Some see racism in ‘birther’ issue

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

Shortly after President Barack Obama declared himself an American-born citizen with papers to prove it, Baratunde Thurston declared himself a disgusted black man.

“I find it hard to summarize in mere words the amount of pain and rage this incident has caused,” Thurston said.

“This” would be the nation’s first black president standing in the White House, blue power suit and all, going on TV to debunk, in more detail than before, the persistent, he-ain’t- really-an-American rumors fanned anew by Donald Trump, the developer and might-be presidential candidate.

Many African-Americans responded to Wednesday’s scene with a large sigh. The rumors and the controversy had a particular, troubling resonance for them: They’ve seen, heard, lived the legitimacy of black people being called into question so many times before that, they said, they weren’t shocked to see it happen to Obama over something as simple as a birth certificate.

But they were sad about it, too, seeing what they felt was a high-level manifestation of the idea that when a black person accomplishes something great, there must be something wrong.

“The stress of feeling constantly called into question, constantly under surveillance, has emotional and physical consequences for us,” said Imani Perry, a professor at Princeton University’s Center for African American Studies. “It also puts us in the position of not being able to be constituents, with respect to our politicians, because we feel we have to constantly protect the president. ... You see people attacking him, and he’s the president; what happens to those of us who are not the president?”

This week, black people struggled to deal with what many of them perceived as a racially motivated put-down of Obama at the hands of Trump and the “birther” movement. Fleeting thoughts about boycotting Trump’s hotels and casinos, or pressuring advertisers to pull away from Trump’s “Celebrity Apprentice” TV show bounced around Facebook and Twitter, the barbershops, the suites and the corner.

Ellis Cose, author of an upcoming book that explores anger and race, said there is a sense that Obama has become the lightning rod for a general longing among certain whites to “take America back to a time when people like Obama could not be president.”

“A lot of folks are amused, and a lot of folks are upset about this,” Cose said. “In addition to uncertainty about the economy and America’s place in the world, a lot of people who grew up in confidence that America was a very white country are having that reality shaken.”