“If Obama is not truly American, then America has still never had a black president.”...
.. Romney is not himself a birther. He was engaging in ironic post-birtherismshowing solidarity with birthers by making a humorous remark that can be plausibly denied as a joke later. This is a necessary device for a Republican politician who wants to rile up the base without seeming like a lunatic, because the belief that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States is still held by nearly half of self-identified Republicans even after the very public release of the presidents birth certificate. Birtherism remains the most frank and widespread evidence of racial animus among some of the presidents critics. As Ta-Nehisi Coates writes in The Atlantic this month, the birthers, strapped in their waxen wings, aim for nothing less than the sun: If Obama is not truly American, then America has still never had a black president....
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/09/fear-of-a-black-president/309064/?single_page=true
I suspect many Republicans who continue to subscribe to the birther lunacy do so because it bothers liberals and because its an act of symbolic defiance of a president they dislike. The problem with birtherism, however, is that the underlying assumptions driving it have always been broader than the president. Birtherism is more than just a conspiracy theory about the presidents birth. Its underlying principle is a rejection of American racial pluralism. The refusal to believein the face of all evidence to the contrarythat Obama is an American reads to many as saying black people dont really count as American unless they talk like Herman Cain or Allen West.
Thats the problem with Romneys joke, too. It falls into a long list of remarks that suggest an emotional myopia based on an extremely sheltered life experience. It comes across as gloating about the fact that, as a rich white man born into a wealthy and powerful family, Romney has rarely been subject to the kind of racist or sexist assumptions that clog the daily lives of millions of Americans. Romney might as well joke that hes never been mistaken for a waiter in a restaurant or a clerk in a retail store, or that hes never been selected for extra screening at an airport or randomly told to empty his pockets by the NYPD. The reason Romney doesnt have to show the country his papers isnt because everyone knows he was born in Michigan. Its because whiteness remains unquestionably American for some people in a way blackness does not. That should not be a point of pride for Romney; it should be a matter of anger and disappointment.
more:
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/08/romney-birtherism-joke-michigan