As you probably know by now, the NAACP has asked the organizations known as "Tea Parties", to disavow any racism among their groups and separate themselves from those who exhibit such racist tendencies. This is a reasonable request since there has been at least a racist element among the teabaggers since their beginnings. It doesn't take a genius to figure this out -- just read the signs at any teabagger rally.
But instead of disavowing racism and getting rid of their racist members, the teabagger organizations have decided to act like their is no racism among them -- a laughable suggestion at best since the racism displayed at these rallies is not even under the surface. It is open and in your face.
Take for example Mark Williams, current spokesman (and former chairman), of the Tea Party Express. He not only denies the existence of any racists among the teabaggers, he says it is "impossible" for there to be any! When questioned about the racist signs seen at nearly every teabagger rally, Williams blames them on a group called Crash The Tea Party. He overlooks the fact that the signs had been showing up at teabagger rallies for a year before the idea for this group even happened (plus the fact that these counter-protesters never even materialized).
Crash The Tea Party is just a straw horse that Williams uses to hang his denials on. But even without the racist signs, all Williams has to do to see a teabagger racist is look in the mirror. Just read this fake letter that he posted on his blog (supposedly from NAACP president Benjamin Jealous):
"Dear Mr. Lincoln,
We [National Association for the Advancement of] Colored People 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 [National Association for the Advancement of] Colored People and we demand that it stop!"
Now I ask, aren't those the words of a racist? Isn't it obviously racist to infer that African-Americans don't want to work or think for themselves? Then Williams goes even further and accuses the NAACP of being a "vile racist group" (even though their membership has always been open to all races). He says they are "professional race baiters" who "make more money off of race than any slave trader ever."
Vile is a word Williams should apply to himself. How could he stoop so low as to compare the NAACP (who accept donations to fight racism in all its forms) to slave traders who pocketed profits of the debasement and enslavement of their fellow human beings? Williams leaves little doubt of his racism.
If the teabaggers were smart they would indeed separate themselves from the members who display such an open and hateful brand of racism. But I'm not sure they could do that at this point. It has been an integral part of them since the beginning.
NOTE -- The picture above is of one of the leaders of a Texas teabagger organization.
Racism is the main technique used by corporate interests to manipulate the teabaggers.
ReplyDeletewhen people tell me 'oh it's not about race.'...i want to smack them.
ReplyDeleteThe NAACP telling the Tea Party to clean up its racist elements is clearly an example of the pot calling the kettle black (pun only slightly intended; I couldn't think of a better idiom to describe it).
ReplyDeleteSuppose a white bureaucrat from the U.S. Department of Agriculture was heard at a Tea Party event saying the following:
"I was struggling with the fact that so many white people had lost their farmland, and here I was faced with having to help a black person save their land. So I didn't give him the full force of what I could do. I did enough."
I'd be the first person to excoriate such a racist attitude.
The fact that "[t]he NAACP had no immediate response Monday afternoon" speaks volumes about that group's hypocisy.
CT-
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, your video comes from a source (Breitbart) that has proven in the past he cannot be trusted. We know he has cut videos to say something that when viewed in their entirety do not say the same thing (such as his "pimp" video at ACORN).
Second, according to this article, the woman in question does not work for the NAACP nor is she an official of that organization. She works for the USDA and that is the organization that should be apologizing for her.
"First of all, your video comes from a source (Breitbart) that has proven in the past he cannot be trusted."
ReplyDeleteThen why is it being reported that Ms. Sherrod has resigned her position at the USDA? If she has a credible explanation for why she favored black farmers over white farmers, she should stand her ground.
"We know he has cut videos to say something that when viewed in their entirety do not say the same thing (such as his "pimp" video at ACORN)."
Again, why did ACORN fire its employees after the video was shown?
"Second, according to this article, the woman in question does not work for the NAACP nor is she an official of that organization."
