Yesterday, the President of the United States did an unprecedented thing: He broke into broadcast schedules and in an unscheduled press conference, showed the world the piece of paper that proves what the world already knew to be true:
He was born in America.
I was in the car, in the midst of a million and one things, when the news came to me via NPR. I heard the term “long-form” and genuinely cracked up. “Long-form” has long been an inside joke of sorts between Angry Black Lady and her blogging minions — someone acts sketchy? We demand to see their long form. Someone refuses to be reasonable? Long-form!
I listened to what the President had to say, entirely approved of his use of the phrase “side-shows and carnival barkers,” and was incensed, if unsurprised, when I heard Donald Trump later crowing about his role in the whole sordid affair (not to mention his outrageous suggestion that he would have to set his eyes on the birth certificate personally before he would be convinced).This was a typical Obama move, frankly — POTUS is very good at separating his ego from the stupid and the trivial, tossing out bones that don’t matter, in order to protect that which does.
And I knew, just like all of us knew, that none of it would change a thing for most birthers — after all, when reason closes a door, crazy opens a window. I harbored some slim hope that Obama’s reveal might make Donald Trump go away, but didn’t really believe that slim hope to be a reasonable one. And lo – I was right.
What I did not anticipate, on any level, was how the whole sad story was playing among black Americans (update: By which I mean: I didn’t anticipate that watching the most powerful black man in history being forced to show his papers would resonate on such a deeply personal, grief-inducing level for an entire community of American citizens).
There are times in the life of a white liberal when she is smacked on the side of the head with the limitations of her understanding. There are times when a life spent trying to listen and comprehend proves not to have been enough, and new information, breathtaking information, is conveyed, and one’s breath is taken and held, as one stands before a chasmal gap, and listens to the voices on the other side.
Ta-Nehisi Coates writes at The Atlantic:
This is a racism of the bone.
My ire is not so much for those who see their interests in that frame, but for the Very Serious People, who see nothing in the fact that those who are sorry that this country wasn’t cleaved in half by Genosha, and those who believe the first black president is a Muslim sleeper agent, are all at the same party. Who with a straight face chalk it up to the inexplicable vagaries of the human mind, or mere chance.
My ire is for those who claim to know better, but do not.
I am really pissed off and quite frankly hurting. Today President Obama released his long form birth certificate to answer questions about where he was born. I can’t remember this being an issue for any other American president or presidential candidate in recent history…. While Obama’s opponent in 2008, Senator John McCain, was in fact born in Panama, it is President Obama who was forced to prove he was born here.The message to all people of color, especially African American men is: “You are not good enough.”
One last point: It’s really amazing that we’re even talking about this. In a sane world, the President of the United States wouldn’t have to release personal information to quell conspiracies about his citizenship…. To a depressingly large number of Americans, “blackness” runs counter to this country’s identity, and an African American president is, by definition, illegitimate.
The Negro was made an American through the sin of slavery but kept this identity through the sacrifices of citizenship: taxes, military duty, labor, effort, patriotism and struggle. Few acts of racism elicit more disgust among black folks descended from eighteenth-century slaves than being told to “go back to Africa” by a white person whose American heritage goes back only to the twentieth century.When birthers accuse President Obama of not having a “real” birth certificate, they’re telling him to “go back to Africa.” It’s a taunt he’s able to dismiss because he knows exactly where and when he’s from. But for black Americans descended from slaves, to question one’s birth raises perhaps a more troublesome enigma: to be born in servitude to someone, but from nowhere.
The hardened historian in me wasn’t surprised, but I was struck by the sick theatre of a sitting president making special appeal to the state of Hawaii in the effort to prove not only that his election was legitimate, but that his citizenship is valid…. I was struck by the profound disappointment of the Obama generation at the state of black citizenship. I was thinking about horror of the president having to show his papers, echoing with the millions of migrant workers, documented and undocumented who have to show papers everyday and are never pre-supposed citizens.
It hurts more than I thought it would. I’m taking it more personally than perhaps seems rational, but I feel sucker-punched.
This has been a very difficult morning for me. I got the news that President Obama released his long-form birth certificate due to the increasing media circus surrounding claims that he is not one of us, that he is not American….
[Looking back at the history of the civil rights era], you’re reminded of the extraordinary sacrifice that has been involved in allowing all of Americans to exist as, be treated as, participate as, Americans — to be that which they are.
…[Civil rights activists] got on buses and freedom rides, they sat in, they died, in waves and waves of domestic terrorism, so that someone like me could go into a voting booth and not be asked, by some racist poll worker, to pay a tax… or pass a literacy test.
…And today, the President of the United States had to prove that he was an American to the satisfaction of the 75% of Iowa Republicans who doubt that, or the 43% of national Republicans who doubt that, or the one heinous, low-class individual who took credit for it after, Donald Trump.
…I find it hard to summarize in mere words the amount of pain and rage this incident has caused. It’s humiliating — not just to Barack Obama, not just to the office of the President, not just to black Americans and those who supported our quest for freedom. It’s embarrassing to the entire nation, that we would sit and let this happen. We have all been debased by this incident.
…My name is Baratunde Thurston. I’m heart-broken over this.
While I worry, deeply and daily, about what all this mean for the President’s own safety, it’s clear that that’s far from the only worry. It’s clear that a great many of my fellow Americans still — even after members of their community have sat on the Supreme Court and made our laws and shaped our media discourse and been elected to the highest office in the land — do not feel fully free to “participate as Americans — to be that which they are.”
And that does, indeed, debase us all.
Crossposted at Emily L. Hauser In My Head.
As I said to asiangrrlMN, very well said, and thank you.
