Is Birther Controversy a Racism Issue?

aggle-rithm

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aggle-rithm
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I hate to start yet another thread about the Obama birth certificate controversy, but this is something that sticks in my craw a little because it reeks of sensationalism and lack of critical thinking.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_theti...ont-end-race-related-attacks-on-the-president

Birthers emphatically deny such criticism. But it's difficult to apprehend the ongoing resistance to proof of Obama's citizenship without crediting racial fear as a significant factor. At first, after all, many adherents of birtherism argued that the administration fueled speculation by failing to release the long-form version of Obama's birth certificate, but now that this version has been released to the public, the call continues to go out for other kinds of information about Obama's past to be released--a level of scrutiny that neither McCain nor Obama's 43 predecessors in the Oval Office were expected to face.
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First, I should state that, although I'm a Republican, I think the whole birther controversy is a stupid waste of time. Trump is being disingenuous, or an idiot, or both, for harping on it.

Nevertheless, I have a problem with the reasoning demonstrated above:

1. Obama is being accused of faking his birth certificate
2. No other president has been accused of this
3. No other president has been black
4. Therefore, it is an issue of race

I don't think the conclusion follows from the premise. There are other things about Obama that are different from his predecessors other than the color of his skin.

Why can't it be about the fact that he is the first president with a foreign-sounding name? Or that fact that parts of his name ("Obama", "Hussein") are disturbingly similar to well-known foreign enemies of the US?

The birthers are wrong, no doubt about it. But making up inflammatory stories about their supposed motivation is just making it worse.
 
MAybe xenophobia would be a better description? It would still fit with your position that it would be based on his 'scary' foreign name.
 
His race cannot be the only factor. From my studies into racism, it is biological, but it's not based on just skin color, it's based on any identifiable outgroup. For example you can elicit racist behavior in groups of people with different color shirts, overriding their skin color.

When you combine the skin color, the name, the time spent overseas (our liberal candidate in Canada is attacked for teaching at Harvard FFS) the connections with people associated with outgroups (Ayers) it all combines to trigger this effect. I also feel that people are so intimidated and confused by his rationalism and progressive tactics that they resort to hysteria in order to deal with it, tribal mindset, but this wouldn't happen without the biological underpinnings of outgroup fear.

Yes no maybe so?
 
I agree the conclusion doesn't logically follow the premise but I don't think that rules out the possibility of racism. Few people reasonably close to the main stream are likely to talk about this in racial terms so it is difficult to assess their motivations. The strong irrationality of the birthers is an indication of some very strong emotions regarding the Obama. I'm more inclined to believe it has a lot to do with racism, not the KKK type of racism but none the less a form of racism. This to me is more akin to people who will see two people walking down the street and observe that there is a one man and one black man walking down the street instead of 2 men or one white man and one black man. In this form of racism, people always note skin color whether it is relevant or not to the discussion.
 
seayakin said:
I agree the conclusion doesn't logically follow the premise but I don't think that rules out the possibility of racism. Few people reasonably close to the main stream are likely to talk about this in racial terms so it is difficult to assess their motivations. The strong irrationality of the birthers is an indication of some very strong emotions regarding the Obama. I'm more inclined to believe it has a lot to do with racism, not the KKK type of racism but none the less a form of racism. This to me is more akin to people who will see two people walking down the street and observe that there is a one man and one black man walking down the street instead of 2 men or one white man and one black man. In this form of racism, people always note skin color whether it is relevant or not to the discussion.
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I agree. If the news media would say something like this, instead of jumping straight to "racism", I wouldn't have a problem with it.

Maybe the American attention span isn't long enough to accommodate more than one straightforward explanation?
 
Why of course.

Any hard questions or disagreements with Obama is racism, geez.
 
I cringe when I hear guests or hosts in the media assert that this is entirely about race. It may very well be; however, there are other possibilities including those aggle-rithm mentioned.

