The NAACP Is Right

The NAACP on the Tea Party:

Today, NAACP delegates passed a resolution to condemn extremist elements within the Tea Party, calling on Tea Party leaders to repudiate those in their ranks who use racist language in their signs and speeches.

The reaction to this announcement has been swift and, in the main, negative. Next door, Dave Weigel, whose knowledge of the Tea Party is formidable, dismisses the resolution as "silliness" and "a stunt," and Chris Bodenner bemoans the fact that he ended Monday praising the Tea Party over the NAACP. If I'm reading this right, Michael Tomasky believes Obama should attack the NAACP because their resolution "heightens division." I think Michael McGough captures the  spirit of "sensible" criticism:

I see a fairness problem with the NAACP's resolution calling upon Tea Party leaders to "repudiate those in their ranks who use racist language in their signs and speeches." (The quote is from an NAACP press release which does not provide the text of the resolution.) Calling on an organization to denounce abhorrent behavior by some of its devotees may seem reasonable. But it implies that the extremists/bigots/bombers are a sufficiently significant component of the organization that such a gesture is necessary.

The NAACP's announcement initially struck me in much the same the way. But some hours of considering this have proven to me that my initial skepticism says more about the broad American narrative of race and racism, then it does about the justness of the NAACP's charge.

I think it's worth, first, considering the record of American racism, and then the record of the Tea Party and its allies. Racism tends to attract attention when it's flagrant and filled with invective. But like all bigotry, the most potent component of racism is frame-flipping--positioning the bigot as the actual victim. So the gay do not simply want to marry, they want to convert our children into sin. The Jews do not merely want to be left in peace, they actually are plotting world take-over. And the blacks are not actually victims of American power, but beneficiaries of the war against hard-working whites. This is a respectable, more sensible, bigotry, one that does not seek to name-call, preferring instead change the subject and strawman. Thus segregation wasn't necessary to keep the niggers in line, it was necessary to protect the honor of white women.

In that same vein we confront Glenn Beck, arguably the movement's greatest and most full-throated advocate in the media. Here is Glenn Beck discussing President Barack Obama's attempt to convene Officer Michael Crowley and Henry Louis Gates for a beer-summit:

This president, I think, has exposed himself as a guy, over and over again, who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture, I don't know what it is...I'm not saying he doesn't like white people, I'm saying he has a problem.

Here is Glenn Beck discussing President Barack Obama's push for health care reform:

Barack Obama is setting up universal healthcare, universal college, green jobs as stealth reparations. That way the victim status is maintained. And he also brings back back

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