Tea Party Fosters Bold Defiance Of Racial Equality
Racial animosity is racial animosity, whatever flavor it comes in – southern redneck scorn, poorly disguised northern liberal contempt, conservative country club hatred, or the calculated disdain of minority elites against Mr. Charlie. The flavor the Tea Party Federation has not only allowed but encouraged from the many, many miscreants among their ranks is bold defiance, a rebellious attitude against the generally accepted racial norms of modern day America that has been allowed to foster unchecked by the movement’s leaders. It is a level of impudence, of juvenile “nobody tells me what to do “ so pervasive throughout their federation, despite the protestations by them and their talk radio cheerleaders, that the refusal by the Tea Party Express chapter to expel Mark Williams led to the expulsion of the entire chapter.
“We, in the last 24 hours, have expelled Tea Party Express and Mark Williams from the National Tea Party Federation because of the letter that he wrote which he, I guess, may have considered satire but which was clearly offensive,” said Federation spokesman David Webb Sunday on the CBS program “Face the Nation.”
“And that is what we do. Self-policing is the right and the responsibility of any movement or organization,” he added.
The National Tea Party Federationannounced the actionin a press release Saturday. The group said that a day earlier it gave the Tea Party Express until Saturday afternoon to kick Williams out and publicly rebuke him, but that did not occur.
There is no getting around the fact that in this particular venue, on this particular topic, African Americans will always have the upper hand when it comes to deciding who has a preponderance of moral suasion on their side in regards to race and racism. Unless the Tea Party acolytes have found a way to go back in time and change the history of America from the beginning, this is a battle they should put in the permanent “loss” column. But these hard headed folks have no intention of ever admitting reality.
Sadly, I am not a member of the NAACP, like most other black people, which is why, when the organization should be figuring out new ways to ensure equal access to opportunity and equal treatment under the law for African Americans, something the United States government has always seemed to be a little reluctant to do, even though they say so in the press conferences they hold, they are instead out scrounging for money. Maybe this dustup will call more attention to the need for those of us who have benefited greatly from this organization’s past efforts to bolster their membership ranks.
So what does expelling Mark Williams and the Tea Party Express mean?
Not a damn thing, unless you are a overpaid op-ed columnist or a lazy reporter who desperately needed this one lone act of contrition so you could go on pretending there is a level of equivalency between the morally confused Tea Party and the venerable grand old lady the NAACP has become. To those of us who don’t tilt at windmills for a living, all the expulsion of one chapter from the Tea Party Federation means is there are ninety nine more to go.
