I kind of figured that Greg Sargent's connection to reality was a little tenuous, but this takes the cake:
One of my favorite right wing fantasies has it that Democrats are broadly convinced that the vast majority of Tea Partyers are closet or overt racists. You hear this so often that it often seems as if some folks wish this were the case.
The latest example of this genre: A mini-tizzy is brewing on the right over a new book that suggests Obama himself may harbor that view. As the Drudge headline put it: "BOOK: Obama Says 'Race' a Key Component in Tea Party Protests."
Good grief. All one has to do is google "tea party" and "racist" to get around 2.1 million examples of Democrats, leftists, and even some Republicans screaming bloody murder about how racist those damned tea partiers are. I've been hearing it for two years now and to deny that is just stupid. Here are just a couple of examples from today:
- But one upshot is going to be a redoubling of efforts to prove the GOP isn't racist.
- And how quickly we've forgotten the overt racism while looking to justify the more subtle examples.
Are there racists in the various Tea Party organizations? Almost certainly, just like they are in the NAACP, both major parties, and probably pretty much any organization of a certain size. Racism has no boundaries when it comes to ideology or race and it can take many forms. In general though, I don't think most Americans are racist whether they are in a Tea Party or not.
When individuals say or do racist things we should to call them on it, of course. But I'm not going to take ownership of that racism if it turns out that the racist associates with some legitimate group that I am in. And I'm going to resent it like hell if somebody tries to make me. Wouldn't you? I thought we had given up things like stereotyping and collective guilt and punishment.
I guess not, no matter how hard Greg Sargent tries to wish that reality away.
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