Tea Party Racism a Reality

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) held its 101st convention this week in Kansas City and presented a resolution asking the Tea Party to condemn its “rampant racism.”
Ben Jealous, president of this country’s oldest civil rights organization, said that the Tea Party has “dedicated racists and ultra nationalists” in its ranks, people who make no bones about not liking black people in general and President Obama in particular.
Mr. Jealous said that the aim of the Tea Party is to push the country back to pre-civil rights era conditions, but Mark Williams, speaking for the Tea Party, said it is the Obama administration that is seeking to do just that.
Huh?
Mr. Williams said that the president’s policies, including health care reform, threaten the human and civil rights of all Americans, including black people. He said that Mr. Obama has created policies that “have emasculated the black family.”
Huh?
Which black families is he talking about?
In fact, how many American families, period, is he talking about?
The facts have shown that though Americans pay more for health care than any nation in the world, we have the worst health care. We have a system based on profit for insurance companies, which has been at the expense of “the American people.”
All groups of people, from all ethnicities and economic classes, have suffered because our health care system is and has been more concerned with profit margins over the health and well being of American citizens.
When little children, black, white, and otherwise, are dying of infections garnered from a bad tooth that could not be treated because a parent didn’t have health care, something is morally wrong with the extant system. When people with cancer cannot get treatment because they do not have and cannot afford health care, something is wrong. When a family has to send a child overseas because he or she has a chronic illness, needs health insurance, isn’t working, but couldn’t get health care anyway because of his or her pre-existing condition, something is wrong.
WHO is it that’s been emasculated by Mr. Obama’s policies?
The Tea Party is not made up exclusively of racist people, but there are enough of them, people so racist that some felt it OK to spit on black legislators some months ago, and who compare Mr. Obama to Hitler …there are enough of them to taint the entire party, in my opinion. For Mr. Williams to state that the Obama’s policies “emasculate” the black family reeks of arrogance, ignorance and racism as well. What black families does he know which have been hurt by the prospect of having access to health care?
I hope that the Tea Party crashes and burns. I hope that its racism hits enough people who are at least embarrassed to be associated with a group which feels to be a euphemism for the Ku Klux Klan. These people are riled up and have lots of energy; I hope that voices of reason, stronger than the so-called “Coffee Parties,” rile up and push back, until the Tea Party is pushed into the Boston Harbor, ever to remain drowned in and because of its own racism, arrogance and ignorance.
Have a good week.
Pastor Smith