Bingo!
I doubt the GOP would be claiming these things about Tim Scott or Ben Carson.
Race plays a role, but political partisanship seems bigger. If I had to guess, it is motivated by racism but without politics to pull the trigger, it isn’t an issue. You need both racism and partisanship. With just one you wouldn’t get it.
Ted Cruz is Cuban and born in Canada. He never had birtherism because he was a republican. A democrat who was Cuban and born in Canada would hear endless birtherism from the right. Meanwhile of all the insults directed and Bill and Hillary Clinton, none of them was that they weren’t born in the US because they were white with western names.
I think it’s not just classic anti-black racism. It’s racism and xenophobia. If the 2008 Democratic Party nominee had been a black guy (or an interracial guy) named Barry Dunham, from a small town in 'Bama (Roll Tide!), there would have been other dog whistles, but no one would have been demanding to see his long-form birth certificate.
But Barack Hussein Obama, whose (Muslim*) dad was from Kenya (in Africa!), and who spent some of his formative years in Indonesia (a Muslim country!) clearly pushed a lot of buttons for some people that Barry Dunham from Wide Spot, AL, would not have. I think it’s even possible that Obama’s somewhat “exotic” air may have actually helped counter some of the “but he’s black!” bigotry (see “Is Obama Black Enough?” from TIME Magazine, Feb 1, 2007, and assorted other ruminations from that long-ago era) but unfortunately Obama’s background also brought in another whole heaping mess of xenophobia to make up for that.
*Actually ex-Muslim atheist (those are the worst kind!)
Well, to be fair, there has to be a plausible possibility at the heart of a good birther rumor. It’s not wholly absurd to wonder if Chester A. Arthur was born in Canada instead of Vermont. It takes racist-level dissonance, confirmation bias and just plain old dumb-ass stubbornness to turn such a thought into a persistent belief, though, instead of just shrugging it off when it gets soundly disproved, as was done handily for Obama.
There isn’t any wiggle room for either Bill or Hillary Clinton in this front, though.
I think it’s racist because that’s the only explanation that makes sense why so many people pushed this bullshit. There was a mountain of evidence he was born in Hawaii, and no evidence he was born anywhere else. And it’s an identity based conspiracy theory about the first black president. It’s possible that some people who pushed and believed the theory don’t have any racist beliefs or impulses, but I don’t think it’s credible that many or most of them didn’t.
Don’t forget how many of these folks reside within their own media bubble, and believe whatever Rush or Hannity or whoever tells them. There are still people convicted that the Clintons killed Vince Foster.
Some of them might not be racist. I suspect that lots of them were a lot more likely to believe this one because of pre-existing biases.
I’m not sure if this has been or can be proven, but I would strongly suspect that racial bias against black people, whether in major or minor ways, correlates pretty strongly with belief in birtherism.
It’s not quite accurate to say that people who believe in conspiracy theories (like Obama being born in Kenya) are stupid. A more useful way to put it is to say that they have unconscious assumptions that make it easier for them to believe in conspiracy theories that support those assumptions or are derived from those assumptions. Because they have spent so much time reading and listening to sources that make assumptions (racism often being one of those assumptions) that imply something must be wrong with Obama and hence he must not really be eligible to be President, these people find it much easier to accept those conspiracy theories that they have heard from those sources. It may or may not be true that they mostly are less intelligent than average. People generally underestimate how much unconscious assumptions affect how people make conscious choices, regardless how smart they are. I suggest everyone read Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman to learn more about this.
Agreed. Biases against Democrats. 
Even if true, correlation isn’t causation. And the problem with that is it allows one to pin negative and provably false belief about Obama on racism. Even when people easily believe the same or similar thing about white Democrats.
I’m not sure how it could be proven. Seems logical to me that racism will make folks more likely to believe a bullshit conspiracy theory about the first black president, and considering how utterly bullshit this one was, and how many people believed it, it seems logical to me that racism had something to do with it. I suspect it had a lot to do with it. Maybe it was just a moderate amount. Probably couldn’t be proven either way.
So: Maybe not racist, but #1 with racists.
“9 and 3/5 out of 10 racists agree!”
It seems like the bar is set too low, even if we agree that it can’t be proven. Lost of folks seem to think that all that is necessary is to present a compelling narrative relating Birtherism to racism. And I agree that’s a narrative that can seem pretty compelling. However, I think one also has to show that other narratives are not compelling, and I’m just not seeing that. What I’m seeing is that other narratives are dismissed because they don’t fit the preferred narrative.
I find the other narratives less compelling to various degrees. The only one that’s even slightly compelling is “Republicans tend to believe nasty things about Democrats, whatever the evidence”, but even if that’s true, I think it’s also extremely likely that such beliefs about Obama were exacerbated and made more likely due to still existing significant levels of anti-black racism.
I haven’t heard the narrative. Can you give some idea of it, and maybe say how it relates if at all to the other narrative?
Well, you have to be a bit more careful than that. Controlled correlation is the definition of causation. i.e., if there is only one possible difference between a successful experiment and a failed one, then that one difference is, by definition, the cause of the success or failure.
There is a very high correlation between drinking poison and getting sick or dying. That specific type of correlation is defined as causality.
Many Dopers seem to believe that a person must literally confess to racism before he can be labeled “racist.” No matter how well racism models a person’s speech or actions, he must explicitly say “I hate XX because he is black” before it is fair to label him racist.
But this thinking is absurd. Birtherism is racist. Period. Close the thread.
Is there one non-racist Birther tucked away in some suburb of Boise? Probably — Heck, the percentage of Birthers who are also indisputably racist might even be as low as 98% for all I know. This doesn’t change the principle; sociology is not an exact science. Birtherism is racist.
Recall Matt Taibbi’s interviews at a Tea Party rally. These people didn’t care about economic issues, nor the birth certificate; they hated Obama because he was a liar: he pretended to be half-white.
So if Jimmy Bob says “I don’t hate all lazy Nigras. Why I even let a half-breed cut my hair!” then Jimmy Bob is NOT a racist. Got it.
I would not disagree with that. As I said, I suspect racism is a significant part of it in this case, but I’m completely not convinced that a white, Democratic candidate with a similar background would not have had a Birther movement generated around him or her as well. The right-wing smear machine is very strong and very effective. Whatever works.
They would have tried, but I think it would have caught on far, far less.
I think most birthers probably can’t stand McCain. There are big divisions in the Republican party from what I can tell.