"I was born..." All the slave narratives begin this way, with an affirmation that the narrator was, just like you and me, born. But the slave narrators know that what should be the most inconsequential, obvious, and non-controversial statement was an act of defiance. For often it was not clear when the narrator was born, and often the date and place of birth was never revealed, kept secret so that the slave would never find his or her mother and father, brothers and sisters. Read the passages that begin "I was born..." and remember that nobody told the narrator happy stories of the birth. The declaration "I was born" and whatever followed that--stories of family, friends, stolen attempts to learn to read and write--was the product of painful research, of reconstruction and not of shared memory. But you had to know when and where you were born. The narrator to say something about being born--when, where, to whom--or be cut free from even the meager ties to land, property, family, history that the narrator might have claimed. "I was born" is the first true statement and the foundation for everything else one might say.
On the one hand, there is nothing to doubt about the claim "I was born." And there is nothing to doubt about the reconstructions and inventions--often meticulous in detail--that fill the early pages of the narratives. What is of interest is that one had to say this, over and over again. Every slave narrative begins this way: "I was born." As James Olney points out (in a text edited by Henry Louis Gates, I might add),"prior to the claim of truthfulness (of the slave narrative) is the simple, existential claim: I exist." The narratives had to remind the readers, mostly white abolitionists and those they were trying to convince, that the stories about slavery, abuse, rape, torture, all perpetrated by devout Christians (they were the worst, anyway), were not fabulous lies. Everything had to have the mark of truth, and there is one thing that is true regardless of who says it: "I was born."
Which brings me to the stomach-turning spectacle of our president being accused--by people who have apparently lost all semblance of reason--of being an illegal alien. What needs to be pointed out once again is that the stark-raving mad right-wing Birther movement, which is apparently regarded as credible and worthy of attention by Very Important People, is completely immune to evidence: there is absolutely nothing anyone will ever be able to do to demonstrate to their satisfaction that our President is a natural born citizen. If this were just another example of Beck/Liddy/Limbaugh/Hannity nuttiness, it wouldn't be so troubling or interesting. But the strange tenacity of this story, the eerie certainty with which Birthers assert that our President was born in Kenya, and the way the craziness seems to spread convinces me that something deeper and more ingrained in our national racial imagination is responsible for the fever- pitch of lunacy.
It's a white racist's trick. They are saying: You were not born where you say you were born, and anyone who has told you otherwise is lying. It is important to us--always has been--to sow a little uncertainty about these things, for then the first sentence of any autobiography you will ever write will be marked by uncertainty, and from that only lies will follow. The edifice of a life on which you've built a family, a career, a presidency is built on phony, flimsy foundations and if we can knock those out from under you, we've got you trapped in the wretched despicable white-pride nightmare that we call "Real America." Some imaginations do not stretch far enough to conceive of a Black Man in the White House, so rather than conforming imagination to what really is the case, they've managed to create a vastly more imaginative world in which international forces who hate our country cooked up in 1961 a conspiracy to undermine the foundations of democracy.
That is why it is a desperate and ugly political game that the birthers are playing, and that is why what should have remained a fringe movement is gaining attention in the national media. The story is that proverbial dog-whistle tuned to the racist, capitalist, land-owning id. That is why Obama needs another Jeremiah Wright speech, ostensibly addressed to the toothless crazies but really addressed to "Real America," not Sarah Palin's "real america," but to the one that is uncertain and fearful, and that wants to think better of what we've got than the goddamn Birthers will allow. To people--and there are a lot of them--who are still uncomfortable talking about race and the consequences of racist ideology, but who are kind and well-meaning and want to be rid of prejudice. Obama will certainly be more respectful that I will ever be of the toothless crazies. That is why he is the President.
I don't know where I been born. Nobody never did tell me.