Last week, the NAACP called on Tea Party groups to repudiate the racism within its ranks. Dave Weigel, writing at The Daily Dish, dismissed the idea as foolish, while elsewhere at the Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote several good posts explaining why the NAACP was right to raise their concerns about some of the racially charged things that have been seen and heard at Tea Party rallies.
What this exchange reminded me of was a post from a couple of weeks ago from Weigel’s former colleague at Reason Magazine, Radley Balko, at his personal blog The Agitator:
Ask Joe Arpaio to be your keynote speaker, and you’ve lost me.
He’s a power-mad thug with a badge, the walking, mouth-breathing antithesis of the phrase “limited government.”
Yes, this is but one state chapter in your movement. So distance yourself from them.
It’s one thing to have a few idiots and nutjobs show up at your rallies.
It’s quite another to invite one to speak.
John Cole has written a few times about the effort among the staff at Reason to continually dismiss the idea that there’s racism in the Tea Party movement. Balko’s post above should be a clue that what the Tea Partiers are about isn’t quite what the folks at Reason imagine them to be about. Polls on Tea Party members illustrate this:
While big government is a favorite tea party target, several bloggers were surprised by the results of the poll question about whether the benefits of government programs such as Social Security and Medicare are worth the costs to taxpayers. Sixty-two percent of tea party supporters said yes. In follow-up interviews, they favored a focus on “waste” instead of slashing the programs.
“Some defended being on Social Security while fighting big government by saying that since they had paid into the system, they deserved the benefits. Others could not explain the contradiction,” the Times reported.
The Tea Party movement isn’t a movement about limited government and it never has been. They may make signs and shout slogans against “socialism”, but as surveys like that one show, they have no problem with things like Medicare or Social Security, or tightly regulating Wall Street. When they talk about socialism, they’re talking about something else. They’re expressing their anxieties about multiculturalism. They’re expressing a belief that our increasingly diverse society is becoming an economic burden to what they perceive as “real Americans”. To them, socialism is the idea that America is becoming more and more inundated with those who will mooch off the rest of us. And their reaction to that is to decry the kinds of government expenditures that many of them continue to rely on:
Liberal pundits like Washington Monthly’s Steve Benen seized on a comment by Jodine White, 62, of Rocklin, Calif., as evidence that tea partiers are “a confused group of misled people.”
“Maybe I don’t want smaller government. I guess I want smaller government and my Social Security. I didn’t look at it from the perspective of losing things I need. I think I’ve changed my mind,” White told the Times.
“These folks claim to be motivated by concerns over taxes, but tea partiers tend not to know anything about the subject. … They claim to hate expensive government programs, except for all the expensive government programs that benefit them and their families,” Benen charged.
The staff at Reason have had a natural desire to believe that the Tea Party folks are their fellow travelers – intellectually consistent free-market libertarians whose opposition to big government comes from a firm understanding of the writings of Bastiat and Hayek. But that’s just not who most of the Tea Partiers are.
They’re more often than not folks who think that Barack Obama is cynically trying to steal their money and give it to people who refuse to work hard and who don’t care about America as much as them. They’re more often than not willing to believe that illegal immigrants are coming here because our government entices them to come with endless giveaways, rather than because of free market forces of supply and demand in the labor markets. And this is why they’re demanding to hear from big government authoritarian thugs like Joe Arpaio at their meetings and not from Reason staff members.
Even a politician like Rand Paul, who’s considered a free-market libertarian, knows that he can’t keep Tea Party support without rejecting that philosophy when it comes to illegal immigration. Sharron Angle, the Tea Party candidate for Senate in Nevada, once expressed support for the reinstatement of alcohol prohibition. This only happens because the Tea Partiers are far more concerned about the culture war than about economic philosophy. They’re for limited government when it comes to things they perceive as encouraging our multicultural society and they’re for big government when it comes to things they perceive as threats from that multicultural society.
