The resolution condemns the bigoted elements within the Tea Party and asks for them to be repudiated. The NAACP delegates presented this resolution for debate and passage after a year of vitriolic Tea Party demonstrations during which participants used racial slurs and images. In March, members of the Congressional Black Caucus were accosted by Tea Party demonstrators and called racial epithets. Civil rights icon John Lewis was spit on, while Congressman Emanuel Cleaver was called the “N” word and openly gay Congressman Barney Frank was called an ugly anti-gay slur.
“We take no issue with the Tea Party movement. We believe in freedom of assembly and people raising their voices in a democracy. What we take issue with is the Tea Party’s continued tolerance for bigotry and bigoted statements. The time has come for them to accept the responsibility that comes with influence and make clear there is no place for racism & anti-Semitism, homophobia and other forms of bigotry in their movement,” stated NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous.
The right-wing hit the ceiling, of course. Here's how Mark Williams of the Tea Party Express put it:
We are dealing with people who are professional race-baiters who make a very good living off this kind of thing. They make more money off of race than any slave trader, ever. It's time groups like the NAACP went to the trash heap of history where they belong along with all the other vile, racist groups that emerged in our history.
So the NAACP is a "vile, racist group" that "makes more money off of race than any slave trader, ever." Wow! Inflammable, you think? Well, not compared to what he said next, on his blog. It's in the form of a mock letter to Abraham Lincoln, supposedly from NAACP president Todd Jealous:
Perhaps the most racist point of all in the tea parties is their demand that government "stop raising our taxes." That is outrageous! How will we Colored People ever get a wide screen TV in every room if non-coloreds get to keep what they earn? Totally racist! The tea party expects coloreds to be productive members of society?
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.
Yes, as TPM notes, this is how an official of the Tea Party Express points out how not racist the Tea Party is. Incredible, isn't it?
These Tea Party people are more alien to me than any creature we read about in our Science Fiction Boards. How are you supposed to deal with these people who don't seem to live on planet earth?
ReplyDeleteYes, they seem alien to me, too, John. I'm just astonished at people like that.
ReplyDelete