And yet you were perfectly willing to smear the entire Tea Party movement for the alleged racial epithets spontaneously hurled by a tiny minority of the rank and file members (if in fact they were members at all; no one has ever identified them).
Sherrod's remarks, on the other hand, were made at an NAACP banquet where she was a scheduled speaker. Isn't the NAACP more responsible for her comments than the Tea Party is for the excited utterances of a few people in the crowd?
By the way, the Mark Williams affair is a non-starter. According to this CNN article, the National Tea Party Federation already expelled Williams on Sunday.
So, that being said, are you willing to denounce the clearly racist policies of Shirley Sherrod, or will you continue to make excuses for her?
We all know what this is really about. The Tea Party's position against out-of-control spending and over-the-top deficits is gaining traction. Unable to win on the real issues, the NAACP, as a wholy owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party, is trying to discredit the movement, as Malcolm X once said, "by any means necessary."
In this case, the means are by repeating a falsehood over and over again until it becomes the conventional wisdom.
If Sherrod said what was reported, then yes, I repudiate it and am glad if she resigned. But the NAACP is not responsible for what she chose to say in her speech.
ReplyDeleteThe teabagger organizations are indeed responsible for the words and actions of their members.
And the authorities that investigated the ACORN affair said the full video showed they had not broken any rules and that was why no charges were filed. The video had been edited by Breitbart (or his flunkies) to make it look like something had happened when it really hadn't.
And while one teabagger organization did indeed dis-associate themselves from Williams, others have not - including the one he is a member of.
You may think the racists are a tiny minority of the teabaggers, but I do not. I believe they are an integral part of them.
Here's a CNN report on Sherrod's resignation.
ReplyDeleteStill think Breitbart is making this up?
Curious Texan (approximately 35 minutes ago): "So, that being said, are you willing to denounce the clearly racist policies of Shirley Sherrod, or will you continue to make excuses for her?"
[Crickets chirping]
I've already answered that question and made no excuses for her.
ReplyDeleteTed:
ReplyDeleteI sometimes cruise many blogs that have different angles from mine in order to take of tour of the neighborhood and try and keep track of who's who, and certainly on a common network where some like yours show up in WidgetBox, etc. So greetings are in order, despite what will no doubt turn out to be many differences.
Of course, this is your stomping ground and your blog, but the reference to Tea Party activists by the very pejorative homoerotic "teabagger" appellation, while popularized by the like of Olbermann and Maddow, used to be an inside reference to a certain kind of sexual fetish mostly seen in Frisco bath houses. It's about on par with the N-word for its slur power. It might flow easily from the tongue for some people, but then so do racial epithets and words like "whore" for women. None of these are polite. But, have it as you wish. This is your workshop, and I respect that much.
Speaking of race and racism charges (and the above picture) while I have no idea who that man is, I can assure you that the majority of Tea Party types, whether you personally agree with their ideology or not, are not racist, and have concentrated their efforts on ideological and political concerns. This tar brush you and some others have apparently is the Emergency Playbook the DNC and offshoot blogs empathetic to the DNC and other shills for the Left, who in frustration and not finding a voice in response to many questions have decided that the tar tactic is best.
The proximate answer here for Occam's razor is that November is just around the corner, and apparently some snowballs to toss are nastier than others.
Thus the hoopla over "racism", which is mostly false, and the crappola about the Arizona Law which mainline sources like FactCheck.org affirm are hardly overbearing, racist, or full of provisions not already located in federal law. Additionally, the whole bruha over "racial profiling" is forbidden by both sets of laws. The AZ law only comes into effect on an "incidental" basis. The USSC has UPHELD some kinds of profiling based on looks and behavior--true. And this is merely a reflection that the highest courts know that whether you're talking local or federal law, you have to have SOME kind of appearance-based differentiation to work from. Otherwise there's no point in even making rules on immigration laws knowing full well that people from other lands are indeed often different. Illegal immigration at the core is not about race. I'd rather (to be honest) welcome more illegal Mexicans in that anyone from lily-white sectors of Europe, for a wide variety of cultural and ideological reasons.
