Reply to Why aren't more discussions about blatant greed

Forum Index » Political Discussion

Reply to "Why aren't more discussions about blatant greed"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]When you can't call the man who spent 8 years insisting that the first black President wasn't born in the US a racist without people dismissing you as a far-left liberal loon...exactly how far do you think a discussion calling Republicans greedy is going to go?[/quote]
What does insisting that a person wasn't born in the U.S. have to do with racism?[/quote]

I liked Obama, and voted for him, and I don't care where he was born, but I've honestly wondered the same thing. I keep seeing people just reflexively call birtherism "racist." It just seems symptomatic of the increasingly broad overuse of the term to label basically any stupid comment that a white male says. Birtherism may have been wrong and pointless, but it wasn't racist.[/quote]

Because actual study of the issue indicates the association of birtherism and racism: See http://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2011/04/social-scientists-look-at-racisms-role-in-birther-viewpoint/1#.WQ4LzXnD9Mt

The hacked emails of Colin Powell provided his thoughts on this issue as well:

In an Aug. 21 email from Powell to Miller, he blasted Trump for embarking on a “racist” movement that believes President Obama was not born in the US.

“Yup, the whole birther movement was racist,” Powell wrote. “That’s what the 99% believe. When Trump couldn’t keep that up he said he also wanted to see if the certificate noted that he was a Muslim.”

Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/09/13/colin-powell-hacked-emails/90341788/

Finally, let's look at a couple of other potential examples. Ted Cruz was [b]actually[/b] born in Canada with a Canadian birth certificate, but the birther movement had no problems with his candidacy, and John McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone. In neither of these cases did anyone repeatedly require ever-more-detailed “proof” that they are American citizens, nor were there conspiracy theories spread about how the documentation was "altered" or somehow being hidden.

So, the real question is how can anyone think that the birther movement, and its attempts to delegitimize first a candidate and then an elected president, was anything other than racist?

This column from the Boston Globe provides some interesting historical perspective - http://archive.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2011/05/02/birthers_shameful_racist_roots/

[/quote]

So, it was racist because Colin Powell said so? Sure, many of the people that went along with the birtherism were probably racists, but the proposition that Obama was not born in the US is not racist by itself. The reason Trump didn't question Cruz and McCain likely had more to do with partisanship. And Cruz is latino, you know, the kind of people that Trump is trying to deport en masse. It's not like Trump would let accusations of racism stop him from doing anything if he felt the urge.

If anything, birtherism was motivated by Islamophobia. Both racism and Islamophobia are rooted in xenophobia and bigotry, and I understand why Average Joe commenter might conflate Islamophobia with racism. But I expect journalists who write for "serious" publications to use the term correctly.[/quote]

The initial question - "Obama's father was not an American citizen. Is Obama a natural born American citizen?" is not, in itself, a racist question. However, it's one that is easily answered by noting that his mother was an American citizen, therefore Obama is a natural born American citizen. Taking the question "Was he born in the US?" the answer is (a) it doesn't matter, given the citizenship of his mother, and (b) there is evidence that, yes, he was.

That should end the inquiry, as it did for McCain and Cruz, and if you stop there, then, to paraphrase Jeff Foxworthy, "You might not be a racist."

However, the birther movement went much, much further. They claimed that the birth announcement in the Hawaii paper was fraudulent, that the applicable government officials in Hawaii were lying, that the various forms that were made available were doctored or fraudulent, and such claims were made for years after Obama was elected. They filed lawsuits claiming that he was ineligible and/or not a legitimate commander in chief.

Those claims, as well as the claims that Obama was a "secret Muslim," were all intended to de-legitimize him as a candidate and a president.

Your attempt to deflect the birther movement from being associated with racism was actually the subject of the study noted in the USA Today article.

[quote]"The influence of racial prejudice in contemporary U.S. society is typically manifested in subtle, indirect forms of bias. Due to prevailing norms of equality, most Whites attempt to avoid appearing biased in their evaluations of Blacks, in part because of a genuine desire to live up to their egalitarian standards, but also because of concern regarding social censure," notes the study. "As a consequence, Whites' prejudice is more likely to be expressed in discriminatory responses when these actions can be justified by other factors."[/quote]

The lead researcher of the study said:

[quote]President Obama has consistently faced a number of controversies that are, frankly, not based on fact. We thought that his critics' persistence in pursuing these fantasies, such as Obama's birth in a foreign nation or being a Muslim, in the face of facts saying otherwise, might be indirectly rooted in racism.

Our research investigated whether people who held racial prejudices might be more likely to see Obama as "un-American," presumably because of his race. Indeed, this is what we found. Whites who were prejudiced against Blacks were more likely to see Obama as un-American, and in turn, evaluated Obama as performing more poorly as president. Whites who were not prejudiced, and Blacks in general, did not do so. Additionally and importantly, this relationship was only found with Obama, as prejudiced Whites did not see Vice-President Joe Biden as un-American, despite the fact that Obama and Biden share political party affiliation and agenda.

The April 27 release of Obama's long-form birth certificate is a situation where President Obama and the White House eventually had to exert effort to quell a controversy that should never have been an issue. Our research indicates that one reason it may have initially become an issue at all has more to do with his race than his place of birth. We find that racial prejudice can, in part, influence evaluations of an elected leader, a phenomenon which is quite "un-American".[/quote]

The article goes on to quote psychologist Jack Brigham of Florida State University, an expert in racial attitudes research who was not part of the study: "[T]he results strongly support a role of racism in the birther movement."

[/quote]

There are all kinds of dumb conspiracy theories.  Have you heard the one about 9/11 being an inside job?  Or the one arguing that women who have been raped can be denied health care coverage under the House bill that passed this week?  A psychologist ought to perhaps consider the possibility that people are easily fooled because they want to feel important or "in the know."  [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics