Dear Tea Party, Stop Supporting Racists

One thing I keep hearing from people in the Tea Party is "The liberals and the media are trying to paint us as a bunch of ignorant racists to discredit our cause!"

I can understand the complaint. If I was accused of being a racist without cause, or being ignorant without cause, I'd be pretty pissed off as well.

But the problem is, the Tea Party isn't getting these accusations without cause. Now, I know, "Oh, well, that's just isolated pockets", or "The Tea Party has such a diverse membership you're sure to find some areas with problems."

Here's my problem: it's one thing if you have some lone wolf in the crowd being an asshole. That happens within every group. But when it's the candidates you support, when the crowd sits back and cheers it on or refuses to act against the racist violent members in their midsts, then you can't claim it's an isolated problem.

When the leader you pick says its easier for minorities to make money selling drugs than getting an education, then yeah - I'm going to say that the people who selected this man to run for office are racists.



Sharon Angle has an ad where Hispanics are patrolling the fence, here to take away jobs and college benefits from an all-white group of college students.


And another Sharon Angle ad that shows Hispanics as scary gang members and arrested while "US citizens" (aka - white people) live in fear of the scary brown people:



Angle, if you may recall, won her Republican primary thanks to Tea Party support. If this is the candidate that Tea Party members pick, then it's perfectly within reach to call the Tea Party movement racist for supporting racists like Angle.

When the NAACP issued a report showing how there were elements in the Tea Party movement that were racist, this was the perfect opportunity for the Tea Party memebers to say "Good! We can now find these members within our midst and evict them from the movement." And while there were some token dismissals, you still have some of the largest groups like Tea Party nation call for a Muslim free congress - and still enjoy the support of Tea Party members rather than moving to expel and reject such notions, you don't hear a peep.

You can't say that racism and bigotry are isolated incidents when the leaders that your group selects and supports are saying and doing the bigoted things. Now, I know, someone will say "But those are just isolated incidents! You're blanketing the whole party based on the views of a few!"

No. I'm basing the whole party based on the leaders that they choose. You may not be judged by the company you keep, but you should be judged based on whom you choose to lead your movement.

Damn it not another Teabagger video

More racist tea party signs

I always love how "it's just the fringe - stop judging us all by the actions of a few!"

Here's my problem with this line of thought: the rest of the group allows and enables those racist fucktards.

If the teabaggers don't want people to think they're racists asshats, the same 20% of the population who followed Bush and Cheney into the ditch then when it became unpopular to love them proclaimed Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck their new saviors - they have to prove it.

That means when Tom Tancredo gives a speech and calls for "literacy tests" to people who are all old enough to remember the Jim Crow era, the response from teabaggers shouldn't be to applaud, but to boo him off the stage.

When someone shows up with a picture of Obama as a witch doctor or referring to him as "boy" or asking "Where's your birth certificate!", the rest of the group shouldn't shrug and say "Oh, well, that's just Earnie," the response of the rest of the teabaggers crowd should be to boo and shame that person and ban them from their midsts.

When I'm in a town hall meeting and a black man stands up and says "Just think of all the progress we made in the 1960's with the civil rights movement", and a teabagger screams at them "Yeah, we know what you did in the 1960's for your kind", or when a black woman speaks and teabaggers scream "Get a job, Oprah", the response of the other teabaggers shouldn't be to applaud, but to be embarrassed.

If and when the teabaggers start doing this, then I'll be ready to start taking them a little seriously. Granted, there's still the "protesting Obama's raising their taxes after they were cut and studies show this is the lowest tax paying generation ever" or "screaming the Obama's taking my guns when not only has he not, he's signed laws allowing more guns in more places than before".

But I'll settle for "stop being a bunch of racist fucktards" as a starting point.