Brietbart and his associates have explained the context of the late unpleasantness on Sherrod, so I won't go into all that.
As to Mark Williams, get a grip.
ReplyDeleteFor the mere appearances due to misinterpretations more and more common in an age of obvious hypersensitivity over race issues, he was nixed from his organization.
But Williams' Swiftian moment in blogging was snark fest and parody--describing the hapless dependency that leftist government gleefully fosters, and how this can in many cases trap the very people they were designed to help--minorities. Fostering, that is, deliberate program failures designed to make all men putatively "free" in some theoretical paper sense, or at least "free from want", but in reality traps us in a type of eternal servitude and continuing cycles of poverty. Charles Murray noted this quite well in Losing Ground.
Gravitating to the party of dependency and big government, however, minorities are particularly vulnerable to these cycles of dependency. As Mark Steyn noted, however, this can be a lily white phenomenon also, where shrinking demographics among scraggly-necked Brit and German women having one designer kid at age 45 on an ever-increasing welfare paunch/government bureaucracy almost literally speak of a civilizational death knell. Leftism and big government fail us for a host of reasons, but most basically due to the fact that all these delicious hand-outs foster not just dependency, but utter infantilization of the populace away from adult responsibilities regarding family life, and on to mostly visceral, piddling selfish pastimes of trivia and mass culture kitsch and garbage.
As Charles Murray also noted elsewhere, when life is the Euro-style welfare state dependence--or marching in that general direction--with nothing of importance to do other than petitioning government for more benefits all the time, sleeping in late when not, and having someone else's dime pamper your fanny, the larger questions of life about civic activities, having and tolerating kids vs. comfortable government-undergirded hedonism, raising families, and getting on with what used to be the responsibilities of adulthood---now almost all outsourced and warehoused to and by the State. The Faustian deal being that you can no longer stick the bills of this happy fun time from big government to the present, because the role of government is so large it subsumes and consumes everything, including an ever shrinking fiscal base from business buckling under regulation and increasingly punitive confiscatory tax rates. You can't stick the bills to the future either--at a certain point--fundamentally due the demographic dearth that all social welfare states suffer, because in the most fundamental sense, you don't even have one.
But that's dandy. Keep making sure Williams remains a distraction target of ire in a Leftosphere that cannot fathom political fallout from this administration's statist assumptions, it's mawkish ignorance of economics in declaring that massive bureaucratic edifices like HCR="entrepreneurialism", and it's sticking of fingers in the ears and claiming not to hear people's challenges to their ideological orthodoxy. Quips are easy. Thus the charges of "racism" as something that allegedly affects Tea Partiers out of proportion the general population (false) and likewise the easy quip from the Left over the Palinequese "refudiate" regarding mosques at Ground Zero, where a more appropriate response might be a discussion over whether religious freedom entails allowing ALL contexts of establishing such in a sensitive area of town, etc. Instead, nay--Palin was the preferred target, and not the Sons of Allah establishing yet one more camp with yet one more concession from the Western world trying desperately to trust in accommodation over common sense. I assure you, however, this means quite more to them than the bien-pensants in the mass media and Leftosphere would have you think.
As to that guy above, while the sign is nasty, it might be that he's doing a takeoff, similar to William's snark, about the Master-Slave relation of government to taxpayer. Hyperbole, yes, and perhaps devoid of context, as most signs and quips are. But it still might be worth looking into.
ReplyDeleteMany thanks for your time.
WT-
ReplyDeleteI doubt we'll ever agree on much but I would like to make a few points.
1. I am well-aware of the street meaning of "teabaggers" and find it amusing the right-wingers used it first without knowing what it meant.
2. It is NOT the same as using the "N-word". African-Americans had no choice in being born black, but the teabaggers chose to be the way they are.
