Birtherism Redux -- Trump's Racist Handbook

Once again, Donald Trump is raising birther claims – this time not about President Barack Obama but about Senator Kamala Harris. After a conservative law professor questioned Ms. Harris' eligibility to serve as president and vice president based on her parents' immigration status at the time of her birth, Mr Trump was asked about the argument during an August 13 “news conference.”

Trump said …

"I heard today that she doesn't meet the requirements. I have no idea if that's right, I would've -- I would have assumed the Democrats would have checked that out before she gets chosen to run for vice president. That's very serious."

Trump then asked the reporter if she was saying Harris doesn't qualify because Harris "wasn't born in this country." He referred to the lawyer who raised the issue in a Newsweek article, Chapman University professor John Eastman, as "very highly qualified."

Earlier in the day, Trump campaign senior legal adviser Jenna Ellis also presented Eastman’s op-ed as grounds for a birther revival, calling the baseless concern “an open question, and one I think Harris should answer so the American people know for sure she is eligible.”

(Matt Stieb. “Trump Revives Racist Birther Conspiracy for Kamala Harris.” Intelligencer. August 13, 2020.)

Trump son-in-law and senior advisor Jared Kushner told “CBS This Morning” co-host Anthony Mason on August 14 that Trump was not agreeing or disagreeing with Eastman. “He said that he had no idea” whether Eastman was “right or wrong,” Kushner said.

Mason asked, “Why didn’t the president take the opportunity to debunk that theory?”

Said Kushner, the enabler: “Let his words speak for himself.”

(Lynn Sweet. “Trump revives racist ‘birtherism’ after Biden taps Harris for vice president.” Chicago Sun-Times. August 14, 2020.)

Kamala Harris immigrant parents -- Shyamala Gopalan and Donald Harris

Kamala Harris mother, Shyamala Gopalan, who died in 2009, was a cancer researcher from southern India who moved to California for graduate school before Harris was born. Her father, economist Donald Harris, emigrated from Jamaica.

Kamala was born in Oakland, California, United States of America, on October 20, 1964. Harris is the first Black and South Asian American woman on a major party ticket.

"Under section 1 of the 14th Amendment, anyone born in the United States is a United States citizen. The Supreme Court has held this since the 1890s.

Sheldon Goldman, a distinguished professor of political science emeritus at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, called the argument being made about Harris' eligibility "100% bogus."

Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard University, called Prof Eastman's argument "garbage" and "racist birtherism redux.”

Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School, told the Associated Press: "Let's just be honest about what it is: It's just a racist trope we trot out when we have a candidate of color whose parents were not citizens."

(“Trump stokes 'birther' conspiracy theory about Kamala Harris.” BBC News. August 14, 2020.)

The accusation against Harris is similar to the Trump-propagated birther conspiracy theories about President Barack Obama, but with more sweeping implications: Obama birthers suggested that nonwhite people are only contingently American, whereas Harris birthers reject the citizenship of up to 18 million Americans.

A cadre of racists allege that these children do not automatically receive American citizenship. And, the conservative legal movement continues to entertain their lie. Some media outlets give these quacks a megaphone through which to launder their racist falsehoods. In truth, Eastman is not qualified to pass judgment on anyone’s citizenship. He spins fables that become the foundation for birtherism 2.0.

Back in 2011, Mr Trump began stoking right-wing theories that President Obama might have been born in Kenya. Even when Mr Obama produced a copy of his birth certificate in April that year showing he was born in Hawaii, Mr Trump continued to claim it was a "fraud.”

Donald Trump is a racist who elevates the efforts of the alt-right. He has a long history of bigoted actions that continues to this day. Remember, recently Trump cast peaceful demonstrators in the streets after George Floyd's death as "THUGS" and criminals. He has repeatedly made appeals to suburban White voters, specifically women he describes as "Suburban Housewives," warning that polices created by the Obama-Biden administration to dismantle segregation in housing will destroy their neighborhoods.

Trump told Wisconsin voters during a recent tele-town hall that those housing rules would bring "who knows into your suburbs." And he has described the toppling of statues of Confederate generals and slave-owning figures from America's history as an attack on the nation's heritage and founding principles.

(Maeve Reston. “Trump's birther lie about Kamala Harris magnifies racist themes of his campaign.” CNN. August 15, 2020.)

Birtherism is a racist smear. It is a tactic Trump used to get himself into politics, and now he uses it again to discredit one of the most successful office holders in the United States. You can say birtherism is “campaign strategy,” but that doesn't reduce its charge as unmitigated racism. It is part of Trump's plan to advance conspiracy theories and a rhetoric of white supremacy. This makes Trump an unashamed racist willing to use anything to gain reelection, and that includes a campaign to “make America hate again.”