BECK: This is when he changes his name. He changes his name from Barry -- because he's trying to fit in as Barry. Then he meets Frank Marshall Davis. He then changes his name to Barack. Why? To make a statement. And to fit in.

Think: You change your name to -- from Barry -- you want to fit in. You decide, “No. I want to be somebody different.” You change your name, and then, again, play the audio of what he did after he changed his name.

OBAMA [audio clip]: I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets. We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets. At night, in the dorms, we discussed neocolonialism, Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism, and patriarchy.

BECK: Stop.

PAT GRAY (co-host): I mean, is that mainstream stuff?

BECK: That's not.

GRAY: No.

BECK: That is a guy named Barack. “Hey, Barack.” Not Barry. “Hey, Barry, come here. Let's talk about neocolonialism.” No.

GRAY: “How 'bout structural feminism, then?”

BECK: “Barack. Neocolonialism.” It takes on a whole different light. So, he goes in, he seeks these people out. As Barack, not Barry. He seeks them out. He creates a new identity for himself.

You know what? This sounds ridiculous. But I don't believe it is. Maybe it is. Somebody said to me -- some -- I think it was during the O.J. trial or something. Do you remember what was -- Pat, you were -- we were working together at the time. We had somebody on talking about -- they were doing -- they were handwriting -- they were one of the world's best handwriting-analysis people.

GRAY: Mm-hmm.

BECK: You remember what that was for? It was back in the early '90s. We had somebody on -- they were analyzing handwriting. And I started talking to them off the air, and they said, “You know, you change your signature, and you change your life.” And I said, “What?” They said, “You change your signature, and will you change.”

So, while I am -- now I'm sobering up. I decide to change my signature. One of the things I didn't like about me, back in the old days, was, I had an ego that could stop Barack Obama's.

GRAY: What?

BECK: Yes, I know. It comes as a surprise to you, Pat.

GRAY: Whoa.

BECK: I had a --

GRAY: Wait.

BECK: So I changed the way I sign my name. I was working on it. I wanted to be more humble, yadda yadda, and I remembered those words, and I thought, “You know what? I'm gonna change my signature.” I sign my name now with a lowercase G and a lowercase B, and I do that to remind myself I'm not a capital-letter guy. Humility.

It plays a role to this day, because I remind myself every time I sign my name who I'm trying to be. I contend the same thing happens with Barack Obama. You do create yourself. A lot of people are created. A lot people just go through life and say, "[unintelligible] was my parents. It was this. Oh, I had a tragedy." That was the first half of my life. I let those things happen to me, you know, and internalized them as, “Boo hoo hoo, poor me.” And it almost destroyed me. Halfway through my life, I decided to reset and say, “No. I'm going to be the guy I have allowed myself to become because of circumstances. I'm going to take charge of my life. I'm going to change my life. I'm going to be who I want to be.”

And I went through a period of self-discovery, which is what you usually do when you go to college -- go through a period of self-discovery. And I built myself. I'm a self-made man. Warts and all, troubles and all, I am responsible for who I am.

Barack Obama, I believe, has done the same thing. He chose to use his name Barack for a reason -- to identify, not with America -- you don't take the name Barack to identify with America. You take the name Barack to identify with what? Your heritage? The heritage, maybe, of your father in Kenya, who is a radical? Is -- really?

Searching for something to give him any kind of meaning, just as he was searching later in life for religion.

Previously:

Beck caps off week of race-baiting by calling Obama a “racist”

Glenn Beck: Obama agenda driven by “reparations” and desire to “settle old racial scores”

Beck: Obama “has real issues with race”

Beck said “to be consistent,” Clinton should give Obama “5 percentage points” because of affirmative action

Beck on being a white Christian who “loves America”: “I just can't win”

Beck: A “sick part of me ... would just love to see” Al Sharpton and Strom Thurmond related

Beck, O'Reilly afraid to speak their minds around African-Americans

Beck: Are Americans “as dumb” as Nigerians?

Beck to 7-year-old: “You want to go to Africa? I will personally purchase your airfare”