Trump's claim that Obama wasn't born in the US was not just about delegitimizing his presidency. But perhaps even more devastatingly to delegitimize the average black American's identification with the most powerful man in the world. To allow black kids to believe that a person from his circumstances could aspire to be the President of the U.S.A. That as a free citizen he didn't just have the right to hate the government but could in fact lead it from the highest office in the land.

It implicitly let the average racist white person on the Street to say to an African-American: "He's not one of you. He did not rise from you. You are not suddenly our equal. You are still just freed slaves."