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Orly Taitz: Obama Birth Certificate Should Say ‘Negro’

Surprising no one, President Obama’s release of his long-form birth certificate has satisfied none of the Birthers.

James Joyner
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Surprising no one, President Obama’s release of his long-form birth certificate has satisfied none of the Birthers.

TPM‘s Ryan Reilly (“Orly Taitz: Obama’s Long-Form Birth Certificate Should Say ‘Negro’ Not ‘African’“):

“Look, I applaud this release. I think it’s a step in the right direction,” so-called “birther queen” Orly Taitz told me in one of her many media interviews this morning. “I credit Donald Trump in pushing this issue.”

But she still has her suspicions. Specifically, Taitz thinks that the birth certificate should peg Obama’s race as “Negro” and not “African.”

“In those years … when they wrote race, they were writing ‘Negro’ not ‘African’,” Taitz says. “In those days nobody wrote African as a race, it just wasn’t one of the options. It sounds like it would be written today, in the age of political correctness, and not in 1961 when they wrote white or Asian or ‘Negro’.”

Taitz says she’s not giving up her fight. She also claims Obama isn’t a “natural born citizen” because she uses a standard that requires both parents to be American citizens — a misreading of the Constitution which if enforced would have rendered several other American Presidents ineligible.

Additionally–and I’m shocked Taitz didn’t point this out–Obama still doesn’t look white.

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37 responses to “Orly Taitz: Obama Birth Certificate Should Say ‘Negro’”

  1. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    And yet, people were arguing with me just yesterday that one ought not leap to race as a motivation for all of this nonsense…

  2. mantis Avatar
    mantis

    And yet, people were arguing with me just yesterday that one ought not leap to race as a motivation for all of this nonsense…

    Yeah, and most of those same people were babbling about Obama only getting into good schools because of his race (“affirmative action”), so I don’t think we should put too much stock in their analyses.

  3. Doug Mataconis Avatar
    Doug Mataconis

    I’m pretty sure that Orly meant to use another word beginning with N but perhaps thought better of herself.

    And, yes, these types of comments do confirm my contention that, at it’s core, the birther meme and the “Secret Muslim” meme and everything like it is about the color of Barack Obama’s skin

  4. jwest Avatar
    jwest

    Can people even say “Negro” anymore?

    I certainly wouldn’t want to make a faux pas by saying something that could be interpreted as the least bit racist.

  5. An Interested Party Avatar
    An Interested Party

    I certainly wouldn’t want to make a faux pas by saying something that could be interpreted as the least bit racist.

    Too late, as you already did that the moment you implied that the president only got as far as he did academically because of the color of his skin…

  6. Franklin Avatar
    Franklin

    jwest- I’m actually with you (sort of) on that issue. Young people should know the preferred terminology, but when I hear 80-year-old people say ‘negro’ I always chalk it up to “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” I don’t blame them, and personally I try to stop saying “he got gypped” even though I didn’t know what it meant for a long time. It’s okay to try to improve yourself.

  7. jwest Avatar
    jwest

    Franklin,

    I know exactly what you’re talking about. Lord knows I try to stay away from any hint of racial insensitivity and I try to correct others when they do or say something adverse to any race.

    I fear we are a shrinking group.

  8. Boyd Avatar
    Boyd

    Try not to be so smug, Steven, especially since yesterday we were discussing Donald Trump and this post is about Orly Taitz.

    And for the record, it pains me greatly to defend Trump, but I prefer to let people reveal themselves instead of sloppily lumping everybody who believes item A into bucket B. In other words, innocent until proven guilty.

  9. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @Boyd,

    Trump and Taitz are appealing to the same crowd with this issue.

  10. Patrick T. McGuire Avatar
    Patrick T. McGuire

    She does raise an interesting point which none of you addressed. And The Smoking Gun has raised some other interesting points as well.

    Are y’all going to claim that this website is a bunch of kooks too?

  11. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @Patrick,

    You mean the list they call:

    So here’s a few nutty points about the birth certificate sure to be seized upon by the nonbelievers:

  12. Vivian J Paige Avatar
    Vivian J Paige

    Not to lend any credence to this woman but why does she think it should say Negro? Mine doesn’t. It says “colored” – and I’m just a few months older than the president. (Is “colored” a Southern thing? I don’t hear many older people saying Negro but I do still hear colored a lot.)

  13. Christian Avatar
    Christian

    How much longer is this horrible experiment going to continue before someone admits this diversity thing doesn’t work.

    With all the third worlders pouring in its only going to get worse. Having to worry all the time about offending, feeding, housing, educating, providing health care for the sensitive races and multi cultural double digit IQ baby mamas, is so stressful upon the founding stock that the offended should be sent back to where they came from and our speech should once again be free.

