HOME | DD

ErinPtah In reply to Hippalektryon [2015-06-22 19:47:35 +0000 UTC]

Do you mean the "he's a Kenyan Muslim" line?

I checked your profile and I see that you're not from the US, so you've probably missed the context....

When people call President Obama Kenyan, they're not talking about his being of Kenyan-American descent, they're asserting that he is literally a citizen of Kenya and not a natural citizen of the US. There was a whole mainstream movement of people demanding to see his birth certificate, to prove that he was born here. It's part of a general narrative from white America that "he's not like us," "he's not a Real American," "he's an outsider who has no right to run Our Country." The problem is that he's black, but they have the self-awareness to know that would be obviously racist, so they present it as being about national origin -- although no white president, not even the ones conservatives don't like, has had their citizenship questioned. (The hospital did release the birth certificate at some point, and these same people accused it of being a hoax, because admitting it was real would mean admitting that their concerns were all about race.)

You can see this idea coming up with people who don't care about hiding their racism, too. The terrorist in Charleston last week said that he "wanted to shoot black people" and accused his victims of "taking over the country."

Calling him a Muslim is part of that same narrative. Christianity is the biggest religion in this country, all our presidents have been Christian, and there's a big part of the (white) Christian mainstream that sees themselves as especially entitled to this country -- for example, they want to turn their own religious standards into laws that everyone has to follow. Meanwhile, Islam is probably the most stigmatized religion in the US. Ordinary mosques get protested and attacked as if they support terrorism. (Most terrorists in the US are white and Christian , but the mainstream dismisses those as outliers, deranged loners who aren't part of a pattern. Whereas the minority of Islamic terrorists get reactions like "is there something inherently violent about Muslims that makes this happen?")

So claiming that Obama is faking his Christianity and secretly practicing Islam instead is another way of saying "he's not like us, he's strange and different and it's extra-sinister that he's hiding it." (Lots of white politicians get accused of faking/exaggerating their religious sincerity to look more appealing to religious voters, but the white ones never get "you must secretly be sincere about some other religion.")

It's also a way of invoking Islamophobic stereotypes, even when you don't say that directly. People who were already making over-the-top accusations of Obama hating America, or being sympathetic to terrorists, are the same people who say "he's a Muslim!...and you know what those people are like."

I wish I was exaggerating how mainstream this stuff is, but it's already exaggerated to the point of self-parody. There was this one event where Obama gave some speech, and his wife gave him a fistbump in congratulations afterward...and a news anchor asked, wide-eyed, "Was that a terrorist fist jab?" You don't say something like that unless you are insanely dedicated to seeing sinister, America-threatening subtext in every random thing the Obamas do.

And, again, white presidents don't get that. Obama only gets it because there's a double standard, because he's black, because lots of Americans are racist.

👍: 0 ⏩: 1

Flyboy254 In reply to ErinPtah [2015-06-23 05:27:09 +0000 UTC]

Well, one white president got it pretty badly. Guy had to face down problems with his faith right up until his death, and even then people were cheering when it was announced he was dead. His foreign and domestic policies earned him so much hatred and scorn, there were literally wanted posters for him, dead or alive.

👍: 0 ⏩: 0

ErinPtah In reply to SmallAustrianVillage [2015-06-19 23:26:35 +0000 UTC]

Nobody's ever said racism only comes from one segment of the population! Just that it's important for every individual to try to change the group that they belong to. If a Sheikh (Sikh?) person commissioned me to draw something in response to racism within their family, I would draw that too.

👍: 0 ⏩: 1

SmallAustrianVillage In reply to ErinPtah [2015-06-20 01:55:25 +0000 UTC]

Apologies,  I'm not expressing myself well. (In addition to my autocorrect striking again, curses,) in the case of the 'Muslim Kenyan', in the context it was being expressed, it didn't strike me as a comment founded in racism but rather a frustration for policies that they felt were designed to be detrimental to the "'Murican' way of life. Honestly, given the frustration my military buddies have with the current administration,  I've heard that comment coming from some of the most un-racist people you can imagine.

👍: 0 ⏩: 1

ErinPtah In reply to SmallAustrianVillage [2015-06-20 02:56:36 +0000 UTC]

I'll believe it's not racist when you find some examples of frustrated people making the same accusations against white presidents. Lots of people thought Bush's policies were terrible for America -- but nobody insinuated that he didn't belong in this country and should go back to England. Nobody accused him of being, I don't know, Wiccan, but keeping that a secret and faking Christianity. Nobody is making those accusations of Hillary Clinton, either, so it's not something conservatives throw at everyone they disagree with. Only the ones who aren't white.

👍: 0 ⏩: 1

SmallAustrianVillage In reply to ErinPtah [2015-06-20 03:02:11 +0000 UTC]

*laughs *
My apologies, the thought of many if ANY politicos actually  being honest to god religious folk of any flavor strikes me as funny. 

But to your point, I certainly appreciate where you're coming from. And I appreciate the art for provoking the conversation. 

👍: 0 ⏩: 0

ErinPtah In reply to OutcastClankzilla [2015-06-19 16:27:18 +0000 UTC]

Something like that. For so many people, it's not "systemic discrimination is bad," it's "systemic discrimination against us is bad, but against other groups, it's just logic."

Can't wait for the day when we truly evolve out of the system altogether.

👍: 0 ⏩: 0