The Freedom Bulletin

At their annual convention, delegates of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People passed a resolution condemning the “racism” of the Tea Party movement. It is important to note that the NAACP is not condemning the Tea Party movement in its entirety but merely “extremist elements” within it and asking leaders to “repudiate those in their ranks who use racist language in their signs and speeches.”

In the brewing battle between the NAACP and the Tea Party, I am firmly on the Tea Party’s side. There are two main thoughts that come to mind about the resolution:

First, why would the NAACP decide to pick on the Tea Party out of all the organizations that exist? Almost every organization has some racist people in it, or mean people, or people who are objectionable for some reason. Why should the Tea Party as a movement be responsible for the fact that some people who identify with it happen to be racist? An organization should not be responsible for the actions or attitudes of its individual members. Ted Bundy was a Republican, for example, but no one (I hope) thought that his murders reflected badly on the Republican Party or expected them to make any statements repudiating him. Plus, even though they shouldn’t be obligated to, leaders of various Tea Party groups have made statements condemning racism and making it clear that racist people are not welcome in the movement.

Second, in my opinion, many of the NAACP’s examples of supposed racist conduct by Tea Party members are not really racist. The NAACP’s website displays pictures of allegedly racist Tea Party signs, including…

• “Obama-nomics: monkey see, monkey spend” – This is just a play on the phrase “monkey see, monkey do.” I understand that the word monkey is sometimes used in a racist way, but it is not automatically racist whenever monkeys and a person who happens to be black are mentioned on the same sign.
• “Obama, what you talkin about Willis! Spend my money?” – I had to look up this phrase in Urban Dictionary. So some of the characters in the show where it originated were black, but I don’t think the phrase is used to insult black people. In this case, the sign is just criticizing Obama for spending everyone’s tax money.
• “Obama’s plan: white slavery” – This sign mentions race and is probably not true, but it’s still not exactly racist. The sign holder is criticizing Obama because he thinks he is a black supremacist, not for being black in itself.
• “Barack Hussein Obama: the new face of Hitler” – Although a dubious comparison, this could be said of a white politician just as easily as a black politician.
• “The American taxpayers are the Jews for Obama’s ovens” – Another exaggeration, and possibly a little disrespectful to Holocaust survivors, but this also has nothing to do with Obama’s race. This sign could just as easily be about a white politician who recklessly spent taxpayer money.

In conclusion, although it is almost certain that some people who identify with the Tea Party movement happen to be racist, this is true of almost every movement, and there are fewer such people than the NAACP seems to think. The NAACP needs to fully grasp the difference between criticizing President Obama and being racist. Criticizing someone who happens to belong to a racial minority is not racist unless you are criticizing them for belonging to a racial minority. Very few people in the Tea Party movement, if any, do this.  

Other takes on the same subject:

• Bill O’Reilly – Talking Points 7/14
• The Humble Libertarian – “What’s Racist About Balanced Budgets?”