PS (Pre-Script): And it never stops. Donald Trump has now launched a
demand that Obama produce his school records. It is both hilarious,
coming from idiots about a near genius, (Dr. Einstein, when did you learn
to speak? Ans.: 4 yrs. old, actually!-EP), which Stephen Colbert brilliantly
mocks, to the tragic. Reportedly, 45% of Americans believed, until
yesterday, that President Obama was not a citizen. In any event, Melissa
Harris-Perry addresses some deep issues underlying these coded, nonsensical
attacks. Put yourself in someone else’s boot, just for this moment.
Ed
http://www.thenation.com/article/160233/birthers-obamas-not-black-enough
Sister Citizen
For Birthers, Obama's Not Black Enough
By Melissa Harris-Perry
The Nation: the May 16, 2011 edition
Remember when the media regularly asked if Barack Obama was “black enough” to get the support of African-Americans? In 2007 pundits wondered if a black-identified but technically biracial candidate who came of age in the post–civil rights era, was raised far from traditional African-American communities, was educated in the Ivy League and boasted a foreign name might be more palatable to white voters than black ones. Today this query seems hopelessly naïve and endearingly optimistic about the fluidity of American racial identities. After the secret-Muslim accusations, the witch doctor posters, the “You lie!” shout-down and the chimpanzee e-mails—it is clear that President Obama is certainly “black enough” to experience both racially motivated public attacks and exceptional support among racial minorities.
But the tenacity of the birther movement has revived the issue of Obama’s blackness for me. Nearly a quarter of Americans, most of them white, believe President Obama was not born in the
Many on the left say that birtherism is just racism, but there’s more than simple racial animus behind it. I suspect that part of the problem is that Obama is indeed not black enough; specifically, the president is not sufficiently Negro—the historical variation of blackness that is uniquely and indisputably American.
The American slave system disrupted the ability of enslaved Africans to retain or pass along their ethnic identities. Igbo,
In this sense, Obama is not very black. He is not a Negro. As a black man, President Obama’s confident and clear knowledge of his lineage is precisely the thing that makes his American identity dubious. Unlike most black people, he has easy access to both his American and his African selves.
In 1897 W.E.B. Du Bois wrote, “One feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two un-reconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.” Although Obama is the child of a black African and a white American, one does not sense this un-reconciled two-ness in him. He confidently embraces a triumphant American narrative that echoes the tone of voluntary immigrants more than the pathos of the dominated.
Compare Obama’s Dreams From My Father with Michelle Robinson’s senior thesis. The First Lady reflected a Du Bois–like struggle with being the outsider within. She wrote, “My experiences at
But in another sense, birther-ism is the dual-edged blade of African identity for black Americans. In the eighteenth century, choosing the designation “African” was a symbol of self-determination. For example, the Free African Society, founded in
But black people have also found it troubling to call
When birthers accuse President Obama of not having a “real” birth certificate, they’re telling him to “go back to
Melissa Harris-Perry
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