Racism has changed a bit since the 1960s. Racism was overt back then – a belief in the necessity of segregation and for preserving separate sets of rules for people of different groups. Today, racism is somewhat different and more subtle. It’s a belief that certain groups of people are an economic burden on society due to our cultural differences. It’s a belief that it’s wasteful when government does things to improve the lot of poor minority groups or to help immigrants assimilate into American society, but not wasteful when it does things that benefit the more privileged classes. Media charlatans like Glenn Beck are masterful at transforming these types of nationalistic impulses into economic theories with fully-developed alternate American histories to go along with them. And it’s foolish to believe that the Tea Party movement isn’t being driven in a significant way by this sleight of hand.
Great text to give sophmore class in English.
I will leave that to others who enjoy correcting bad grammar.
Lee seems to specialize in Orwellian newspeak. “Racism” seems to mean as little as “medical marijuana” .. excpet Lee dislikes one and likes the other.
Using words so loosely they mean nothing, is as much a tactic of the far right as it of the far left … a lot of what Lee wrote here could have been written by
Glenn Beck .. Yeh, a terrible guy, but racist? hardly.
The citizen who fears Mexican immigrants is not necessarily a racist, unless having a Spanish ancestor is a definition of race.
European descended impoverished Americans vastly outnumber the “colored” minorities … classist segregation of the schools is not “racist” either.
sighhhh
Also, the right tends to rely on Rasmussen opinion polls — which are clearly slanted toward the ideological positions of the right.
I already have the links to prove my point, so go ahead, ‘baggers, and make my day.
English 101 accuses Lee of ‘Orwellian Newspeak’, but does not accord the ‘baggers the same linguistic legerdemain regarding racism.
I have two words for you: Southern Strategy.
Hmmmm…that’s a big jump. I certainly agree with the first part; Tea Party folks are all for programs that benefit them (see Didier), but not so much for things that go to others.
Considering the breadth of the label “Tea Party”, I would concede some in the ranks are motivated by racism. However, I think it’s more of a case of plain selfishness and personal greed, something that’s infected way too many folks in our society these days, regardless of ideology.
re 4; Deflection — ‘They both do it’ — therefore the ‘baggers are no better or worse than say, the American Civil Liberties Union.
Go peddle your BS elsewhere.
@ 1
Great text to give sophmore class in English.
I will leave that to others who enjoy correcting bad grammar.
Ok. In your first sentence, the words “to a” should have preceded the word “sophomore,” which you misspelled as “sophmore”.
Using words so loosely they mean nothing
You’re about as competent at discussing semantics as you are competent at critiquing someone else’s grammar, though I completely understand the all out, full court press to evade responsibility for any form of racist attitude however it might present itself. It’s all part of the syndrome.
Nevertheless, there really is little point in trying to draw fine distinctions between racism and ethnocentrism. Both are a form of xenophobia, and both are equally reprehensible.
Now, do you care to actually address some of the substance of Lee’s post?
5: What in the world are you talking about? Deflection? English, please. Where did I bring in the ACLU?
http://www.pollingreport.com/
They pointedly do NOT include Rasmussen as a reliable poll.And, it’s a politically neutral source.
Their professional opinion is that Rasmussen cannot be included, because, inshort, they run fake polls.
They are Robocall polls — very unreliable — and when you tailor the questions to suit the response you want, that means it’ unreliable — except as a propaganda tool.
Lee is close to the truth about the mass of Tea Party types. At the most general level the Tea Party is about the “deserving” and the “undeserving.” For the TPs, any government benefits they receive are OK because they deserve them (with little intellectual rationale) while benefits to others are waste and corruption. This covers not just social security but federal farm subsidies, federal flood insurance for flood-prone propeties, and on and on. Welfare benefits to rural white are fine, but not to urban non-whites.
What we have is close to tribalism. Tribes are identified by various social markers ( race,abortion, choice of sports, gay rights, comfort on cultural diversity) which don’t map easily onto economic self-interest. The same people who “support” the free market want protective tariffs for local industry. I’ve heard TP types rant against unions while also being outraged about mass layoffs and outsourcing to foreign countries. There is no point in trying to find some overall philosophy for these people.
