[Thanos]

As per this very detailed list complied by Tim Wise (author of the original 'What If The Tea Party Was Black?' article, we can all clearly see that the explotation of racial fears (if not outright anti-black racism altogether) is an undeniable and essentially innate feature of the Tea Party phenomenon. No racially based anger and hatred to exploit and the Tea Party probably doesn't even exist.

Note that all references to the events and statements as they occurred can be linked to in the original article. Opening excerpts beginning here (it's a long and rather saddening list):

$1:

Prominent white conservatives are angry about racism.

Forget all that talk about a post-racial society. They know better than to believe in such a thing, and they're hopping mad.

What is it that woke them up finally, after all these years of denial, during which they insisted that racism was a thing of the past?

Was it the research indicating that job applicants with white sounding names have a 50 percent better chance of being called back for an interview than their counterparts with black-sounding names, even when all qualifications are the same?

No.

Was it the study that found white job applicants with criminal records have a better chance of being called back for an interview than black applicants without one, even when all the qualifications are the same?

No.

Was it the massive nationwide study that estimated at least 1 million cases of blatant job discrimination against blacks, Latinos and Asian Americans each year, affecting roughly one-in-three job seekers of color?

No.

Is it the fact that black males with college degrees are almost twice as likely as their white male counterparts to be out of work?

No.

Is it the data indicating that Chinese-American professionals earn less than 60 percent as much as their white counterparts, even though the Chinese Americans, on average, have more education?

No.

Was it the study that found the lightest-skinned immigrants to the United States make as much as 15 percent more than the darkest, even when the immigrants in question have the same level of education, experience and measured productivity?

No.

Perhaps they finally stumbled upon the evidence suggesting millions of cases of race-based housing discrimination against people of color each year, and this is what has them so incensed?

-------------------
.....the intellectual strength of the claims is not the issue. It doesn't matter. From a political perspective, even the most insane-sounding claim about Obama's supposed hatred for white people makes sense. It's a perfect way to prime white racial fears and anxieties, to say, in effect, they're coming for your money white folks, and then your children. In a nation where the population will be half people of color within 25-30 years, and where the popular culture is now thoroughly multicultural (and thus many of the icons don't look the way they used to), and where the President doesn't fit a lot of people's conception of what such a person is supposed to look like, and where the economy is in the toilet for millions, playing upon white anxiety is the perfect recipe for political mobilization.

They've said very clearly that they want their country back. And if we who oppose the right don't challenge these folks for the racists they are, or continue to shy away from making race an issue (as if it weren't already), they just might get it.

Like I said, all instances and statements are documented and therefore undeniable. The Tea Party specifically, and the American right-wing in general, has zero credibility when they claim that they aren't exploiting racial fears as the primary tactic to push their movement forward.

[GreenTiger]

Thanos,
It not that the Tea Party is Racist, not at all. They are just a bunch of stupid fat heads who imaging climbing into Sara Palin's pants.

[commanderkai]

Awesome. A link to a very angry and biased blog. I should start posting blogs which makes the Tea Party look like the Salvation Army or something.

[Wullu]

I love it. The Tea Party has the left absolutely TERRIFIED!

[Zipperfish]

GreenTiger GreenTiger:

Thanos,
It not that the Tea Party is Racist, not at all. They are just a bunch of stupid fat heads who imaging climbing into Sara Palin's pants.

I concur. Like I said, I think when the Tea Partiers march to "Take America Back" they are really saying "Take America Back--to the 1950s." That was the Golden Age for your average tea partier. America was a big Town of Mayberry before the hippies came along in the 60s and ruined it all. The reason, I think, that there are so few blacks is that the 1950s wasn't actually a very good time to be black. They were still getting lynched. Wasn't a great time to be gay either, or a woman for that matter.

[BartSimpson]

Wullu Wullu:

I love it. The Tea Party has the left absolutely TERRIFIED!

They do. The left is bereft of new ideas and the Tea Party is a populist movement that is reshaping the politics of the United States. By definition, it's the old left that are now the social conservatives and it's the Tea Partiers who are the liberals who seek radical change.

