Racism?

In following with yesterday’s tirade I have to wonder what exactly is going on with the NAACP and ask the question that will regain some of the trust that I probably lost with my right wing friends, “would their resolution regarding the tea party people (I still don’t know what they want to be called) have been approved (or even suggested) if the president wasn’t black?”

In keeping with my usual cynicism I would like to tell the Tea Party to suck it up, a resolution from a group that can’t actually make you do anything is like a internet petition–better left ignored until something more interesting replaces it lest you grant it more publicity. Having said that though, I’m actually in support of their condemnation of the NAACP’s resolution. It’s tricky to actually make that statement because the resolution in itself is so general I’m having a hard time understanding what it actually means for the tea party.

Checking their website, which I had to navigate around so that I didn’t have to give them any of my information, I came across what I am supposed to believe is the resolution. It’s a generic piece of clap trap that wants you to agree that racism is bad, democracy is good, diversity is fine, and civility is awesome. The word “banal” comes to mind since nothing in the resolution seems to be oriented specifically at the Tea Party Movement, or its members. I only know that this has to do with the tea party because I have been told that it does. Reading it, I would have just thought that it was the pledge that members of the NAACP had to make in order to join the association.

Back to the race thing though, I’m sure that some members of the tea party are racist. Just as I am sure that some supporters of the president are racist as well. Accusing the whole movement of being racist just because of the fringe element seems to be stereotyping. Although I will say that we are ending up as a society where the loudest voice is automatically deemed to be the spokesman for any group. Those shouting racial epithets in front of congress after the passage of the healthcare act were not the norm, and from the general reports of tea party “confrontations” in town hall meetings the screaming psychopaths weren’t the norm either. They just received the most press.

Even the billboard with the picture of Hitler, Lenin, and Obama on it doesn’t smack to me of racism so much as ignorant fear mongering. It’s also pretty self-contradictory either Obama is like Lenin or he’s like Hitler being both doesn’t really work. I wonder why the author took to the picture of Lenin instead of the more recognizable Stalin, but that’s not the point. It isn’t inherently racist, just as all of the idiot fear mongering which produced the images of Bush dressed like a Nazi had nothing to do with race either.

Like the accusations of anti-Americanism in the last decade the cry of racism isn’t constructive to the debate. It’s a conversation stopper designed solely to enrage. Stupid doesn’t mean racist, although the inverse is certainly true.