Libertarians are out of touch with reality (always have been) but also out of touch with actual governance. They are useful window-dressing, providing a sheen of limited government principles over a Republican Party lacking in any intellectual coherence. (See, we have people who favor legalizing drugs! So we can’t be fascists!) The right is about the seizure and holding of power, not small government. Leninist not Federalist.
The Kansas City newspaper ran a pretty good editorial asking Baggers to repudiate the racists in their ranks. I think I posted a link to it on a previous post. I’d go find it, but I’m phoning this in.
@4
Considering the breadth of the label “Tea Party”, I would concede some in the ranks are motivated by racism. However, I think it’s more of a case of plain selfishness and personal greed, something that’s infected way too many folks in our society these days, regardless of ideology.
That’s a very good point. And it’s definitely bolstered by the fact that surveys have also shown that many Tea Partiers are college-educated and fairly well-off. But I also don’t think that those views are mutually exclusive. A lot of times (and I can think specifically of two former high school friends of mine who are Tea Partiers now), that it’s a mix of both.
Do black leaders need to repudiate the epidemic of black criminals within its race?
@6
Now, do you care to actually address some of the substance of Lee’s post?
Surely you jest!
No, he’ll start claiming that I believe something totally different than what I actually believe, so that he can then call me a racist who’s just like Glenn Beck.
re 7: Don’t be fatuous, Whore-fin.
The topic of my reply to your critcism of Lee’s post is that you make false comparisons.
Answer me this: Where did Lee mention Orwellian newspeak? That’s what I mean by you being fatuous and evasive.
Lee,
“The Tea Party movement isn’t a movement about limited government and it never has been. They may make signs and shout slogans against “socialism”, but as surveys like that one show, they have no problem with things like Medicare or Social Security, or tightly regulating Wall Street.”
This may be true of some. Presumably on the premise that I have no problem with my Dad collecting Social Security, for which he paid. I would love to see a 20 year phase out of the program so that those who pay get a return, but we stop giving people that claim. And the hypocrisy in this is where?
The rest of the paragraph makes a lot of unsupported guesses about motives. Good guesses or bad, they are still guesses unsupported by your slanted polls.
“The staff at Reason have had a natural desire to believe that the Tea Party folks are their fellow travelers..”
More unsupported guesses. Followed by this gem of bias- “They’re more often than not folks who think that Barack Obama is cynically trying to steal their money and give it to people who refuse to work hard and who don’t care about America as much as them.” Paying taxes for legitimate and Constitutionally supported government activity benefiting the whole populace is one thing. It is completely ethical and legal. Taking my tax money to write an EITC check to someone is theft. Nowhere in the Constitution is such authority granted. In fact Franklin wrote “We should make the poor uncomfortable and kick them out of their poverty.” He wrote that when taxes were taken to benefit another the republic would be doomed. Again, where exactly is the hypocrisy?
Your last paragraph suggests that racism has changed to exclude race as a factor. Interesting.
Re 10
The calls for Tea Party leaders (such as exist) to repudiate racism have a precedent. It is identical to the question ‘when did you stop beating your wife?’
Since the ’60’s, racists could recognize each other through dog whistles. The first one was abortion. Before Roe v. Wade, the argument against abortion was about responsibility, specifically the responsibility of poor people not to get pregnant. Since most people of color were poor, it was easy to say “We’te not racist, we are for responsibility.”
The anti-abortion crowd switched to an argument based on rights, but still focused on people of color. Since the number of people of color in the middle class has grown, the anti-abortion crowd has thinned out because there is less cover for the racists hiding there.
Lee:
I see your point, but how much hair splitting will we have to do to call folks “racist”? If we could quantify motivators, how high would the race motivator be before we could label someone racist? 51%? 1%?
Speaking from my interaction with TP folks, they just come off as not wanting to give hardly any their money to the government period, but still expect their same levels of programs and services. They think the “down and out” are just “lazy”, regardless of color or background.
