico's "Off Message" podcast released Tuesday that the president was "raised white."

Carson has come under racial criticism himself, but his comments helped him break through the cacophony of speeches and interviews by provocative front-runner Donald Trump and rivals Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and John Kasich.

Carson came in near the bottom in last week's GOP primary in South Carolina, and faces a struggle in the Super Tuesday primaries March 1.

Carson's "lashing out. His campaign is on its last leg," said Leah Wright Rigueur, a professor of public policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. "Here's a chance for him to reinsert himself into the national conversation and rile up the base."

"His comments are not geared toward black audiences; they're geared toward white conservatives," Rigueur added.

Carson has leveled race-based attacks before, saying in 2013 "Obamacare is the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery."

And he's suggested he is still waiting to see evidence of racial bias by U.S. law enforcement agencies.

But even as Carson questions Obama's "blackness," he's complaining about being politically and racially typecast. Obama, once a curiosity because his mother was white and his father was black, has been fully embraced by many black Americans as one of their own.

Carson, however, has lost some admiration that many black people held for his life story and medical accomplishments as his conservative views won praise in heavily white Republican circles.