President Obama’s decision to release the full long copy of his Certificate of Live Birth in Honolulu may drain the birther movement of some adherents, but it will make few Americans happy.
The majority will appropriately feel shamed by the fact that even today in these United States of America, the stubborn ignorance and blind prejudice of the birthers’ persistent suspicions and lies about his birth ultimately coerced the President of the United States to acquiesce to their demands to see his personal birth certificate. This is truly shameful. No other American president has been compelled by prejudice to produce his birth certificate: that dubious distinction for our first African-American presidents shames us all.
Ironically, the ignorance and prejudice that motivated the birthers’ crusade to see that certificate – long after its authenticity had been repeatedly verified by Hawaiian state officials and independent investigators – still will disable their capacity or willingness to believe the proof that they have been presented. Many birthers will continue to believe, as conspiracy theorists typically do, what they want to believe – that President Obama is some unqualified “other” unfit for his office – rather than the certified truth of his status as a natural born American fully eligible to hold the office of president.
That is the path, psychologists say, that perpetuates the conspiracy mind-set, especially if it fits with their subliminally or overtly racist prejudice, and their sense of entitlement to believe what they choose to believe, never mind the facts.
A national New York Times/CBS news poll released a week ago confirms the depth of that persistently skeptical anti-Obama prejudice. The poll showed that although 57 percent of American adults said they thought that Obama was born in America, 25 percent said he was born somewhere else.