Thanks for the post, Lee. Trying to peel away the “small government” facade of the TP is a good thing….
Mr. Sinical (…proud ‘neath heated brow.) @ 14
Who or what was I comparing the TP to? I just said selfishness was prevalent in society, and in particular the TP. Or do you not agree?
Again, what are you talking about? Now I’m the one who brought in Orwell, too?
Another gem from the stunningly ignorant completelylost:
Why do you hate Ronald Reagan?
Re 20
I don’t actually hate Reagan. Nor do I deify him as too many on the right do, or the left for Obama.
They are men. As such they make or made mistakes. I can believe a man to be good and well intentioned without requiring him to be perfect.
After all, Reagan admired that pre-eminent traitor and destroyer of decent self reliant Americans, that abomination FDR.
@19 “Again, what are you talking about? Now I’m the one who brought in Orwell, too?”
I suspect there’s just some confusion here, Whorfin, started by Mr. Sinical @5 with an unfortunate reference to your comment @4. It appears to me that he should redirect his comments towards English 101, who introduced “Orwellian” @1.
I’m glad to be of service. heh- You two good progressives can kiss and make up now.
“that pre-eminent traitor and destroyer of decent self reliant Americans, that abomination FDR”
I take it back. heh- Lost is no hater, no siree.
Re 23
Obama is likely a decent man who is wrong about most things political or to do with the economy.
Reagan was a great man who was mostly right about the same things Obama about which Obama is mistaken.
FDR undermined everything that made this country great. He created generations who stopped asking what they owed their society as citizens, and started asking what they were owed.
Hatred? Not really. FDR was a great man, in a distorted way. Nothing less than some form of greatness would have effected the disastrous change he wrought on this country. In every way the man was wrong about politics, wrong about the Constitution, and wrong for this country.
Now, I wish all of you a good Sunday afternoon. Please find unity in disparaging every thing I said, down to comma placement if that makes your day. The boy and I are going fishing.
@18
I see your point, but how much hair splitting will we have to do to call folks “racist”? If we could quantify motivators, how high would the race motivator be before we could label someone racist? 51%? 1%?
Well, the tell is sometimes a matter of how consistent they are in their beliefs. A good example of this was an old post where I noticed a regular commenter here shift from believing that marijuana should be legal to defending the arrests of black people for buying marijuana. When it was her son (who was in college), she could grasp why it was wrong to arrest him, but when it was anonymous black people in a poor neighborhood doing the same exact thing, she was all for it. And she was furious that I thought of her as a racist.
My point here though isn’t to try to discern which individuals in the tea party movement are and aren’t racists, it’s to point out that this movement keeps having problems with racist statements because a fear of a more multicultural nation is a major part of what drives it. Not everyone who has that fear is some KKK grand wizard, but a movement like that will certainly attract more than a few people who are that racist.
re 19:
from #4
Yes. You are the one who brought in Orwell. Which brings me back to your fatuity.
Does anyone out there truly believe the NAAPC is not a racist organization? Racism isn’t just white people being racist; it’s everyone being racist because we all are racist in one way or another.
@28
Does anyone out there truly believe the NAAPC is not a racist organization?
I don’t believe that the NAACP is a racist organization. I think it’s possible that there could be an individual member of the NAACP who holds racist views, but I’ve never seen any action or position taken by the NAACP as a whole that is racist in nature.
As I tire of your seemingly endless arrogance, Lost, I’ve cleaned it up for you.
@5: Mitch McConnell resorts to the “both sides” fallacy on this one:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....50417.html
All I can say is: drip, drip, drip…
@28 “Does anyone out there truly believe the NAAPC is not a racist organization?”
You can do better than that, PI. When progressives accuse the Tea Party of condoning the racist elements within their ranks, they can at least point to racist remarks by various self-anointed leaders and the racist signs waved at rallys. And even with that, the right will still argue there’s absolutely no racist element. So what evidence have you? What have you got on the NCAAP that leaves you so flabbergasted that anyone wouldn’t consider them racist?
