Are Donald Trump and his Birther Friends Racist?

The recent birth certificate controversy and President Obama’s act of contrition to the loose association of people we lovingly labeled birthers, has brought up many questions about the motivations of those who continue to fuel this pseudo-controversy and it’s implications on politics and issues of race.

Does the birther controversy have anything to do with race? Absolutely. Is Donald Trump a racist? Likely. Is he alone in his racism? Absolutely not.  Does it matter that Donald Trump and his cohorts may be racist? Depends.

The problem lies not in defining whether or not an individual person is racist but in asking does it matter and if it matters, why?

As a society our views of whether or not someone is racist have evolved over the years. When the line between defining a person as racist or not racist lies between whether or not they are holding a fire hose and sicking dogs on civil rights protestors, that line is easier to see. Racism itself is more insidious and often difficult to define.

Unfortunately as a society we prefer to focus on the more sensational stories that highlight “racist behavior.” We love to become outraged when Kramer from Seinfeld repeatedly uses the “N” word, or when Mel Gibson becomes drunk and lets his anti-Semitism flag fly.  We love to dissect off color comments by people like former Senator George Allen or make fun of lame defenses like Donald Trump and his “I’ve always been good to the blacks” comment.

While racism is expressed in words we like to act as if racism is wholly and only expressed in words. While we seem okay with ignoring things like unequal school funding, continued discrimination in housing and the lasting psychological effects of centuries of systematic racial oppression, we are not okay with Charlie Sheen getting drunk and screaming obscenities laced with racist language.

For those who may feel that racism has vanished it hasn’t. In many ways it has simply gone underground. Unfortunately, rather than taking a long hard look at ourselves as a nation and asking how we got here, we prefer to look at incidents of individual behavior and shake our collective heads. Until we grow tired of our obsession with sensationalized “news,” we will never move to a place of meaningful discussions on topics of race and the cultural legacy of oppression and inequity.