I’m Free, White, and Twenty-One: The Real Origins of the Tea Party GOP’s Addiction to Birtherism

“I’m free, White, and twenty-one.”

–Inger Stevens, The World, the Flesh, and The Devil

Since the election of Barack Obama Conservatives have become addicted to crazy talk.

If I were more inclined to be impolitic, I would simply say that those Conservatives who subscribe to the belief that Obama is not eligible to be the President of the United States by virtue of the status of his birth were rank bigots who suckle at the poisoned teats of the wrong end of history and wallow in old school, dominative, blood is destiny racism.

But given that more than a plurality of Republicans believe that the President is part of some Manchurian candidate-like conspiracy, one which was elaborately planned decades ago, the Birther delusion needs to be taken seriously. On the surface it a manifestation of Richard Hofstader’s classic work on the paranoid style in American politics. The fringe and the paranoid have always been with us. Birtherism is just a 21st century version of a tried and true theme in American life that has run amok once more. Thus, it is nothing new.

Digging a little deeper, the obvious becomes apparent: the Birther meme is about race, difference, and a crisis in Whiteness at the turn of the 21st century. In total, Birtherism is a pathology in the heart of the White Conservative Soul. But in that delusion, there is a synergy of facts that often go under-discussed for fear of violating norms of political correctness.

Primarily, Obama is a black man who happens to be President. This is unsettling to many white folks–as well as to their erstwhile coloured colonial administrators black and brown Conservative enablers such as Herman Cain and Alan Keyes. Even more telling, I would suggest that the vitriol directed towards President Obama is not just a function of White American anxiety at the time of a declining empire.

Sure, economic insecurity and realistic group conflict are part of the story. But, there is more going on. Here, I would make two interventions. First, the hatred by the New Right towards President Obama is not only about policy (to the degree that Conservatism can even be decoupled from White supremacy) but also speaks to symbolism: the White Racial Frame cannot accept that a person of color, a black man, is the leader of The Free World and resides in the White House. This is an upset that many of The Greatest Generation and their Conservative spawn cannot countenance because in their eyes to be White is to be quintessentially “American.”

The second point is a bit more nuanced. While Shelby Steele and others smartly suggested that then candidate Barack Obama was a racial compromise nominee, a “mixed man” who could please white Americans because he did not carry the baggage of slavery and /or channel white fears of racial comeuppance (like Jackson or Sharpton were imagined to by some). Thus, voting for Obama was a get out jail free card for some white folks and a potentially transgressive act. But, there was a deep problem in Obama’s success for other White Americans–the very same core group who would later form the nucleus of the John Birch infused Tea Party GOP.

Barack Obama is unapologetic in his life accomplishments. Regardless of what one thinks of Obama’s policies, he is no dolt. President Obama may be too generous to his foes, but he is without regret for, doubt about, or at all apologetic regarding his intelligence. This explains why the human mediocrities of Red State America flock to Palin and her many distinguished life failures for the Tea Party GOP brigands seek not a philosopher king, but rather an intellectually bereft political Whore of Babylon who validates all of the short comings inherent in White Populism. Thus, President Obama gets tarred as “uppity” or “elitist” because–and I give my foes no parlay here–he is smarter and more accomplished than the typical proles of the Tea Party GOP ever could be (even with all of the unearned advantages that come with Whiteness).

In total, the Tea Party GOP may indulge in talk about Birtherism, xenophobia, rewriting history textbooks in Texas, banning ethic studies in Arizona, secession, nullification, and States’ Rights, but the New Right is really about a fierce protection of the psychic and material wages of Whiteness. For what is all of this “real America” talk, if not a signal to the inviolate and inalienable rights that are imagined to come with being White?

I have come to a long and difficult conclusion regarding the White Conservative Soul’s antipathy towards President Barack Obama. At first, I thought it was “just” policy and ideology colored by white racism. More recently their disdain is becoming even more apparent as the Right and many Conservatives have made it plain that they hate the basic fact of the President’s existence. At first I did not want to write such a thing. Now, the reality of the Birther’s hold on the Tea Party GOP and the consequences of this big lie for the American polity demands that we speak truth to power…and that we do so without apology.