Of Tea and Race

A blogger at True Slant somehow tries to link the exceedingly weird Amy Bishop shooting incident to racism and the Tea Party movement. Bill Jacobson responds...

There is no actual link between Alabama-Hunstville shooter Amy Bishop and the Tea Party movement.

By all accounts, Bishop was extremely liberal and a huge Obama fan (to the point of being described by someone who knew her as being obsessed with Obama).

...It would be easy to dismiss the attempt to link Bishop and the Tea Party movement given the absurdity of the connection. After all, Bishop loves Obama, so how could the "anti-Obama" nature of the Tea Party movement have caused Bishop to do anything?

It's just that these things have a way of working their way into the mainstream media, regardless of how outlandish the supposed connection.

The link between Bishop and Tea Parties is absurd on its face -- it's a lot more easy to link her to Democrats than Tea Partiers (and in reality, linking her to either is stupid and insensitive to the victims of her awful crime). But the link to racism with the Tea Parties is almost equally absurd. The author at True Slant stated this regarding a NY Times article about the Tea Parties...

The New York Times didn’t address the issue of the Tea Party’s white makeup, but the article did describe the movement’s geographical connection, in Idaho, to the white supremacists Richard Girnt Butler and Randy Weaver.

That's actually not the extent of the connection in the article -- a civil rights activist quoted in the article saw questions about Obama's birth certificate as a proxy for racism and intolerance and "painfully familiar cultural and rhetorical overtones." And there is at least one reference to how most of the people at Tea Party meetings are white, contrary to what True Slant says.

But that's it -- they can't establish that any actual racism from Tea Party adherents, but the biggest link is geographical. By that linkage, I must be a huge supporter of President Obama, since I live within 15 miles of D.C.

Worse yet, the proxy for racism now seems to be whether there are enough minorities that are part of a movement. I know folks who are attending Tea Parties, and they're not racists. But it's absurd to claim that they need a minority like me ( or several such people) to show up to prove they're not racists. I guess I should expect this from Keith Olbermann, but I think it reflects a reality that is obsessed with race. Here's an excerpt from Olbermann's recent statement to the Tea Party folks...

And I know phrases like "Tea Klux Klan" are incendiary, and I know I use them in part because I am angry that at so late a date, we still have to back back that racial uneasiness which has to envelop us all. And I know if I could only listen to Lincoln on this of all days about the better angels of our nature, I’d know that what we’re seeing at the Tea Parties is, at its base, people who are afraid – terribly, painfully, cripplingly, blindingly afraid.

But let me ask all of you who attend these things: How many black faces do you see at these events? How many Hispanics, Asians, gays? Where are these people? Surely, there must be blacks who think they’re being bled by taxation. Surely there must be Hispanics who think the government should have let the auto industry fail. Surely there must be people of all colors and creeds who believe in cultural literacy tests and speaking English. Where are they? Where are they?

Do you suppose they agree with you that they’ve just chosen to attend their own separate meetings, that they’re not at your Tea Party because they have a Tea Party of their own to go to?

...Fear is a terrible thing – so is prejudice, so is racism. And progress towards the removal of any evil produces an inevitable backlash. The Civil War was not followed by desegregation, but by Jim Crow and the Klan. The Civil Rights legislation of the 60s was not followed by peace, but by George Wallace and anti-busing overt racism. Why should the election of a black President be without a backlash?

But recognize what this backlash is and maybe you can free yourself of this movement built of inherited fears and of echoes of 1963 or 1873. Look at who is leading you and why. And look past the blustery self-justifications and see the fear – this unspoken, inchoate, unnecessary fear of those who are different.

If you believe there is merit to your political argument, fine. But ask yourself, when you next go to a Tea Party rally, or watch one on television or listen to a politician or a commentator praise these things or merely treat them as if it was just a coincidence that they are virtually segregated. Ask yourself: Where are the black faces? Who am I marching with? What are we afraid of? And if it really is only a President’s policy and not his skin, ask yourself one final question: Why are you surrounded by the largest crowd you will ever again see in your life that consists of nothing but people who look exactly like you? Good night and good luck.

Now, I know that I'm looking at this from a different perspective than a liberal. They tend to look at the issue and believe, that when the vast majority of faces at a Tea Party gathering are white, that there is an underlying current of racism there, one that perhaps the Tea Party folks don't recognize but that exists. But Olbermann's expectation that there will be backlash to the election of a black president is like a self-fulfilling prophecy, one that basically makes it certain that we need to examine all criticism of this President from people of other races with a detailed analysis of whether the criticism is tinged with racist sentiment. That's insane on its face.

Leaving aside the fact that telling people they're closet racists probably isn't the best way to get them to change their opinion or consider your point of view, I don't understand why the lack of minority faces at a political meeting establishes some kind of racist thought. Olbermann analogizes the situtation to baseball prior to Jackie Robinson, when the game was segregated, and people like Olbermann's pre-teen father assumed that Satchel Paige just didn't want to play for the New York Yankees.

But Olbermann misses the point entirely -- baseball was rigidly segregated by the owners of the teams under an unwritten "Gentleman's Agreement". Yes, the rule was unwritten, but it was understood by everyone in the game, and rigidly enforced by Commissioner Landis during his tenure. This is one reason why Branch Rickey's decision to sign Jackie Robinson was such a big deal.

Last I checked, there's nothing stopping anyone of any color from attending a Tea Party meeting or rally. Considering the rather decentralized structure of the Tea Party movement, there's probably no way to have such an agreement, even if there was a desire to do so. And there's no proof of either.

Bottom line, it's silly to allege such stuff, because it can come back and bite you. More importantly, it demeans what racism really is, and eventually leaves people unable to discuss legitimate political disagreements with one another.