[GreenTiger]

The word to describe the Tea Party movement is not Racism,
Stupidity to the NTH would be closer, some member of the lunatic fringe may want to get into her pants.

People getting ticked off at Congress is normal as they all Mental Institutional escapees is normal.

But the followers of the tea party are more like the group you would find at the supper ball fans painting their faces doing and saying all kinds of silly things in the natural sport of telling Congress to get stuffed.

[BartSimpson]

The Tea Party is essentially Howard Beale personified.

Howard Beale Howard Beale:

I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth; banks are going bust; shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter; punks are running wild in the street, and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it.

We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat. And we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be!

We all know things are bad -- worse than bad -- they're crazy.

It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out any more. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we're living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, "Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials, and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone."

Well, I'm not going to leave you alone.

I want you to get mad!

I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot. I don't want you to write to your Congressman, because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street.

All I know is that first, you've got to get mad.

You've gotta say, "I'm a human being, goddammit! My life has value!"

So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell,

"I'm as mad as hell,

and I'm not going to take this anymore!

[GreenTiger]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

The Tea Party is essentially Howard Beale personified.

I can go along with that we are all "are as mad as Hell and I won't take it anymore".

[HyperionTheEvil]

It's the Tea Party, largely a group of angry white people who don't Can't Stand Obama as their president. That they have a racist undertone is now new.

[BartSimpson]

HyperionTheEvil HyperionTheEvil:

It's the Tea Party, largely a group of angry white people who don't Can't Stand Obama as their president. That they have a racist undertone is now new.

I'm curious, is it then your contention that this same group of people (more or less) was racist when they opposed Bill Clinton? Or were they racist when they initially supported Ron Paul as 'the TEA Party' early in the 2008 primary election cycle?

[2Cdo]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

HyperionTheEvil HyperionTheEvil:

It's the Tea Party, largely a group of angry white people who don't Can't Stand Obama as their president. That they have a racist undertone is now new.

I'm curious, is it then your contention that this same group of people (more or less) was racist when they opposed Bill Clinton? Or were they racist when they initially supported Ron Paul as 'the TEA Party' early in the 2008 primary election cycle?

Bart, anyone who doesn't kneel at the feet of Obama is obviously a racist. How dare anyone oppose the lefts saviour!

[Zipperfish]

This just in. Some group called the "Tea Party Federation" just expelled the "Tea Party Express." The leader of the latter organization, Mark Williams, wrote a blog that the Tea Party Federation called "clearly offensive":

[url=http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2010/07/mcconnell-on-tea-party-racism.htmlTea party leader expelled over slavery letter
[/url]

I think the Mark williams offensive blog entry has since been removed, but the Atlantic has saved them for posterity.

Here's a choice quote.

$1:

We Coloreds have taken a vote and decided that we don't cotton to that whole emancipation thing. Freedom means having to work for real, think for ourselves, and take consequences along with the rewards. That is just far too much to ask of us Colored People and we demand that it stop!
...
Mr. Lincoln, you were the greatest racist ever. We had a great gig. Three squares, room and board, all our decisions made by the massa in the house. Please repeal the 13th and 14th Amendments and let us get back to where we belong.

[BartSimpson]

In many ways, Mark Williams is right. Freedom does mean living with the risk of failure and it also means not having to depend on anyone else. Too many black people say that they want to be free of whitey, but then they come demanding support from whitey. Malcolm X essentially stated the same things Williams did forty years ago when he said it was time for blacks to stop sharecropping for the whites and to build businesses and etc. of their own.

As to the 'colored' thing, the NAACP stirred that up by calling the Tea Party racist and one of the charges is that Tea Party members allegedly have called black people 'colored'. If this is such an affront then why do they insist on calling the NAACP the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People?

[ShepherdsDog]

Interesting. I was watching CNN yesterday and had a rep from the NAACP and one from the Tea Party movement.....both had African heritage. While it was very apparent with the rep. from the TPM, the other guy from the NAACP could easily have passed for a caucasian.