3. I don't know if you are racist or not, but I am willing to take your word and say you're not. However, all one has to do is look at the numerous racist signs at every teabagger rally to know there are many racists in the organization.
4. If you have a copy of that mythical DNC Emergency Playbook, please send me a copy. Mine must have gotten lost in the mail.
5. If you could assure me that everyone who was stopped by police in Arizona would have to provide proof of citizenship it might be different, but you and I both know only Hispanics will be demanded to do so (many of whom are citizens).
6. The reason there are federal laws on the books regarding immigration is because it is a federal problem. That doesn't make Arizona's racist law OK.
7. Breitbart is a lying ass.
1. I am well-aware of the street meaning of "teabaggers" and find it amusing the right-wingers used it first without knowing what it meant.
ReplyDeleteThey might very well have used the term first. However, the incident's context that I'm aware of seems to point to a particular first usage where the person having this on a sign very WELL seemed to know the usage. So this is half-truth. Conservative Jay Nordlinger plainly notes that the very first usage WAS in the sexual sense directed at Obama, but the Left picked up on this very quickly, and so in context (which is always vital) coming from these types is not exactly meant as a term of affection either.
Again: Doesn't mean it's not nasty. People have called themselves meatheads and bitches before. Ditto for people who use the N-word on themselves as a form of empowerment.
I never decide to return the favor just because they used it first, or feel empowered.
2. It is NOT the same as using the "N-word". African-Americans had no choice in being born black, but the teabaggers chose to be the way they are.
I didn't say it IS the same for the feelings it might cause, but is about on par for it's use as a derogatory term as a form of utter derision. Obviously, the experiences of African-Americans as a race would be different enough to usually feel more put-upon by he N-Word. However, a quick tour of the Leftosphere indicates very quickly the overall intonation of their common usage of "teabagger." Perhaps you don't feel it is about on par for either the intent or the presumed reception, or perhaps (more likely) you simply don't care. It matters not. I'm not squeamish about such things, but only wish to point out that the intensity with which both terms are used often indicates either a nasty disposition. Momentary, or perhaps permanent. I am old enough to know hatred when I see it.
3. I don't know if you are racist or not, but I am willing to take your word and say you're not. However, all one has to do is look at the numerous racist signs at every teabagger rally to know there are many racists in the organization.
Well, small favors are welcome. Thanks. Racism is actually a particularly ugly form of collectivism, doubling an already bad notion and applying it to genetics, which I find totally abhorrent as well as dumb. However, a quick tour of blogs like ZombieTime indicates that probably what is going on are mostly plants, and he dryly notes they cannot stay in form. There is more than the "all" to this in many instances. Scouts Honor.
4. If you have a copy of that mythical DNC Emergency Playbook, please send me a copy. Mine must have gotten lost in the mail.
ReplyDeleteThat was snark. Such a copy of course is not needed, and never was. The DNC has this down to a science. The printing press of the DNC is the majority of the media taking cues from politicians, who in turn know fully well that red meat sells. The charge of racism is a fear-striker that resonates with people not willing to hash out over ideology. People who think the government is there to pay their mortgages and education and health care are particularly of this flavor of voter.
5. If you could assure me that everyone who was stopped by police in Arizona would have to provide proof of citizenship it might be different, but you and I both know only Hispanics will be demanded to do so (many of whom are citizens).
ReplyDeleteIf you've read the law and seen the provisions, usually only incidental situations where you're forking over information anyway regarding "your papers, please" type moments like DL and proof of ID (do you not have one of those??) apply. Over at the Legal Insurrection blog William Jacobson notes that there are plenty of governmental rules and edicts that require proof of ID and citizenship. NOTE: ObamaCare will be yet another of these. Other incidentals will be criminal activity, or--at most on the "softer" crimes--road incidents involving the so-called "grey lines" where contractors already breaking immigration law are hiring, and snagging traffic. Which, BTW, they'll get nailed for anyway per federal law on the illegal hiring part.
