The Racism Behind Birtherism Comes Out of the NeoConfederate Closet
Other birthers are probably a bit angry at this guy for letting the cat out of the bag, lighting it on fire and swinging it around his head by the tail.
The President can’ be a citizen because he is “mixed race” and the Constitution is only valid up to — but not including, the fourteenth amendment. So by this guy’s claims no black person can possibly become President.
An Alaska man who is challenging President Barack Obama’s eligibility for office on the grounds that the president is a “mulatto” based his complaint on an argument common to the neo-Confederate and antigovernment “sovereign citizen” movements, Hatewatch has learned.
In a complaint filed Tuesday with the Alaska Division of Elections, Gordon Warren Epperly of Juneau argued that Obama isn’t eligible for office because, as a person of mixed-race descent, he is not a “natural-born citizen” of the United States.
“As Barack Hussein Obama II is of the ‘Mulatto’ race, his status of citizenship is founded upon the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Before the (purported) ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, the race of ‘Negro’ or ‘Mulatto’ had no standing to be citizens of the United States under the United States Constitution,” the complaint says. “As the Fourteenth Amendment is only a grant of ‘Civil Rights’ and not a grant of ‘Political Rights,’ Barack Hussein Obama II does not have any ‘Political Rights’ under any provision of the United States Constitution to hold any Public Office of the United States government.”
Though this appears to be the first time it has been used in an effort to challenge Obama’s citizenship status, Epperly’s argument is not unique. Indeed, it seems to be an amalgam of two bizarre extremist legal theories — one that says that blacks do not have the same legal rights as whites because their citizenship is founded on the 14th Amendment, and another that claims that in order to be a “natural-born” U.S. citizen, one’s parents must both be U.S. citizens as well.