Now that Barack Obama has released the long form of his Hawaii birth certificate, I wonder if the two-thirds of Republicans who question his citizenship will be mollified.
I’m not optimistic.
No one ever had a valid reason for subscribing to birtherism. The president still has three funny names that don’t sound a bit like the pale males who have occupied the White House since the founding of the Republic. His real problem is a failure to produce the long form of his officially certified white card.
There is nothing wrong with bashing the American president–we all do it. But the suggestion that the current occupant of the oval office, though duly elected, is an illegitimate imposter is something new. Obama’s moderate, accommodating political style (his health care plan was largely copied from Mitt Romney’s original for Pete’s sake) raises fundamental questions about those who see decry him as a socialist antichrist.
Ultimately, there is only one explanation for the birther phenomenon–it is no longer acceptable in America to despise a politician simply for the color of his skin. We now accept people of color in our restaurants and on our golf courses, but not, it appears, in the White House. [Since this post was written, Sarah Posner has argued persuasively that birtherism is rooted in the tenets of American fundamentalism. I suspect she’s right, but it is frightfully difficult to analyze American fundamentalism apart from the dogma of white supremacy.]
That so many white folks (a solid majority in the South) could be misled by a canard this shallow suggests that virulent racism isn’t just a sad part of the American past. “The past is a foreign country,” L.P. Hartley wrote, “they do things differently there.” Tragically, birtherism reveals that many of us remain trapped in an era that was supposed to be gone with the wind–we do things differently here as well.
A true political imposter like Donald Trump has twice as much political support as his nearest Republican presidential rival because he gave the birther heresy a thumbs-up.
Who are we, and how did we get this way? I wish I didn’t know the answer.
Friends of Justice 
Alan.
You ask “Who are we, and how did we get this way? “.
Perhaps this post by Digby has some of the answer, namely that anti-Negro racism has been built in to American culture from the beginning and though it has lessened over the years it is still a determinative influence on US attitudes to the disadvantaged.
For some reason the link to the Hullabaloo article that I put i n my previous post did not work. Here it is again.
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/racism-american-tradition.html
First of all I am a white tax paying Texaan and second, I am a democratic and voted for Obama.
The “change” he talked about while running for office was no where in my wildest imagination! America now is so far in the red it will not recover for my grandchildrens, grandchildrens, grandchildren. I have read on the Internet that Obama’s Mother was in Hawaii on vacation in the ocean when her water broke and that is why Obama was born in America. Where are his wedding pictures and since he is so dashing, why has no woman come forward and said she has dated him?
So, you have read on the Internet. So, does that make it true? If it is true, what does it have to do with anything? Obama’s mother was a US citizen, therefore Obama is a US citizen. He was born in Hawaii and the circumstances surround his birth there have nothing to do with anything, nor do his wedding pictures nor lack thereof. Why has no woman come forward claiming she has dated him? Fishing, fishing, fishing. Trolling, trolling, trolling.
What do all these questions have to do with Obama’s work or status as President? It seems like a very good example of how the human mind can find itself believing objections against Obama are not really racist, it’s just that he’s concealing his college records and GPA’s to hide something lurid (affirmative action!?); or that even though his mother was a citizen, he’s not; or…