Photos from NAACP, who got them from ThinkProgress.org
It’s about time! It’s obvious to just about everyone with functioning senses that the Tea Party (‘tea bagger’) movement has been racist from the beginning. They have continued to be racist (although perhaps not as much as they used to be, in such a blatant manner) this year. They now use more code words and perhaps the signs have changed to be less clearly racist. But it’s still there. At least those are the observations of myself and others who have seen these people in action in person.
The Tea Party is overseen and encouraged by the most extremist right-wing elements in the Republican party, and to a certain extent some libertarian and militia groups. This is a dangerous mix of people. Every single one of those groups has a problem with people who are anything but “white” and many of them have angry and violent personalities. (I was almost attacked by a very angry Tea Bagger at the first rally I recorded in 2009). I know these things in part from my own associations with people in these groups. Many Republicans themselves are racist, sexist and classist people, but those who are the most extreme are now the Tea Partiers. The Tea Baggers are racists and the Tea Party itself is a racist organization that was formed as a direct reaction to the election of a black American president. They can’t stand that another tax-obsessed white man wasn’t put in office.**
These descriptions fit some people in Congress too, people like Michele Bachmann, who align themselves so closely with the Tea Party.
But I want to emphasize the vast differences between the current Tea Party and the tea party protesters of the past, such as those we saw during the Bush administration. Bush era protesters who reenacted patriot acts of the early Americans were obviously not racists and were inspired by the crimes of the Bush administration and questions about torture, 9/11, the wars and the suspension of our civil rights during the Bush administration. That is not what the Tea Party is protesting. They are protesting Obama. So it’s fitting that the NAACP finally determined the Tea Party is racist. Better late than never.
By the way, Sarah Palin had something to say about this on her Facebook page, mostly that this makes her “sad”, and the rest is not worth repeating. In fact, let’s face it, none of her screeching or writing is worth repeating. But the media will report it and repeat it like it’s consequential.
NAACP Delegates Vote to Repudiate Racist Elements Within Tea Party
Today, [July 14] NAACP delegates passed a resolution to condemn extremist elements within the Tea Party, calling on Tea Party leaders to reputiate those in their ranks who use racist language in their signs and speeches.
The resolution came after a year of high-profile media coverage of attendees of Tea Party marches using vial, antagonistic racial slurs & images. In March, respected members of the Congressional Black Caucus reported that racial epithets were hurled at them as they passed by a Washington, DC health care protest. Civil rights legend John Lewis was called the “n-word” in the incident while others in the crowd used ugly anti-gay slurs to describe Congressman Barney Frank, a long-time NAACP supporter and the nation’s first openly gay member of Congress.
Missouri Representative Emmanuel Cleaver was spat on during the incident, and so it was particularly appropriate that the resolution was passed as NAACP delegates gathered in Kansas City for our 101st Annual Convention.
The proposed resolution had generated controversy on conservative blogs, where in some cases the language has been misconstrued to imply that the NAACP was condemning the entire Tea Party movement itself as racist.
The resolution will not become official NAACP policy until approved by the National Board of Directors in October.
More from NPR. The Tea Party baggers are fighting back by calling the NAACP “bigoted” which makes no sense at all. Blaming the victim is an old, transparent tactic that right-wingers use ad naseum. Michele Bachmann, one of the Tea Bagger Queens in the U.S., has her staff constantly and nastily attacking anyone who accuses her of anything. It’s increasing, I have noticed, and making her look stupider than ever.
Bachmann, by the way, appears to be a closet racist who uses racist code words in her speeches, and she’s an embarrassment to everyone in Minnesota.
**This is obvious: If John McCain had been elected, the Tea Party would never have been formed. Why would they have bothered? John McCain is as white as it gets. War “hero” too, in their eyes. Yet John McCain would probably be doing many of the exact same things Obama has been forced to do with the economy. Or maybe the whole thing would have collapsed by now, which would have come with it’s own set of benefits and huge negatives. I really don’t want to learn to speak Chinese, at least not until I have to. As Obama now says, if he hadn’t done what he did, the economy would probably be twice as bad off and unemployment twice or three times as high.
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