But let me get this straight: The Federal government's absolute refusal to enforce it's own edicts other than alleged incidental "audits" of business (which can fire illegals, but not deport them and merely get business in trouble) is of no concern to the state of Arizona? With people on ranches in border areas living in abject fear, the crime and incarceration rates and social services busting entire states, and the suppression of wages all too well known in these areas for these reason, I'd say the states have an abiding interest in the lives, safety, and overall economy harmony and budgetary concerns of their citizens. Who, by the way, pay taxes to account for all the above along with the quite reasonable expectation of a fair business playing field along with safety. As I understand the opposition to the recent Arizona law, it boils down to something like the following: the federal government’s past decision not to enforce its own law should always trump the state’s right to honor it. That raises interesting questions: Does the state contravene federal authority by exercising it? If the federal government does not protect the borders of a state, does the state have a right to do it itself? The federal government has seemed in the past to be saying that if one circumvented a federal law, and was known to have circumvented federal law with recognized impunity, then there was no longer a law to be enforced.
Of course, what is going on here is about demographics more than allegations that stick over social justice concerns and other faux moral outrage. It is about potential expedited citizenship and the voting roles and the gravitation of immigrants to the part of government. And speaking of things we both know, we both know this as well.
6. The reason there are federal laws on the books regarding immigration is because it is a federal problem. That doesn't make Arizona's racist law OK.
Oh my. What a clever little quip. See above. Again. An open borders policy is the de fact situation, and makes a mock of the de JURE situation that is supposedly on the books, albeit in print only and of little effect.
7. Breitbart is a lying ass.
You may direct that to Breitbart. He's an adult who can field his own groundballs returned to him. Other than this, I find it odd that a supposedly clever administration was so fast on the kill switch over a non-issue made from whole cloth by a lying ass. Surely the administration investigated this before hitting the red button. Or not. Interesting.
You seem to think I have defended the administration and the USDA over their reaction to this video. I have not. If you have read my blog in the last couple of days you would know that I have blasted them just as I would have if a Republican administration had reacted this way. I don't care to defend Democrats when they are obviously wrong.
ReplyDeleteNO. I seem to have no such belief about what YOU think on the matter, and in fact if you'll notice I really didn't address the Sherrod/NAACP issue other than defer it to your imagined input or support on my part about Brietbart. And no, I have NOT had time to follow all your posts on the matter. Or anyone else's, for that matter. Sorry. That's exactly why I made no assumptions about this, and if you notice--again--I actually DEFERRED the issue you addressed on this point to Mr. Brietbart, as that was not a topic I planned to address at the moment. Why? Well, because I DO seem to believe is that my personal input on that is still waiting for full context here, which can be hard to unweave from how the traditional Denture Breath media spins things in their tendentious manners as yet another wing of this White House. The sainting of Saint Sherrod by the media is another matter altogether.
ReplyDeleteHowever, a couple of other notes I meant to add earlier before other things closer to hearth and home got my attention. I DO find it curious that when it comes to CERTAIN select principles, liberals are hot for federal government intervention to bolster something or, conversely, have it shut down. Thus for example when it comes to illegal immigration (which.. ya know....IS the current law on the books--or so we are told) no one in the Leftosphere ever spilled much beer about the so-called "Sanctuary Cities" openly DEFYING federal law. The fact that these illegal situations generally go unpunished is beside the point. They ARE a violation. Entire cities now provide haven along with all manner of sumptuous health, education, and other social services benefits. Ditto for all the crappola about some states now deciding to flout federal drug laws. This is not an issue that gets me hot under the collar, so long as this is not extrapolated to mean cocaine bags at the local pharmacy. But I can tell the politicians are lying through the teeth when they say they'll just tax the crap out of pot, and THAT will help "fund" drug rehab programs along with helping to shore up budgets. Nonsense. The reason some Western states like California are busted is not lack of revenue or expenditures on drug rehab, but rather the social services costs to illegal aliens, teachers and public works unions, and state budgets that are utterly out of control. I doubt pot taxation will make all that much difference. But the point is that it's certainly curious that when it comes to "state's rights" suddenly liberals find an issue (as with Sanctuary cities) where the state is sovereign to make their own rules of the game. How nice. How convenient.