    We don’t have anything vested in having people here, like the ones who bankrupted one of the biggest economies in the world, California.

    jews have shown they are not equipped to control all of the media in a free and self governing country since they’re experts on self serving lies and propaganda when we need facts in order to govern ourselves. They shouldn’t be allowed to control any aspect of government since they are killing our founding stock in the middle east for jews and israel. They shouldn’t have their Fed bank or have anything to do with our money supply which they are now going to destroy in favor of a world currency whether we want it or not. They should not control our textbook industry because rather than educating our children they are preparing them for the jew world order. they shouldn’t be allowed to control our – you fill in the bank.

    Its not fair to Southern White people that a member of La Raza and a Zionist are allowed on the Supreme Court but Klanners are banned.

    Obama rules over people that he has no psychological nor biological connection to no matter where he was born.

  14. Drew Avatar
    Drew

    Fascinating, although disappointing thread.

    As always, I have a different take. I’ve never thought Obama not a citizen, but rather simply thought it a petty and irresponsible act on the part of the leader of the United States to not release sensible and commonly released documents.

    Yes, the birthers are crazy, and ought to shut up. But the slobbering of his supporters, giving him a pass, is weird. This isn’t the midnight clerk at a 7-11, this is the President of the United States. These are very perfunctory diligence items – birth certificates, academic or work records etc. I sit, at any point in time, on 3-10 corporate Boards. We wouldn’t dream – out of basic fiduciary concerns – not examining basic documents. In fact, we’d be sued if things didn’t work out with a senior officer hire and hadn’t done basic diligence.

    And yet, Obama’s sycophants declare such issues off limits. From where I sit, yes, the birthers are bizarre. But those defending Obama’s actions, and preening around scoffing at the birthers really need to look in the mirror and ask themselves “how am I tempermentally any different?”

    And we all need to ask ourselves how is it the case that such a simple disclosure comes so easily at this time? Why now? Why not 3 years ago? Why in conjunction with the faux concerns about “real” issues? Sounds to me like Obama played politics with this. The country deserves better.

  15. PD Shaw Avatar
    PD Shaw

    “In those days nobody wrote African as a race, it just wasn’t one of the options. It sounds like it would be written today, in the age of political correctness, and not in 1961 when they wrote white or Asian or ‘Negro’.”

    Seems to be overlooking the key point that the word is being used to describe Obama’s father, an African, as in from Africa. Surely Titz is aware of this fact.

  16. PD Shaw Avatar
    PD Shaw

    Yikes, unfortunate spelling; I meant Taitz.

  17. mantis Avatar
    mantis

    I’ve never thought Obama not a citizen, but rather simply thought it a petty and irresponsible act on the part of the leader of the United States to not release sensible and commonly released documents.

    Despite the fact that he released the only birth document the State of Hawaii issues three years ago? Also, by “commonly released,” do you mean by past presidents? Name one.

    All the rest of your comment goes back to you whining that he didn’t release a document that was actually released three years ago. He did what he did today because idiot lunatics like yourself and the birthers will not shut up about it and the idiot media has decided to spend an awful lot of time appeasing your idiocy.

  18. wr Avatar
    wr

    I think it’s hilarious to see jwest post message after message whining about how people call him a racist, and then post his true feellings under the name “christian.”

    That is you, jwest, isn’t it?

  19. John Burgess Avatar
    John Burgess

    @PD Shaw: I’m sure you mind just confused ‘ditz’ with ‘Taitz’ and you ended up with ‘Titz’.

  20. john personna Avatar
    john personna

    As I say in the other thread, you only tarnish yourself Drew.

    The newspaper birth announcements were enough for any sane person.

  21. john personna Avatar
    john personna

    Or is Drew just hurt that Obama wouldn’t do what the right couldn’t do for itself?

    Since the right couldn’t clean its own house, it had to beg Obama to do it for them.

  22. PJ Avatar
    PJ

    @john personna:

    Since the right couldn’t clean its own house, it had to beg Obama to do it for them.

    You might be on to something, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is part of some deal he made with Boehner, considering how feckless and afraid the GOP are to deal with their crazies.

  23. Michael Reynolds Avatar
    Michael Reynolds

    Of course Drew denies the very existence of racism.

    Nicely done Drew. You’ve jumped into the gutter in a wonderfully obvious way that makes your true beliefs indelible.

    No doubt like the rest of the delusional you’ll go right on in denial. But it won’t work.

    It’s a sad day for you. You had been “passing.” now you’ve outed yourself.

  24. Ben Wolf Avatar
    Ben Wolf

    Nicely done Drew. You’ve jumped into the gutter in a wonderfully obvious way that makes your true beliefs indelible.

    I try not to judge harshly those suffering from serious mental illness.

