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Is Birther Controversy a Racism Issue?

JudeBrando said:
The constant accusation from the Left that everything and everyone on the Right is always racist is a vicious, hateful, deliberate, defamatory lie and does nothing but minimize legitimate claims of racism, but they don't care.

http://stoprepublicans.blogspot.com/
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You know, I actually agree that the small number of lefties who cry racism at every corner do detract from when racism is one of the more important motivating factors in a claim.

Like this one.

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Not all birthers are racist or motivated by racism, but a large enough number of them are that it colors the movement. Let's face it, birtherism is ridiculous and racism is one of the only things ridiculous and powerful enough to sustain such a unsustainable belief.

So it would be unreasonable to assume that just because someone is a birther that they are also a racist, it isn't unreasonable to see that racism does play a large part in the movement which is more accurately described as anti-Dem or anti-Obama.
 
JudeBrando said:
The constant accusation from the Left that everything and everyone on the Right is always racist is a vicious, hateful, deliberate, defamatory lie and does nothing but minimize legitimate claims of racism, but they don't care.
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That's a strawman argument. There is not constant accusation from the left that everything and everyone on the right is always racist.

If that were the case, you'd easily defeat the proposition that everyone on the right is always racist.

Please read this:

http://www.fallacyfiles.org/strawman.html

Pay attention to the subfallacy of straw man--the extreme man. It's really easy to defeat most positions if those positions are mischaracterized in language of "all" or "everyone" or "always".
 
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aggle-rithm said:
We'll never know whether this would be an issue if Obama had the same name but was caucasian...but it's possible, so I don't think attributing it to racism is warranted.
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See my earlier post.

I think provisionally accepting the premise that racism at least influenced the Birther movement as the result of inductive reasoning (examining ALL the evidence to see where it points) is warranted.

The little deductive argument you outlined above, of course, isn't valid, but that doesn't mean the conclusion isn't true if arrived at by a different reasoning process.

I don't think people are saying the ONLY reason to think there is racism is that no caucasian president faced a Birther challenge. It is, rather, one more bit of evidence that tips the scales in the direction of the conclusion that racism is a factor.
 
Some of it could be racism, but I suspect more of it is just political desperation. Anybody remember the whole bit where Bush couldn't be president because he and Cheney were from the same state?

ETA: I didn't notice when I posted the link but guess who filed the lawsuit saying Bush couldn't be president?

"We believe Bush is from Texas and Cheney is from Texas," said Philadelphia attorney Philip Berg, the lead counsel in the case.
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Yep, the same guy who's been pushing the Birther issue.
 
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Brainster said:
Some of it could be racism, but I suspect more of it is just political desperation. Anybody remember the whole bit where Bush couldn't be president because he and Cheney were from the same state?
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No, I actually don't. Yet everyone knows what a 'birther' is. That probably tells you the important difference in those two 'movements'.
 
Let's not forget that the Birther claims started as a smear campaign by Hillary supporters. That the GOP crazys took it to the next level doesn't excuse the original claims. While I'm not sure racism can be completely discounted, I believe the xenophobic explanation works best. On the surface, Barack is so different from our typical presidential candidate, that injecting any silly question mark about his past is enough to sway simpleton voters.

Presidential campaign are inherently dirty. Look at McCain's 2000 run and the Rove-led smear that he had an illegitimate black child during the South Carolina primary. I'm willing to bet that if you conducted a poll of those same voters now, 10 years later, there would still be some that believe that story.
 
I think racism is kind of a red herring in the issue. It might have played a factor early on, but now it's just as has been described--a popular basis on which to hang one's wishes that the President is in some way not legitimate.

Continuing to press on the racism issue actually gives too much of an out: "There they go, accusing us of racism again!" It doesn't get anywhere.

People believe it for any reason that causes them to not like Obama, be it racism, partisanship, or legitimate dislike of his policies. The problem is not in why they dislike him, but that they are willing to select for any facts that harm his credibility.
 
JudeBrando said:
The constant accusation from the Left that everything and everyone on the Right is always racist is a vicious, hateful, deliberate, defamatory lie and does nothing but minimize legitimate claims of racism, but they don't care.

http://stoprepublicans.blogspot.com/
Click to expand...

In a PPP poll released Thursday, a 46% plurality of registered Republican voters said they thought interracial marriage was not just wrong, but that it should be illegal.
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http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/po...think-interracial-marriage-should-be-illegal/

No word on how many thought it was wrong but should be legal.
 
Anyone that has spent any time interacting with birthers on the internet will know that racism is a major factor in birtherism.
 
A fundamental core tenent of birtherism is that the citizenship of his mother is not important. Why? because she was a race traitor.
 
Since when do people who believe earth-shatteringly idiotic things get the benefit of the doubt about why they believe them?

My suggestion to butt-hurt birthers is to stop being idiots. Then maybe we can have a reasoned discussion about race and politics.
 
First president with a foriegn sounding name? Hmmm you think its Obama? I think its Roosevelt or Van Buren or Eisenhower or Kennedy or Reagan or Nixon...

What does that even mean "a foriegn" sounding name?

We are a country where everyone...save the native Americans...was origionally from somewhere else...including Washington. My last name is very foriegn sounding.

How is Obama any more foriegn sounding than ORiely? How is Barrak and more foriegn sounding than Dwight?

How do you get to determine what is foriegn sounding?

It sounds like a code for Arab or African...leading to, maybe, a suposition about race?

BTW: Trump was origionally a name from Germany (a foriegn country we fought two wars with) and spelled something like Drumph (that's probably wrong, but it was a strange foriegn sounding german spelling).

Additionally, this "foriegn" sounding name guy -- on half of his family at least -- goes back many, many generations in this country before the Trumps ever got off the boat (and his mother had some sort of strange foriegn name like MacDougle or wierd keltic/Scot varrient like that).

Beware of all foriegn sounding names!
 
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