At last year’s Tax Day Rally in New Dorp, Staten Island, I did in fact, meet ONE black Tea Party supporter. I’m not sure if he’s still kickin’ it with them today. He was a curious oddity to me. I don’t remember his name, but I do remember that he was a Cuban immigrant, naturalized American. And after a year of vitriol and obfuscation, I wonder if he is still aligned with this movement. A movement that at its heart invalidates his right to claim America as his home.
UPDATE:
So I got this comment on my rather benign commentary:
This man integrated, joined America – as proven by his being a Tea Partier – and no other Tea Party supporter would gainsay his status as a right and proper American.
Get over your racism and your hatred of all things White and all things truly American and maybe, just maybe, you’ll earn the same privilege.
I won’t hold my breath though.
I can accept critique, but if this commenter were a regular reader of this blog, he’d recognize that my supposed hatred of ‘all things White’ is unfounded. I mean, seriously, who blogs about Procul Harum, Foo Fighters, and Bartleby, the Scrivener??? I don’t even need to unpack all the things wrong with that premise. Perhaps I do? I don’t know.
Yet, I had missed the findings of a recent poll from Quinnipiac University that breaks down the demographics of the Tea Party Movement:
• 74 percent are Republicans or independent voters leaning Republican;
• 16 percent are Democrats or independent voters leaning Democratic;
• 5 percent are solidly independent;
• 45 percent are men;
• 55 percent are women;
• 88 percent are white;
• 77 percent voted for Sen. John McCain in 2008
I don’t doubt that there are people of color who are part of the conservative movement, or the tea party movement. They’re entitled to their opinion and have the right to associate with an organization that compliments those beliefs. More power to them, even if it confuses me. However, I do have to question a movement that argues that my right to claim my American-ness is contingent upon my embracing white culture exclusively. I do have a right to question the intentions of a movement that failed to condone those who yelled racial and homophobic epithets at elected officials. We can disagree on the policy, even the politics, but again, from this commenter and the protesters, that’s not really the conversation or debate they want to have with someone like me.
Doris Kearns Goodwin was on Meet the Press this past Sunday and she said something that struck me. ‘The tone of recent time is troubling… But in the last 30 years or so to hear the racial epithets, the homophobia, when we thought were becoming a more tolerant society shows we have far way to go… People worrying the country is becoming un-homogeneous. There’s a lot of minorities out there. And that whites are fearful something going on.’ She was referring also to Frank Rich’s column on Sunday.
It also reminded me of something Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote awhile back during his close reading of Civil War history the following:
It makes sense when you think on the deep promise of white supremacy. Black equality is the promise of mortality for everyone. I ask it again, what are you in a world where a black man is president? Who knows what depths a man might go to cling to those last vestiges of Godhood? He would claim Obama’s Muslim. He would claim he isn’t a citizen. He would claim that Obama was not “really black” or not black in the “usual way. Anything to differentiate themselves from the teeming masses, anything to get away from he undying fact that in the hearts of all men, there is a Harlem.
White racism and fear have historically been used as wedge issues against social and economic reformation. This is not a new tactic. It’s old, trite even, like the cartoon circulating on the internet this weekend suggesting Obama raped the Statue of Liberty by signing health reform into law. A black man defiling Liberty; that pure, and iconic image of white culture. Smarter bloggers than me have written their analysis of that, so I don’t feel a need to rehash. Still, I can’t clearly articulate the policy objection from these people. There’s no entry point to find a middle ground. It’s all or nothing. I’m holding my ground.
I almost joined the tea party because I thought it was a party that drank tea. I’ve since then learned the truth about the party and still think I may join them to sabotage them from within. It’s all apart of my master plan (insert evil villain laugh here).
you are so right on every level. first of all, the tea partiers really do give tea parties a bad name; before, when you heard the words “tea party”, visions of cute, crystal Victorian cups and saucers would come to mind, along with pretty pastries and little sugar blocks [one would not dare use those awful packets of sugar given out a McDonald's]. but, now when you hear the words “tea party”, if you’re black, you immediately think Ku Klux Klan. Clearly, they are not readers because the first tea party was against another COUNTRY for taxing the colonies. This group never distinguished between “taxation without representation” and “Obama” because whatever Obama says/does, they are against it even if it is something that would help them immensely such as health care. They would rather die with their Klan robes on and tea bags hanging from their hoods than to accept anything from Obama even if it meant beinging them back to life. The non-reader thing is proven again in their constant misspellings on their signs. One woman wrote “AMENSTY” for ‘AMNESTY”, only one example out of many, many grammatical and spelling errors on their signs. They paint Hitler mustaches on Obama because they know that THEY ARE THE REAL RACISTS so they throw the first punch by calling everyone who is against THEM a racist. The Tea Party people emanated from Obama’s win which they never expected. Imagine their calling themselves PATRIOTS, while praying that Obama’s plea to have the 2012 Olympics in Chicago would fall on deaf ears and he’d FAIL. They were ecstatic when the 2012 Olympics were awarded to Rio de Janeiro!!!!!! How can a patriot be GLAD that America lost to Rio — and still call himself a PATRIOT????? And, last, I agree with your mention of infiltrating the Tea Partiers because that was the ONLY way the Ku Klux Klan was caught out there; the FBI had to actually become MEMBERS of the Klan in order to convict them of an actual crime. One FBI man was actually with the Klan when they killed the civil rights worker,Viola Luizzo!!!! We also need to organize and actually go to the events where tea partiers gather just to show that there is opposition to them. Looking forward to a response.