  25. anjin-san Avatar
    anjin-san

    Of course Orly probably also thinks Obama’s license plate should say “negro” too…

  26. anjin-san Avatar
    anjin-san

    The whole birther thing is just “driving while black” on a grand scale… “That’s a mighty fine house you are living in there boy, you ready to prove you are a real American”?

  27. anjin-san Avatar
    anjin-san

    Also, by “commonly released,” do you mean by past presidents? Name one.

    Second that. Put up or shut up.

  28. tom Avatar
    tom

    The clerk that entered “African” must have been Hawaiian. No seriously, this is why BO waited for so long, he knew the “birthers” would not accept it because of this one fact. For sure this is a political move, just what he is trying to accomplish I don’t know.

  29. michael reynolds Avatar
    michael reynolds

    Yeah, it’s Obama ‘s fault that racist morons have been trying to prove he’s not American.

  30. Eve Newsome Avatar
    Eve Newsome

    Why would it say “African” and not Negro? There are many Caucasian persons in Africa, particularly South Africa. I am not one of these “issue harpers”, just saying, not every African citizen is black, there are lots of natural Caucasian born African citizens. By using “African” that would not necessarily depict a race, just a country of origin. I may be incorrect about that, so someone feel free to chime in if I am mistaken, and I don’t mean that sarcastically.

  31. ratufa Avatar
    ratufa

    why is Obama’s father’s race listed as “African”? Kurt Tsue at the DOH told us that father’s race and mother’s race are supplied by the parents, and that “we accept what the parents self identify themselves to be.”

    http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/born_in_the_usa.html

  32. G.A.Phillips Avatar
    G.A.Phillips

    Who started birtherism? Who prolonged it?Who came up with different races of human?Who’s prolonging it?I am willing to bet all of them have D’s in their names or political party affiliations or after thePH’s….

    sigh….

  33. matt Avatar
    matt

    This is just the beginning. Don’t worry the birthers will soon go to great lengths to “prove” that Obama has been spending the last two and half years forging a birth certificate.

  34. mantis Avatar
    mantis

    Shorter Orly Taitz: Obama should really just be called a Negro.

  35. best alien Avatar
    best alien

    I don’t think much of the birthers, but even so: the question of what composers of the COLB would be expected to write is game as such. So, why didn’t they write “negro” or “colored”? The quote sometimes given seems to refer to current practice, however I find it credible that people actually from Africa would use that in self-identification, and it would be accepted in HI even in 1961 (even if not all Southern States etc.) In any case, to imply or charge the State government of HI as complicit in some giant conspiracy like this (as they would presumably have to be) is absurd, slanderous, and a mark of desperation.

  36. Pasco Avatar
    Pasco

    Orly Taitz is a 1000 percent on target. In 1961 the term African was not used to describe a black person’s race. A black person’s race was always described on government documents as Negro.

    Here’s proof of what I say:

    VITAL STATISTICS OF THE UNITED STATES 1961 at

    http://www.nber.org/vitalstatistics/historical/nat61_1.CV.pdf

    says on page 231 under the section “Race and color” the following:

    “Births in the United States in 1961 are classified for vital statistics into white, Negro, American Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Aleut, Eskimo, Hawaiian and Part-Hawaiian (combined), and “other nonwhite.” [emphasis added]

    “The category “white” includes, in addition to persons reported as “white,” those reported as Mexican or Puerto Rican. With one exception, a reported mixture of Negro with any other race is included in the Negro group; other mixed parentage is classified according to the race of the nonwhite parent and mixtures of nonwhite races to the race of the father. The exception refers to a mixture of Hawaiian and any other race, which is classified as Part-Hawaiian. In most tables a less detailed classification of “white” and “nonwhite” is used.”

    If we were allowed to view authentic Hawaiian long form birth certificates from 1961, I guarantee you, that you would never find one birth certificate listing the race of any person as African. Listing the race of Obama’s father as African is absolute proof that the birth certificate Obama presented as being authentic; is a fake, and proof that Obama was not born in the US of A.

  37. Jay Tea Avatar
    Jay Tea

    OK, time to stake out the sane middle ground here.

    “Negro” was the accepted term for a span of time, as was “colored.” Witness the United Negro College Fund and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

    Obama’s father was not of African descent, was genuinely African, born in Africa to African parents and a citizen of an African nation who never established residency in the US, let alone sought citizenship, so “African” is an understandable use in this context.

    And today’s “African-American” term would be utterly inapplicable to Barack Obama Sr. — but perfectly fits his son.

    Non-Negro Africans were pretty much out of the public consciousness of the time; Arabs weren’t that a big factor in American thinking, and South Africa was still seen as a former European colony with European masters.

    Context, people. The world has changed in 50 years, and so has America. And “Negro” is still a valid term in many contexts. If you’re going to insist on breaking down humanity into races, then it goes along with “Caucasian” and “Asian.”

    J.

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