@27 There’s a mix-up here, folks. Please refer to my post @22, Mr. Sinical. Whorfin did not mention Orwell. That was “English 101”, @1.
Re 30
While appreciating the assistance I left those thoughts out on purpose.
It’s reasonable to assume my beliefs and assumptions about those statements by the fact that I made them. If I didn’t hold those opinions I wouldn’t have done so.
Thanks anyway. Have a nice day.
In other words, you want to come across as some arrogant asswipe. Mission accomplished, Lost.
And Steve Steve Steve, you supposedly know your own kind, EH?
@28
The NAACP is far from the only group that has called on the Tea Baggers to repudiate the racist folks that appear in their ranks. I find it puzzling that the Baggers have not as they would gain standing in the general community by doing so.
And then there’s Mark Williams, leader of Tea Party Express, who says blacks were better off under slavery because they didn’t have to look for a job and favors repealing emancipation.
@24 “Obama is likely a decent man who is wrong about most things political or to do with the economy.
Reagan was a great man who was mostly right about the same things Obama about which Obama is mistaken.
FDR undermined everything that made this country great. He created generations who stopped asking what they owed their society as citizens, and started asking what they were owed.”
You’re a stupid man who, despite having (or maybe I should say claiming to have) a college education, utterly lacks historical understanding or critical thinking skills. Saws, hammers, and lumber prices you perhaps understand; but your macroeconomic literacy is near zero.
Rabbit
“You’re a stupid man who, despite having (or maybe I should say claiming to have) a college education, utterly lacks historical understanding or critical thinking skills. Saws, hammers, and lumber prices you perhaps understand; but your macroeconomic literacy is near zero.”
You’re an older gentleman who heard ad nauseum about how the great FDR saved the world. You also heard about the terrible economic effects on peoples lives of the Great Depression from parents and grandparents. Perhaps you have some memories of those times personally. While I respect your right to an opinion, that respect doesn’t have to take the form of agreement.
My grandfather extolled FDR for many of the same reasons. I respected my grandfather and learned many lessons from him, but on this one we could never agree.
For all that I am a ‘stupid man’ I can recognize that in crisis sometimes any action seems like forward motion. It is the job of a leader and a patriot to balance the short term gains against the long term costs. This FDR failed to do. It is the job of a leader and lover of his country to balance the social costs against the fiscal ones. This also FDR failed to do.
He didn’t fail to do this out of ignorance. He hasn’t got that good an excuse. He did it because he wanted a fundamental change in this country, cost what it might. He did it because the ways of thinking and the acceptable exercise of government authority as the Constitution and 150 years of tradition dictated weren’t good enough for him. He did it to remake this remarkable country in his own ideal of what was best.
So, while I lack the ability to critically think, express myself well, or understand the kind of economics any half educated man could tell you was bunk (but no fully educated idiot) I stand by my statements. FDR was and will likely remain the worst and least truly American president.
You’re just blowing it out your ass again, saying nothing.
“And Steve Steve Steve, you supposedly know your own kind, EH?”
I know your kind, Puddy. Over the past few years I’ve become very well acquainted with your kind’s mindless hatred of anything decent and good.
lost @ 40:
I see your point, however, you can’t overstate the feeling of helplessness, despair, and no hope folks in 1933 had in this nation. You had, by some estimates, a third of the country out of work.
There were more than a few folks around looking at the Soviet Union or Germany at the time and thought what was “working” there would work here. FDR did lead by giving people some hope that the system still worked and tomorrow would be better.
I’m sorry, such programs like Social Security and the Securities and Exchange Commission seem to be pretty popular…or do you think they should have never come about? What about the FDIC? Banking reform? Those are the main legacies of FDR; remember a good part of the New Deal was repealed in WWII….
@32
“Hymie-towners.” Tell me that a member of the NAAPC didn’t make that remark. If you can’t remember who said it, google the phrase. You might learn something completely different. (Appologies to Monty Python for using their words in bold.)
