Ally Action Project Week 9: Racist Birther Conspiracies

This week we looked into the birther conspiracies so that we could push back on these racist actions. The birther movement was a white supremacy rumor that was popularized in 2007 by Trump during Barak Obama’s presidential campaign. Trump stated that he did not believe that Obama was born in the US, making him ineligible for the presidency. Even after Obama released his birth certificate, Trump persisted with his racist conspiracy. It did not matter to Trump of it was true, because spreading the false narrative alone fed his clinging onto white supremacy ideals.

Trump has resurfaced his birther conspiracies again in 2020 to combat another person of color, Vice Presidential nominee Kamala Harris. She is of Indian and Jamaican heritage, and was born in Oakland, California. Trump’s signal of support to an opinion article published by Newsweek was his dog whistle to amplify the racist birther rumor about Kamala Harris.

The US Constitution states, “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President.” The 1790 Naturalization Act increased this scope of natural born citizens to include babies born abroad to US citizen parents. Prior to the Civil War, in 1857 the US Supreme Court ruled in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case that the US Constitution did not extend citizenship to free or enslaved black people and the rights and privileges of citizenship could not apply to them. This deeply racist moment in US history was another step towards the Civil War, and after the war for southern slavery was lost, the move to reverse this Supreme Court decision was enacted. The 14th Amendment of the Constitution from 1868 solidifies this concept of citizenship for all races and gives citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States”, known as jus soli. The concept of jus soli, or “right of soil”, has been debated by white supremacy groups, but it continues to be the rule of law in the US. There is no constitutional mandate for the Vice President to be a natural born citizen of the US, but it is assumed that since the VP would take over for the president in an emergency, that the VP should meet the same criteria of the president.

Children of immigrants are natural born and not second-class citizens. Kamala Harris unequivocally meets the criteria, as her parent’s citizenship at the time of her birth does not factor into her being a natural born citizen. The birther conspiracies have not been aimed at other white candidates in the upcoming election, and the ideal that the burden of proof to be a citizen rests on minority cultures is just another racist roadblock to keep them from progressing forward. Reject birther conspiracies and educate anyone that you know who promotes these racist tropes.