Letter to editor: I was very disappointed to see that the Missourian is revisiting that nonsense about President Obama's birthplace. This is not about a birth certificate. It's about a black man in a big white house. Anyone who thinks racism is a thing of the past in this country must be living under a rock. I am especially upset about the current attempts to sabotage President Obama because there's a good chance my husband is related to him through his Kansas roots. When the President went to the 65th anniversary of the D Day landing in France, he took with him his great-uncle, Charlie Payne. Mr. Payne had been with the U.S. forces that landed in Normandy in 1944, and so it was a powerful experience for him to attend the memorial service for his slain comrades. Mr. Payne is Obama's grandmother's brother. My husband's maternal ancestors include many Paynes which is a common name in SE Kansas. The President's grandfather, Stanley Dunham, and his grandmother, Madelyn Payne, were married just before Pearl Harbor. Mr. Dunham joined the Army and his wife worked at a bomber factory in Kansas. They named their daughter Stanley Ann because Mr. Dunham had wanted a son. After the war, the family moved several times including to Texas where Mr. Dunham worked on an oil rig. When a friend offered him a job at a furniture store in Seattle, the family settled there long enough for Ann to graduate from high school. Old Army buddies told stories of how business was booming in Hawaii which was about to attain statehood, so Mr. Dunham moved the family one last time to Honolulu. Ann enrolled at the University of Hawaii where she met a brilliant, charming student from Africa. In "Dreams from My Father," the autobiographical account of President Obama's early years, he mentions finding an article from the Honolulu Star-Bulletin focusing on the U of H graduates and his father in particular. It was during his high school years, long after his father had left his mother to return to Africa, that Obama discovered the article "...folded away among my birth certificate and old vaccination forms...." (p. 26) The article quoted the President's father as saying that one thing other nations can learn from Hawaii is "the willingness of races to work together toward common development." That was one of the "Dreams" Obama learned from both sides of his family. How sad that the cancer of racism still infects our ability as a nation to "...form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility and provide for the common defense." The very people who hate Obama for being mixed race are the ones who would benefit the most from his vision of affordable health care, economic opportunity and protection from the ravages of climate change. My mother had a rather gruesome way to describe what these people are doing. She'd say they are cutting off their nose to spite their face. How sad that we are allowing old hatreds to keep us from working together to build a better future for our children and grandchildren. And to think that the powerful corporations are funding the anti-Obama hysteria for their own financial gain is even more disheartening. We are being played for fools and willingly giving up our cherished right to think for ourselves. As the song says, "When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn." Susan Cunningham 3730 Sunset Dr.Pacific, MO 63069(314) 550-0866