It's not about Obama's birth, it's about his race

Editor's note: Sherrilyn Ifill is a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law.

Baltimore, Maryland (CNN) -- I will not click on the link to view the long form of President Obama's birth certificate. I will not participate in this final humiliation -- in the president's reluctant acquiescence in this ongoing smear.

The release of the president's long-form certificate proving his birth in Hawaii will not stop the attempts to discredit his leadership. The so-called "birther" movement veils a much more basic challenge to Obama's legitimacy. And yes, that challenge has a great deal to do with his race.

This is not new. Black leaders always have had to prove their "legitimacy" and their allegiance to America. The way to smear the NAACP in the '40s, and leaders like the Rev. Martin Luther King in the '60s, was to suggest that they were Communists working against America.

Opinion: Conspiracy theories die hard

Thurgood Marshall spent a good portion of his confirmation hearing for a position on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals refuting charges that he was a Communist. Frederick Douglass pushed President Lincoln to allow blacks to serve in the Union Army as a way of proving to whites that blacks were worthy of citizenship.

Source: http://rss.cnn.com/~r/rss/cnn_allpolitics/~3/Q0M9Iq6cP1E/index.html

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