Black Conservatives in the TEA Party Movement, and the Stupidity of the Race Card

[A Black Falcon]

The Republican party in general is racist, and the tea party movement is on a right fringe of the Republican party. Should it be surprising that many of them are racists? Not exactly. So the fact that there have been quite a few very disgustingly racist posters and things said at tea party rallies isn't exactly surprising. It's sad, but not surprising. America still has a big racial problem, obviously.

For anyone who questions that the Republican Party is racist, I don't mean that all Republicans are. Of course they're not. They did for instance elect Michael Steele as party chairman. However, just look at the party. Look at how it is Southern-dominant... Southern WHITE dominant. The Republican Party crushingly dominates in the South, and that provides almost all of their solid base and most of their significant lawmakers. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Republican Party decided that, as the Democratic Party was moving in the direction of finally supporting civil rights for blacks, and thus alienating their traditional Southern Democrat base that had been a big part of their party, the Republicans would go in the opposite direction, abandon their founding principles, and jump headlong into racism. It worked brilliantly for decades, and led to a Republican-dominated period in American history. That period is now ending, though, but in the South they haven't let go...

I mean, just look at the recent scandal in Virginia over "Confederate History Month", and how the governor (a Republican) somehow forgot to mention slavery, the only actual cause of the war, the statement announcing it. He was criticized for that and did a few days later add that in, but that they'd have something like that in the first place, a month celebrating the legacy of a country founded on the principle of wanting to continue to hold slaves... we shouldn't forget the Civil War, but we also shouldn't forget why the South was actually fighting.


Anyway, to get to some of your points. No, of course disagreeing with Obama does not immediately make someone racist. Things like the support for Confederate history that is so common among white Southerners (who are now mostly Republican, and you can try to deny it but the Tea Party movement obviously comes out of the Republican Party) do. Things like the posters comparing the Obamas to monkeys do. Things like the Birther Movement does (I would estimate that somewhere around 100% of the actual reasons why birthers think that Barack Obama was not born in the U.S. are because of racism, considering that there is no actual sane reason to believe such idiocy).

Anyway, yes, of course you're right that the black community has hurt itself, with its opposition to learning (people being "too white" if they try to do well in school, etc), the glorification of violence, exploitation of women, and drug use, etc. That much is obvious. And of course people shouldn't be beaten up for disagreeing with most black people, that's horrible... but that doesn't mean that the Republican Party has the intrests of poor or minority people at heart, it most certainly does not. The Tea Party movement's not the same as the traditional Republican line, but they're not much better, with how opposed they are to the social safety nets that are so vital to our poor people need so badly.

As for black Republicans, with how racist so many of the party leaders are, and with how most black people are poor and the Republican party is very strongly anti-poor and very strongly pro-rich, it's not exactly hard to understand why there aren't many of them... and the same goes for hispanics, except add in the anti-immigrant stuff there too. (On that note, President Bush II was quite far ahead of his party on hispanic issues, and actually tried to reach out to hispanics, supported immigration reform, etc. It's one of the only good things I can say about him. It's just too bad that his party wasn't behind him.)

We as a people need to remember that when Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence, he clearly stated that all men are created equal. In other words, all men are subject to the same God-given to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. None of these things are judged on factors like race. If America fails to understand this fact, we are doomed to continue this stupid race argument for decades to come.

Jefferson also owned slaves and supported slavery, though, so he didn't exactly live up to those ideals either... but that is part of why he's such an interesting figure, so contradictory and yet so inspiring sometimes in his rhetoric...