So today’s Tea Party is yesterday’s Moral Majority. So we’ll be eulogizing it in a few years as another burst of what may have once been well-intentioned, but eventually clouded over by hatred and bigotry.
I know that there are Teepers of all stripes and spots, but the refusal of Teeper leadership to prove that they aren’t inherently racist or that they disown the actions of those who are is essentially de-legitimizing themselves as a meaningful force.
@44 So you condemn an entire organization as racist today for what one person said in 1984? Then I’m sure you don’t mind our condemning you for what some faux-libertarian idiot said 26 years ago. But let’s not go back that far. How about we instead hang all of the ugly troll comments on you. Let’s start with these,
My goodness! I truly hope you’re making some progress getting over your issues with gays, PI.
Next we’ll explore your issues with black people. Bye the bye, you own the “N” word, PI, big-time.
If the entire NAACP organization is to be deemed racist for what one person said in 1984, then surely PI will accept his new tag as a racist for what one of his fellow travelers wrote only last year.
Mark’s comment tars you as a racist just as you say that Jackson’s 26 year-old comment makes today’s entire NAACP a racist organization. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, PI.
Brilliant!
How closely related to the tea party movement is the ‘birther’ movement? What I mean by this is that I believe there are polls which have shown tea partiers are much more likely to believe Obama was not born in the US than the general public.
I personally believe that the ‘birther’ movement is clearly motivated by racism. It seems that some people just will not accept a mixed-ethnicity president and will find any way to discredit him, even though their theory has been proven wrong over and over again.
I think it’s a mistake to equate the “Tea Party” with the priviledged, whether directly or indirectly. The Tea Party folks I’ve met would hardly fit their definition. At most they are folks on the bottom of the economic ladder, or at best only a few rungs up from the bottom. Their connection with the “priviledged” can be described best as “wanna bes”.
This explains part of the attraction of the Tea Party in contrast to traditional Republican politics. The top ranks of the Republican Party are filled with those who have a lifetime of political influence or financial influence. Most Tea Party activists could never aspire to such ranks. But the Tea Party gives them an alternative for their ambition, and a heady aroma of influence. Palin understands and feeds on that ambition, being a practitioner herself. Nothing rewards those folks in the Tea Party quite so much as having a parade of traditional Republicans come humbly to their conventions, supporting and encouraging them, and asking humbly for their coronation as their candidate-of-the-hour if they prove themselves sufficiently ideologically pure.
I emphasize their economic and social position at the bottom of the economic ladder, because it is important. As James Webb indicated in his book “Born Fighting: The Scots-Irish Experience in America”, much of the economic conflict between race, religion, and heritage takes place at the bottom of the economic ladder. Those who have fought and scrambled to get a place on that bottom rung are usually willing to do whatever it takes to keep from getting pulled back into the pit, including making sure that other groups are kept off the ladder entirely.
The truely priviledged have used that for basic fact of human life for their own purposes for as long as humankind can remember. It is in their interest to keep as much of the population hanging by their fingernails to that bottom rung, at which point they will do anything to avoid falling back into the pit. By supporting racism, nationalism, or any other method of setting the lower classes against one another, they profit from the conflict and keep the lower classes from recognizing those who are really benefiting at their expense.
“The difference between the tea party and the NAACP is if you are looking for racists at the tea party you look at the fringe and if you are looking for racists at the NAACP you look to the stage.”
-Anonymous commentator on the CBS TV news website on the video of the (now former) USDA Official released by A. Breitbart.
@51
You mean the heavily edited video that took what that USDA official said way out of context in order to get her fired?
The real question is whether or not you’ll figure out who the real racists are now.
@52
Did you notice the audience reaction to the racist bits? Acceptance – as long as the victim was white.
Admittedly, she did go on to make a good point about changing attitudes and then wiped it all out with her unsupported condemnation of the Tea party.
@53
Did you notice the audience reaction to the racist bits? Acceptance – as long as the victim was white.
The audience knew the context of the story, dummy.