Yesterday, at its annual convention in Kansas City, the NAACP issued a resolution condemning elements of the Tea Party movement as racist. It’s an over-reaction to that movement, and debases legitimate charges of racism. No matter how controversial or unwelcome the Tea Party wave is for the left, it’s not a racist movement, and certainly no more of its members are bigoted than other large protest groups.
It its false, undeserved, and likely unavailing, for the NAACP to accuse these disparate groups of racism. It’s also sly and insidious to accuse not the whole group, but elements of it, of racism. In any group of so many, there’s likely to be an elements of racism, unfairness, happiness, confusion, coin collecting, and card-playing. Take a million people, and one will find any element one wants.
On the left, someone not disposed to the Tea Party movement, like Mary Curtis of Politics Daily, sees how futile this resolution against the Tea Parties is:
But every charge by the NAACP will be answered by denials and statements by black Tea Party members, such as the Bishop E. W. Jackson, president of STAND (Staying True to America’s National Destiny) or Rev. C.L. Bryant, a former president of NAACP’s Garland, Texas, chapter, who is now a Tea Party activist.
You can forget about that common ground, over a broken economy, a government — big or small — that works and justice for “real Americans” (you know, the ones who live on farms as well as inner-city apartments)?
Better to argue over a resolution that won’t change one mind.
She’s correct — progressives should be out campaigning for their views, not issuing resolutions like the one from Kansas City.
I am not a member of this movement, but I did once attend a Tea Party rally in Jefferson, Wisconsin, and have followed the effort ever since. See, Scenes from a Tea Party Protest, Jefferson, Wisconsin. (A libertarian has an odd, shifting feeling when watching a Tea Party event — one feels in agreement sometimes, but disagreement in others.)
I found that I agreed with them on some issues (small government) disagreed on others (immigration), but felt that there was nothing racist about their protest. Not at all. Nationally or locally, charging as much is wrong and counter-productive.
The left will one day have its version of these sort of protests, and until they do, they’ll not make ground by false accusations against others.