I don't think this qualifies as racism. Rather, it is stupidity. Any Democratic president elected would have undergone the same treatment, maybe under a different guise, but still. This is merely a manifestation of the political tear between the parties. Had Barack been lighter as you say but all biography otherwise the same I bet we would have seen the same thing. What strikes me as most amazing about this story is that it actually exists and the wikipedia page about it is as long as Barack Obama's. There is nothing to it and yet the news won't let it go.

This is just another conspiracy theory among millions and maybe that's why we're still hearing about it. Who doesn't love a good conspiracy theory. Hell, I believe every theory the first time I hear it because I want to exist that kind of fraud exists for some reason. When I first heard the Paul is Dead theory it took me a few minutes before I even thought to disregard it. Conspiracies are alluring for some reason and I think it is more the possibility that things aren't the way we're told than racism why this movement still finds supporters.

I don't consider this racism because I can see the same theory emerging for any president born in Hawaii. There are always nutty ideas out there and there are always nuts who listen. If anything it has less to do with his race as it does with the divide his personality has put into American politics. It also sounds a bit like a whiny republican being a sore-loser. But whatever, it will amount to nothing and doesn't deserve our attention as that will only give the idiots more fuel.

Although the "birther" claim avoids presenting itself as racism, it's fundamentally a way of constructing a distinction between those who are one of us and those who aren't.  I would suggest that the vehemence of those who adhere to this claim owes a lot to its defensive ego-bolstering effect, and when political sentiment is constructed around such an effect, this is enough to acknowledge it as a kind of racism.  Yes, it could equally be directed against a president drawn from another racial, ethnic, or cultural group (Hispanic, Jewish, etc.), but if it were directed against an obviously red-blooded American whose birthplace was in question, it would have much less appeal, and it would at any rate disappear as it was soon as shown to be false.  It's also worth noting that the backers of this claim overlap to a large extent with those who, in the purest possible voice of racial "tolerance," decry Obama as a Muslim.  The danger of the birther claim is that it masks its racism in the language of constitutional technicalities, making it possible for politicians to echo it and lend it an appearance of legitimacy.

In short, it's stupidity (as Leah has said), but I think we can't dismiss it as only stupidity.  We would be ignoring one of the strongly problematic currents in recent American political discourse.