Joan Walsh:Too much tea party racism

[cal04]

BY JOAN WALSH
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/joan_walsh/index.html
http://www.salon.com/news/healthcare_reform/index.html?story=/opinion/walsh/politics/2010/03/20/tea_party_racism
more at link

When the tea party movement began last year I saw it as right-wing reaction, but given the economic turmoil across the country, I tried to understand it. Maybe there was populism within the movement that the left needed to recognize. I attended a local tea party last April 15, tax day, and while I didn't find folks whose minds seemed mutable by liberal populism, at least it seemed possible to have a conversation. I wrote about a former banker and a Democrat who made common cause with some of the protesters around the bank bailout and Goldman Sachs's overall influence on government. She had some good conversations. I saw closed minds, but I didn't see violence or overt racism. Of course I was in San Francisco, so it probably wasn't representative of the tea party movement, but I still think the effort to understand the economic anxiety that's part of what's motivating the tea partiers was worth my time.

A year later, though, it's worth more of my time to say what many resist: The tea party movement is disturbingly racist and reactionary, from its roots to its highest branches. On Saturday, as a small group of protesters jammed the Capitol and the streets around it, the movement's origins in white resistance to the Civil Rights Movement was impossible to ignore. Here's only what the mainstream media is reporting, ignoring what I'm seeing on Twitter and left wing blogs:

(snip)
On Thursday MSNBC's "Hardball" host Chris Matthews grilled tea party Astroturf leader Tim Phillips of Americans for Prosperity about supporters who taunted a man with Parkinson's disease at a tea party gathering in Ohio last week. Phillips insisted the bullies just didn't represent the tea party movement. But such demurrals don't cut it any more. At the Nashville tea party gathering last month, a proponent of the kinder, gentler tea party movement, Judson Phillips, tried to distance himself from crazed and racist elements – but later endorsed racist speaker Tom Tancredo even after he told the convention: "People who could not even spell the word 'vote', or say it in English, put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House. His name is Barack Hussein Obama." Tancredo blamed Obama's election on the fact that "we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country." He got some of the loudest cheers of the weekend.

So I'm having a hard time tonight trying to believe almost uniformly white tea partiers are anything other than a racist, right-wing reaction to the election of an African American president who brings with him feminists and gays (even if he doesn't do as much for them as they would ideally like). I'm having a hard time seeing the tea partiers as anything other than the spawn of George Wallace racism – the movement Pat Buchanan bragged to me that Richard Nixon made his own. Of course, in that same "Hardball" segment, Buchanan denounced me for condescending to and "demonizing" the tea partiers. I still find that rich: I grew up in lower middle class Long Island, with a first-generation Irish father, going to public schools and universities, while the wealthy Buchanan grew up in Washington D.C. with professionals as parents and attended Georgetown University. How is he the supposed working class troubadour while I'm somehow emblematic of the pointy-headed liberal elite?

[Cha]

1. KickR

[The Magistrate]

2. Ms. Walsh Is Quite Right, Ma'am

This is a collection of radical right racists, motivated by hate, and nothing more.

[FLyellowdog]

3. TheTea Party is definitely the party of George Wallace.

No if's, and's, or but's about it. What a shameful state of affairs the Republicans have gotten themselves into. :puke:

[TuxedoKat]

10. Wait, Wallace renounced

his racist positions in his later years didn't he? I think he'd be to the left or at least way more reasonable or respectful than these people.

[awoke_in_2003]

11. yes he did. nt

[FLyellowdog]

12. I guess I need to clarify...in his EARLY days. Sorry. nt

[TuxedoKat]

13. No problema

Just wanted to acknowledge him for doing the right thing in his later years.

[awoke_in_2003]

14. Not to worry...

I knew what you meant (as did most here), just wanted to affirm what someone else said about him turning around in the end. If a man like Wallace can come to grips with his error, it leaves a bit of hope.

[BlooInBloo]

4. Linky no worky...

This one works for me: http://www.salon.com/news/healthcare_reform/index.html?story=/opinion/walsh/politics/2010/03/20/tea_party_racism

[pinto]

5. Whatever remained of a reasonable Republican party has been replaced by a racist bumper sticker.

[kestrel91316]

6. I said from Day One that the teabaggers were first and foremost all about racism.

It appears I may have been right. Fancy that.

[BlueMTexpat]

7. Anyone with a tad of common sense is characterized as

"emblematic of the pointy-headed liberal elite," no matter what their actual roots, struggles or attributes may be.

The teabaggers (like many, I refuse to call them tea "partiers") and all complicit members of the Republican party, or ANY other, who support them, not only allow and encourage this, but make heroes of those who do such characterizing.

[elleng]

8. Shouldn't Dems be saying they're Un-American?

No more NICE FOLKS, b'tds.

[CLANG]

15. No they're Americans alright.

Racism is as American as apple pie. Many Americans struggle their lives trying to understand and appreciate those that seem different from themselves. That is definitely NOT in the mindset of these Ugly Americans.

[Zoeisright]

9. Of course they're racist.

Anyone who thinks otherwise is stupid or deliberately ignorant.

[husky92]

16. You Are Absolutely Right...

You are right, a large segment of these people are bigots and dumber than hell to boot. These tea party folks are a blight on MY America. They can make all the noise they want about immigration, minorities wanting handouts, etc., but bottom line most are pissed because we have a black President and they hate anyone that leans toward the liberal side. Take a look at their signs (the ones spelled correctly!) and who they gravitate to -- Beck, Limbaugh, etc. Hate mongers. I'm embarrassed to even be in the same country with some of these people and I'm sick of them wanting THEIR country back. What is THEIR country -- whites only? They show their ignorance by siding with the Republicans who preach small government, fiscal responsibility, etc., to them yet they (Republicans) shit on people like the Tea Party types in this country by catering to the wealthy. They can care less about most of these people, yet they want to invite them into their tent because they want their votes. These knuckleheads just don't get it.