Reply #9: Birtherist response highlights racial undertones of ‘debate’ [View All]

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_theticket/20110427/ts_yblog_theticket/birth-certificate-wont-end-race-related-attacks-on-the-president

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So what's fueling the dogged questioning of Obama's origins? Many critics of the birther movement say its core tenets--and its stubborn resistance to evidence disproving those beliefs--can be traced to racial hostilities. The fundamental birtherist conviction, these critics say, is that an African-American can't have legitimately won the presidency--and that his elevation to power therefore has to be the result of an elaborate subterfuge.

"There is a real deep-seated and vicious racism at work here in terms of trying to de-legitimate the president," Peniel Joseph, a professor of history at Tufts University, told The Ticket.

"This is more than just a conspiracy," Peniel added. "I think this is fundamentally connected to white supremacism in this country."

Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. in early April called for the connection to be publicly drawn between birthers and racism: "So it is time to call this birther nonsense what it is--not just claptrap, but profoundly racist claptrap."



Birthers and the persistence of racial paranoia
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/michaeltomasky/2011/apr/27/barack-obama-obama-administration