The Boy Who Cried Racism!

So I found this article by Glynnis MacNicol over at Mediaite.com referring to the ad that the so-called Birthers purchased in the Washington Times. The ad once again reiterated their belief that President Barack Obama is not an American born citizen, and thus is not eligible to serve as President. We've been over this time and time again, numerous lawsuits have been thrown out because of how stupid this truly is.

Well the ad that was purchased features a fairly famous image, and now there are those crying racism over this. I'll show you the ad and then explain:


Now, for some reason there are those who are flipping out over this, screaming about how this is racist. And Glynnis MacNicol over at Mediaite is one of them.

It’s unclear what is more offensive here: the accusation that President Obama is not an American citizen, or the ape imagery. The former, of course, is utterly ridiculous. The latter is not. Also, now Obama is British.

Ape imagery has well-documented racist undertones, making it fairly difficult to miss the subtle message here. Earlier this year the New York Post got in some very hot water for publishing a cartoon depicting policemen shooting a monkey that many interpreted to represent President Obama. To pair that sort of imagery with birther claims is a double insult, that at the same time may ironically get right to the heart of the matter: Why are some people so convinced the president wasn’t born here? Could it possibly have anything to do with the color of his skin.

I'll be the first to admit that I'm fairly sensitive to matters dealing with race. I've at times perhaps over reacted to things and saw things that weren't necessarily there, simply due to the massive influx in racist attacks against Obama.

But this isn't one of them. This isn't racist, I don't care who you are. People want to point to the use of the monkeys as a reference to Obama, however there's two reasons why this is completely unfounded.

1. This is a fairly famous imagery. The Hear No Evil/See No Evil/Speak no Evil image has been associated with the monkeys with their ears/eyes and mouth covered forever. So there's no reason to link that to Obama simply because the Birthers are attacking Obama over the citizenship. Are many of the birthers racist in some of their attacks in labeling him as "not one of us"? Of course. Is THIS among those racist attacks? I don't believe so.

2. The monkeys in the image are CLEARLY identified as the Media/Courts/Congress. So you can't say one of them were meant to symbolize Obama.

I understand the vast racist history of associating black people with monkeys. There have already been many attacks on Obama and his family using that very thing. This doesn't fall into that category.

The problem here is that when you cry racism you dilute the impact that your protestations bear when there truly IS racist attacks against Obama or any other African American. Then it's just "oh here they go again, crying racism at every turn".

There are many racist things out there involving attacks on the Obamas. This isn't one of them. And it's careless and reckless and just flat out irresponsible to cry racism when it's not. Print this post