A while back, I was argued with for suggesting that race is not the primary issue. What I mean by this is that people should stop labeling birthers as racist and label them as the fools they are. We have no definitive evidence that someone like Trump, for example, is racially attacking Obama. And even if he is, I think it's far more egregious to believe in the conspiracy theory.

I would rather see the media pointing out the logical fallacies rather than the racist undertone. Anderson Cooper has done a great job with this.
 
The reich-wing republicans don't believe any democrat is a legitimate president. That Obama is black, while not necessary to their smear campaigns, is certainly helpful in convincing dittoheads and other credulous morons that he is a foreign-born muslim communist.
 
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Drysdale said:
Why of course.

Any hard questions or disagreements with Obama is racism, geez.
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Maybe if you keep repeating it'll be true! It's possible to disagree with and/or dislike Obama's actual actions/policies without having to resort to dogwhistle racism, you know
 
There's no single answer to this. With some it's racism, with others it's a natural distrust of the leaders who don't share their ideologies. With still others it's just a hope this is a way to get rid of a politician they don't like (both sides have an unbelievable amount of people who would excuse someone in their party for doing something they'd want to see an opponent strung up for. The "yeah well this guy you people support did this" justification).

This is a controversy borne of many different roots.* So few things that we want an easy answer for are black and white.*










*:duck:
 
aggle-rithm said:
1. Obama is being accused of faking his birth certificate
2. No other president has been accused of this
3. No other president has been black
4. Therefore, it is an issue of race

I don't think the conclusion follows from the premise.
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You are correct, but I don't think the racism claim is presented in such a vacuum.

There is no denying that there is at least a minority of racists whose views on Obama are owing to racism. (Remember the erstwhile Tea Party leader's racist sign in Houston?) There has been overt racism at some anti-Obama demonstrations.

If the conclusion is something like, "Racism undoubtedly played a role in the Birther movement", and you saw it as inductive rather than deductive reasoning, I think there is sufficient evidence to provisionally accept that conclusion.

The inductive vs. deductive reasoning part is perhaps the most important point of my post, I think. It's a reasonable conclusion based on all the evidence, not a logical proof based only on the premises you cite.
 
Drysdale said:
Why of course.

Any hard questions or disagreements with Obama is racism, geez.
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So you think the birther issue is a "hard question" that Obama is avoiding? :rolleyes:

Whether it's racism or not, it's a lie that has traction within the republican party.

A plurality of Republican voters, 47 percent, said they believed Mr. Obama, who was born in Hawaii, was born in another country; 22 percent said they did not know where he was born, and 32 percent said they believed he was born in the United States.

http://hotair.com/archives/2011/04/...nk-obama-was-born-in-another-country/?print=1
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The generic attack on Obama being an illegitimate president is not because of racism its because he has a D at the end of his name on the ballot. The same generic group attacked Clinton for being illegitimate and called him a rapist and murder as well as Kennedy calling him a tool of the pope and claiming he cheated to win because of mob ties/cook county while ignoring the cheating in down states Illinois for Nixon. The same with FDR. The specific attack though seems to have a huge tint of race.
 
I think everyone's missing a simpler answer. It's simple dislike for someone. Obama's got his birthers, George W. Bush had his 9/11 idiots, Clinton had his Vince Foster twits, George H. W. Bush had his New World Order morons. For some people, if they don't like someone, they'll latch on to whatever they can to validate their dislike for them.
 
It's a racist attack, but not all attackers are racist, they're just trying to find anything to destroy their president. They simply cannot accept that a Democrat is in power.
 
aggle-rithm said:
Why can't it be about the fact that he is the first president with a foreign-sounding name? Or that fact that parts of his name ("Obama", "Hussein") are disturbingly similar to well-known foreign enemies of the US?
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How are any of these things not racist?
 
TheJim said:
The generic attack on Obama being an illegitimate president is not because of racism its because he has a D at the end of his name on the ballot... The same with FDR.
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And, don't forget, FDR was Jewish! Franklin Delano Rosenfeld. Has anyone seen FDR's original long-form birth certificate? :rolleyes:

Believe it or not, Jew haters are still pushing this crap. :(
 
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