But actually it's not about the law, now is it? What we have here in reality is a definition of "Constitution" that's redefined to mean "that which the Left would like to have, or thinks will work well for demographic reasons." It's all about demographics. And we all know it. The demographics of drug use as well, of course. But as to issues like the bruha over AZ law, what is at stake is mostly the demographics of illegal aliens most probably being offered an expedited path to citizenship via "amnesty" rules changing the terms. Thus shoving millions of illegal immigrants closer to the voting roles, and of course we know where that will lead due to immigrants naturally leaning to the party that promises more government.
ReplyDeleteThe shopworn battlecry of "racism" is about stale by now. Yes, it certainly exists. But I've found that in reality no one party has exclusive claims to this. Most often, however, it's a wedge that politicians and activists use to shut down dissent, absolving themselves and their consciences of having to finally at long last come to terms with the real issues. The narrative works for some people; thus for example if one complains about the BS CBO numbers on Obamacare and how a major negative report was sat on by the administration when it was learned about all the nasty and expensive side issues on ObamaCare, and how it will force companies to drop people from insurance roles (remember--you get to "keep" your insurance if you like!) along with budget-busting moves in the 2400 page bill that deal more with multicultural crap than real health concerns? Why, only "racists" need complain! Have concerns that the federal government is not enforcing their own rules on the so-called "border"? You're a racist!
Name-calling is ugly, but whether done by one group or another, is apparently much easier than actually addressing the issues at hand. This was supposed to be a nation of laws, and not of men, or edicts by politicians. Not a giant parking lot where harassment of ranchers, farmers, killings, murders, and all other manner of mayhem goes relatively unpunished, where people on border towns live in abject fear in some areas, where national parks are being trashed, where foreign governments are using the border as a relief valve for their own failed socialist economic policies in Latin America, where entire state budgets are busting due to the social services benefits to non-citizens who have no right to be here, where hundreds of thousands of illegals are costing states billions in incarceration costs (the numbers vary depending on whom you talk with), where wages are being suppressed, and where (in more than a few cases I'm aware of per the testimony of a local police) discovery of the real ID of the perpetrators of crimes is costly, time-consuming, and in some cases impossible without lengthy consultations to Mexican authorities, etc. The situation is beyond surrealistic and untenable. It is asinine.
One last item, Ted, as I know you mean well regardless no doubt of our many disagreements here. You are very ideological in your approach to things, and I can appreciate that. And your site is well-argued and plainly spoken and laid out (for the most part).
ReplyDeleteHowever, I must also take exception to this notion that the courts are the ones who must foment change of whatever type. The people of Arizona spoke. Or, that is, they tried to. But they got shot down. Now I realize that not all law is uber-democratic in origin and that you must draw lines in the proverbial sand here and there for our core rights. The Left has argued, ironically, that these illegal aliens have core rights than EVEN SUPERCEDE ours, and those of law enforcement to do their jobs. Ironic, for the fact that all manner of social services from taxpayers flows in their direction, and doubly for the fact that after the latest federal ruling they are now all but exempt (unlike you and me!) from any requirement of ID. You and I don't and indeed can't even get away with that. As we should not. You have ID as well as I do for official business and other transactions as required by state and federal law as well.
Also, we have this rather odious notion that the people who work in law enforcement--in Arizona and elsewhere--are all just intractible racists who are picking on migrant workers. I find that a highly disturbing and dubious allegation lacking anything other than anectdotal evidence.
Have a great rest of Thursday.
-W