Jack & Jill Politics

Better late than never, I’d say for the NAACP to grope around for some relevance to the actual challenges African-American. As you know, here at JJP we’ve been talking about the racism rife and ripe within the Tea Party for a long time now. Other bloggers & journalists, both black and just people who love black people have also chronicled the many, many, many examples of Tea Party race-baiting. Here’s a WaPo story from May 2010:

In a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, most Americans see the movement as motivated by distrust of government, opposition to the policies of Obama and the Democratic Party, and broad concern about the economy. But nearly three in 10 see racial prejudice as underlying the tea party.

Frankly, a little help at this point is appreciated. The voice of Ben Jealous and the NAACP’s membership couldn’t come too soon, although I do wish they’d spoken up sooner. This mess has gone on too long without strong repudiation. More about the resolution the NAACP has put forward for mostly private discussion among their members:

The original called for the NAACP to “educate its membership and the community that this movement is not just about higher taxes and limited government.” It suggested that something could evolve “and become more dangerous for that small percentage of people that really think our country has been taken away from them.”

“We felt the time had come to stand up and say, ‘It’s time for the tea party to be responsible members of this democracy and make sure they don’t tolerate bigots or bigotry among their members,'” NAACP President Ben Jealous said ahead of the debate. “We don’t have a problem with the tea party’s existence. We have an issue with their acceptance and welcoming of white supremacists into their organizations.”

I hope Jealous & co knows that they are about to catch hell from from the far right. And they’d best get their house in order unless they want to get the ACORN treatment with sabotage attempts and “exposés”. Just look at the so-called New Black Panther Party which is tiny and represents no black people I know. I’m guessing the membership is about 10 people. Real Black Panthers of the past have been highly critical of this little band of hate-filled fools. Yet Fox is running a so-called story on an obsessive perpetual loop with fabricated facts that would make any god-fearing tea partier afraid that Mel Gibson’s phastasmic “pack of niggers” is minutes from a home invasion intent on killing as many “crackers”, white women and babies as possible. Video from Fox News:

So the NAACP had better watch their back. They might find though that this is an area in which black bloggers and the NAACP have some common interests. This is not necessarily a partisan issue — while the Tea Party group lean conservative in their rhetoric, they are not directly affiliated with the GOP. In fact, some of those Tea Partiers are highly critical of the Republican party since they spinelessly have allowed Barack Hussein Obama who’s obviously not even a U.S. citizen since he was born in Kenya or Indonesia or wherever to act like he’s President or something rather than leading the lynching party to drag that nigger out of the White House. I mean, the nerve! Here’s what the NAACP says on their new website about addressing Tea Party racism:

Today, 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.

Hey, the Tea Party folks are not all wrong. I share their concerns about the Wall Street bailouts for example. And I agree that the current tax code is too complex and onerous for small businesses. As a small business owner, I’ve come to see that up close. I personally disagree on many other issues however. I’m willing to dialog with them about where we agree and where we disagree but not with people who fantasize about overthrowing a popularly elected president because the ample proof that he’s a U.S. citizen doesn’t somehow satisfy their concerns.

The Tea Party has become this steaming mix of astroturf, some reasonable people and a pile of other people who are completely unhinged by the fact that a black man is President. Both the astroturf nonprofits who want to use the Tea Partiers to mobilize and the reasonable people have both identified that racism in the Tea Party doesn’t help them popularize their agenda. It’s those people that need to hear from the NAACP and all those who reject racism as a corrosive and dividing influence in our country.

People within the Tea Party & Tea Party sympathizers who talk about…

• “second amendment remedies”
• secession & states’ rights – here, here and here (I could find more of course)
• President Obama being Hitler and/or communist
• the Obama Administration setting up concentration camps for white people
• etc

…these people must be called out for their divisive hatred, unblushing racism and unpatriotic rhetoric — before we see folks like Sarah Palin, Sharron Angle and Rand Paul elected to office where they can project their hatred into legislation targeting African-Americans. And it’s time for those with greater sense and patriotism to push back. And hard.

Here’s video of Tea Party members enthusiastically asking FreedomWorks President Dick Armey whose group has been one of the leaders in organizing the astroturf of the Tea Party not if but WHEN states will secede from the union in a tone that makes their wistfulness of a time (Civil War? Jim Crow?) when white people were safe to oppress non-white people all too clear…