Barack Obama finally addressed concerns that he had not been born in the United States:
“Yes, in fact, I was born in Hawaii, August 4, 1961, in Kapiolani Hospital,” Obama said in the White House briefing room, looking somewhat incredulous to be making such a statement.
Hawaiian officials, a short-form official birth certificate, local newspaper reports of his birth and fact-checking expeditions by news media long ago had confirmed his Hawaiian birth, but some conservative politicians and media commentators refused to accept it.
“Normally, I would not comment on something like this,” Obama said, but he said he felt compelled to try to put the issue to rest after questions about his birth certificate drowned out news coverage of the deficit crisis.
“We do not have time for this kind of silliness,” the president said. “We’re not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers.”[1]
The real problem here is not about dignity or whether presidents or presidential candidates should be required to produce birth certificates. It is that Barack Obama has mislabeled racism as silliness.
Racism is not “silly.”
- [1]Margaret Talev, “Obama releases birth certificate, calls for end to ‘silliness'”, Sacramento Bee, April 28, 2011, http://www.sacbee.com/2011/04/28/3584737/obama-releases-birth-certificate.html↩