Baratunde Thurston On President Obama's Release of His Long Form Birth Certificate

Baratunde's Website: http://www.baratunde.com/

Goldie Taylor On President Obama's Release of His Long Form Birth Certificate (Papers Please)

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By Goldie Taylor 11:36 AM on 04/27/2011

“Show me your papers!” Major Blackard, then just 19 years old, dug into his trousers in search of his wallet. He padded his jacket, but could not find his billfold.

“Sir, I done left my wallet…” Blackard said. Before he could finish his sentence, the young man was posted against the brick wall, cuffed and taken to the St. Louis city jail. Unable to prove his identity, he would spend the next 21 days in a cramped, musty cell. That’s where his older brother Matt found him, beaten and bloodied. Matt returned with Major’s employer later that day, wallet and identification card in hand, to post bond.

The year was 1899. Major Blackard was my great, great grandfather.

The real crime, as Pulitzer Prize winning author Doug Blackmon points on in his seminal work Slavery by Any Other Name, was that my grandfather was a colored man in America.

This morning, as White House staffers released copies of the president’s long form birth certificate, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something very ugly was going on. For the first time in recorded history, a sitting president of the United States found it necessary to produce his original birth certificate for public inspection. Not once, in 235 years, have we ever demanded proof that our president was born on American soil.

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Part of America Died Yesterday With President Obama's Presentation of His Long Form Birth Certificate. There Will Be Re-birth. But That Does Not Change The Death That Has Occurred. I Am In Deep Mourning For This Country.

Yes, Birtherism is Racist: Three Videos Tell You Why

Yes, Birtherism is Racist (As is Donald Trump): Three Videos Tell You Why.
From AlterNet.
By Sarah Seltzer | AlterNet
Posted on Thursday, April 28, 2011 @ 06:37 AM

In the wake of yesterday's surprise long-form birth-certificate reveal from President Obama, there's been plenty of incisive commentary explaining why the birther movement was offensive and racist, not to mention the insidious nature of conspiracy theories that won't go away. For those in our audience who want to digest that commentary themselves or want fodder to combat colleagues, cousins, or anyone who isn't convinced by the hard facts and evidence, here are three videos explaining the racial politics behind the birther movement.

Rachel Maddow had Goldie Taylor, contributing editor for TheGrio.com, on her show. Taylor read a piece explaining the dangerous history of "identity papers" being needed for black Americans, particularly black men, to even go out on the street and used against them as a form of harassment, intimidation, and discrimination, using a story from her own family as an example.

Go here to read the rest of the article and view the three videos.

Men in Brotherhood: Introduction

Earlier today, I read yet another by now very tiresome to me re-telling of Donald Trumps recent expression of inner unresolved pain in the form of repeating the birther's claim that President Obama was very potentially born in another country. My mind drifted to all the various and pathological ways we men engage with one another in the world. Of course, the birther movement itself is filled with women as well as men who express this particular brand of psychological injury through what may at first appear to be a vindictive need to attack a specific individual--Barack Hussein Obama. I however know what is occurring is a simple disowning of something within that is uncomfortable and that discomfort is then being displaced or projected onto the American President. I know it comes from a wounded place rather than simply a place of trying to reveal the truth to people because of the vitriol that underlies most of it as well as the, for lack of a better word, plain ole energy of it all. It has the DNA markers of pain not a pure desire to enlighten. That DNA marker betrays any truly or potentially altruistic motivation, I believe.

Still, for some reason however, my mind went to the unconscious masculine specifically, whose actions I have observed so much in this life. So as all of this swirled in my head---the wars various men have started and sustained over the years, gang warfare, corporate madness, fear of The Sacred Feminine, school age bullying and such--my mind temporarily stopped. Soon an idea emerged. That idea was to start a series on this blog that celebrates the ways in which men strive for connection and brotherhood with one another rather than ways to destroy or cut each other down or apart. And so this series was birthed: Men in Brotherhood.

And so it is...