Honolulu, we have a problem...

I’m sure that most of us have read about or are at least familiar with the controversy surrounding President Barrack Obama’s place of birth and birth certificate. As I listen and read about this subject, I ask myself, “Would this conversation be taking place if Obama was not 1) an African American man, and 2) if his father was not a Muslim and of African heritage? I will talk about these issues to try to get answers to this double faceted question, or if not actual answers, at least to openly discuss the issue.

One of the citizenship requirements for becoming the President of the United States is to be a natural born citizen, as in born in one of the United States or one of its territories. Our current president clearly fits that requirement or he would not have been able to run for the highest political position in the nation in the first place. I am quite sure that the responsible parties did their due diligence prior to Obama even being considered to run for the Democratic seat, and already had squared that away already. However, there are those who are not only unsatisfied with his job performance thus far, but are also opposed to having a man of African descent in the leading position in this country, and these are the folks who are pushing this “birther” controversy. So much hateful, negative, and disrespectful propaganda has been allowed to circulate about Obama, including signs and slogans promoted by various Tea Party groups and members, and their ideological supporters. I do not think that this level of discourse about our political leader would be tolerated if this man was not an African American. There have been so many instances of this, that neither Obama nor other democrats have said very much about publicly, that this has now become a norm in our political culture. It has even gone to the point of questioning his place of birth, his status as an American, and even as a believer in Christianity. This kind of language, propaganda, and political wordplay was not used towards John McCain, who was actually born in a civilian hospital in Colon, Panama. Hawaii is one of our United States, and Obama’s birth certificate, short and long forms, shows that he was born in a Honolulu maternity hospital. This makes Obama to be a United States citizen by birth, as was his mother, who is Caucasian and was born in Kansas.

So what’s the issue? Is it Obama’s father, who was born in Kenya, and is a Muslim by faith? Or is it the fact that Obama is a Black man and some people who take issue with that will spin any kind of false propaganda that they can in an attempt to discredit him? I think that it’s a combination of these two factors that are driving this negative and disrespectful propaganda machine against our President, and the American media rarely speaks out against it. I do not agree with everything that Obama says and does so far, and we all have the right to agree or disagree and to voice that opinion respectfully. However, we should respect the office of the President that we elected and not smear his family and name with false propaganda, media hype, and political wordplay.