Powerful stuff, Emily.
Thank you.
Thanks, ee. It’s so powerful to read these quotes one after the other.
I think Emily has joined the ranks of white ladies who can speak for me anytime. Only other person on the list is my moms.
Aw, stm/ABL is making me cry! Thank you sweetie, that’s a fairly amazing thing to say. My goodness.
Meantime, I’ve been going back and forth with someone on Twitter (with respect on all sides, so it’s good) who started with something along the lines of: “How could you not anticipate how it would play among blacks, exactly?”
So I’m adding a clarifying update!
Ignorance is an obstacle, my friends. Avoid it if you can, is what I’m saying.
Thank you for this Emily. It’s so true…and it really saddens and infuriates me how many people would read your post title and react, not with acceptance and understanding of the racism we’re steeped in every day in this society and a desire to change it in whatever small way possible, but rather with anger and indignation at the very idea that they just might possibly are part of the fucking problem and ought to contribute to the damn solution. White privilege is at once insanely powerful and the weakest fucking sauce.
Thanks for this roundup. The whole incident is shameful. I feel like we as a nation have sunk so low and it disheartens me.
White person. Shutting up and listening.
I linked to stopthemaddness’s post yesterday. It is powerful, and as a white woman, I realize that I cannot begin to fathom much of this, other than to call a racist a racist. I continue to be convinced that the vast majority of birthers and teabuggers are nothing but overt or latent racists. Never have I in my 61 years seen a president so vilified over issues that have nothing to do with policy. I have seen things said about Mrs. Obama that made me want to reach into a screen and throttle the writer. It is unconscionable and what’s worse we are NOT having the conversation we need to be having. Whenever the topic is raised the right-wing rats cry “race card” and proudly trot out Herman Cain and Allen West as “proof” of their tolerance. It simply disgusts me. Thanks for writing this.
I just wanted to share my horror at the media and these horrifying individuals among us who condone this state we’re in.
I cringed when Sarah Palin spoke of anyone (race not even an issue) who had gone to university or tried to better themselves or learn about the world was now the elitist enemy of America, I can’t tell you what a deep disgust I felt for everything I love and know to be true to be dismissed as if my efforts to be more than I am branded me a traitor to my nation.
Talk about villainy. To hold up deliberate ignorance and to come from the mouths of such hypocrites to these people who believe the rich when they tell them they’ve got enough, but the rich are suffering.
And now to force the president of America into the most insane game of chicken. I am truly disgusted to grouped together with these people because I am from European descent. And my family is from immigrants as well, more recent than most living around me now. But generalizations are the enemy, Racism is the enemy. sexism is the enemy. Entitlement is the enemy. IGNORANCE is the enemy, and as long as we had elected officials who glorify ignorance for their own greed, we are fighting a losing battle to save America from herself.
I completely understand the sentiment here. I anticipated fury from black Americans. Heartbreak and devastation is much harder for me because I know, in my heart, that there is one reason that Mr. Thompson is in such profound pain right now. There is a reason that no one looks to me to present “papers” to prove I belong or to prove that I graduated with my Master’s on my own merits and not because of some sort of educational welfare.
By a completely random genetic accident, I am white. Somehow that entitles me to a priveledge and acceptance.
I am sorry for every person who was demeaned by this ignorance. I can truly say that my life has been enriched because of the diverse people who have impacted me. Each time I gain an insight to a person which allows me greater understanding for the plight of another, I become a more evolved person. I come closer to understanding myself because other people had the patience to help open my mind and led me away from ignorance.
I see Prez Obama to be that same guiding light for 2011 society. I believe that people will gradually have open hearts/ minds because he is patient will the buffoons of today. He is the hope.
I come closer to understanding myself because other people had the patience to help open my mind and led me away from ignorance.
I think that’s the thing, isn’t it – we have to able to see and admit our ignorance, and then allow ourselves to move away from it.
Shut the fuck up, you race-fixated moron. That some people question Obama’s birthplace in no way makes them racist.
No it makes them fucking morons. He was born in Hawaii, end of story.
That should read “No it makes them fucking morons AND racist.”
Typing while half asleep this morning.
Their racism makes them racist.
Go find a fire and die in it.
Why are you responding to a post that’s over a year old? Projection much?
He’s trying to remember a time BEFORE President Barack Hussein Obama, the Sohulist-Muslim-Kenyan Terrorist Coddler, gave the order that took out Osama Bin Laden and completed the mission that Dubya Dumbass and his cronies fucked up.
The people who need to shut up and listen never will. They are incapable of understanding the value of listening. They are incapable of grasping the fact that the only way of connecting with someone from a different background, be it racial, economic, or whatever, is to accept their life stories for the truth that they are, rather than assume some superior knowledge of what it is “really” like to be black, Hispanic, gay, Muslim, poor… Or, just as sadly, they have no wish to make such connections.
The saddest thing is not that this President has been subjected to such scrutiny about his origins. The saddest thing is that the true believers of the birther movement don’t care, not because the proof is inadequate, but because they simply can’t, or won’t, listen. Their ears are sealed. They are motivated solely by fear and paranoia, and listening is not part of their repertoire, unless, of course, the scary-looking stranger is in their back pocket, politically.
As tragic as I find this, I know that as a white woman who has never been asked to prove that that I am a “real” American, my outrage cannot possibly be as painful, on a personal level, as that of someone who may have been asked for identification simply to justify his or her presence in the “wrong” neighborhood or store. I think it is horrible, but there is no way for me to even begin to claim that I know how it feels.
This phony issue has always made me angry. Now it also makes me want to cry.