Actually, I think we kind of agree. I'm saying it's because of his name and because he looks different that any President before him. You are saying it's because he has a foreign national for a father and has roots in another country. But my examples are a direct result of yours.....

Also, I agree with you on the political opposition using these issues against him. To be expected. And, I agree that race doesn't have to have anything to do with it. I'm just saying this particular thing would not be happening to a white man named John born in Nebraska, and I'm saying that no one at all has to be racist for that to be the case.

...which means I shouldn't have used the word only in the previous post, I must admit....

Where did I ever say that ALL people who didn't vote for Obama are racist?

As others have pointed out, my post accused *some* Obama opponents of being racist. I stand by my view that this would be a non-issue if he was white and had an American sounding name. This is just another angle on the "Obama isn't one of us"/"Obama is anti-American" attack.

But I NEVER said that people didn't have legitimate reasons for voting against Obama. I know full well that his policies don't appeal to everybody, and McCain's/Hillary's policies would probably have been better for some people. On the flip side, I think that a lot of Obama voters voted for him for cr*p reasons. But that's irrelevant to this discussion.

Back to the birth certificate issue, did people clamor for Bill Clinton's birth certificate when he was running for President? Did they accuse Ronald Reagan of not being an American because he didn't post a copy of his birth certificate in every newspaper across the country? If they did, I haven't heard of it.

What makes Obama different from those Presidents? Why do people accuse him of not being an American when that accusation hasn't been leveled before?

Did either of them have a foreign national for a father? Is there any evidence all all that their mothers might have been out of the country when she gave birth to them? Imo you're comparing apples and oranges, asking us why they don't taste the same then telling us it's because the apple isn't colored orange.

Well if Johns last name were, say, O'Hara and his father was an Irish national, and his mother was placed in Ireland right around the time of his birth, and when the issue was raised John refused to produce the original Birth Certificate then, yeah Enigma, I think it would.

Remember, this issue was not raised by republicans. It was raised by Democrats themselves. Now that it has been raised it becomes just another thing for a muckraker to check out and it will be done in every presidential election election to every candidate from now on regardless of the color of his skin or what his name is.

Perhaps I should rephrase the statment to read, if you took the word white out of the original statement, there would be no way to construe the statement as an accusation of racism. If the statement substituted any race other than white, would it be the same statement? No, the statement appears to imply that the fictional President would be accepted as American based on his race. If not, why would race be mentioned at all? Your statement just proves my theory. To paraphrase "In order to be accepted as American without question, he has to be white" How is that not racist?

@Max : If you'll notice, two posts down from my original post, I agreed with August that I should have given you the benefit of the doubt. I meant that. Perhaps the way I read the statement was not the way it was intended. Perhaps the statement itself was not worded as intended. My reaction was uncalled for and I admit that. I still believe that you have to leave the word white out of the original statement in order to eliminate the possibility of an accusation of racism being implied.