On Friday, speaking in his native Michigan and standing alongside his wife Ann, Romney said...
"Now I love being home in this place where Ann and I were raised, where both of us were born. Ann was born in Henry Ford Hospital. I was born in Harper Hospital. No one's ever asked to see my birth certificate. They know that this is the place that we were born and raised."
After the "punch line," Romney paused to take in the appreciative laughter and applause from his predominantly white audience.
Though Romney's remark drew immediate criticism from commentators, many were just as quick to add that Romney is no racist. But it is often true that people demonstrate their racism or other bigotry through humor. Especially in more refined circles, it is considered a more acceptable way to disparage a racial or ethnic group.
A key point of No Apology is to disparage President Obama for supposedly "apologizing" for America, though Romney is short of specifics as to exactly what Obama has said that would constitute an apology, rather than just the occasional recognition that the U.S. government hasn't always been perfect.
Yet, one of the ways the United States clearly has fallen short of its finest ideals has been in the history of white supremacy and the callousness toward the harm done to non-whites. Romney's book -- and his "joke" on Friday -- puts him in the camp with white supremacists, a place where he has chosen to be.
By noting, accurately, that no one has asked for his birth certificate, Romney also recognized that -- as a white man from a prominent family -- his Americanism is beyond question. The same is not true for an African-American with a "foreign-sounding" name like Barack Hussein Obama.
It is ironic, however, that neither Romney nor Obama had fathers who were born in the United States. Romney's father, George Romney, was born in Mexico where his polygamous Mormon grandfather had fled to escape American laws against a man taking multiple wives. Obama's father was from Kenya.
Yet, the two family situations have been treated entirely differently. As Mitt Romney noted, "No one's ever asked to see my birth certificate," while many prominent white Republicans have demanded to see Obama's birth certificate.
The baseless "birther" conspiracy theory has been perpetuated despite the fact that Obama authorized Hawaiian authorities to release even his "long-form" birth certificate when "birthers" raised questions about the "short-form" certificate that had been public for years.
Though the offensive theory about Obama's birthplace has been repeatedly disproved, its promoters continue to use it as a way to rally working-class whites against the black "other." Romney is even giving several prominent "birthers" speaking slots at the Republican National Convention next week. These include billionaire Donald Trump who briefly jumped to the top of Republican presidential polls when he began promoting the lie about Obama being born in Kenya.
Taking everything into account -- including Romney's well-documented hostility toward undocumented Mexicans in the United States -- a troubling case could be made that Romney indeed is a racist, at least of the country-club variety, a sad turn for a nation that only four years ago elected its first African-American president.
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