NAACP to Vote on Declaration that Tea Party is Racist

Apparently the NAACP believes that espousing federal fiscal responsibility and respect for the Constitution is racist.

From ABC News story by Huma Khan (h/t Pat at And So it Goes in Shreveport):

"The nation's largest and oldest civil rights organization will vote on the resolution Tuesday during its annual convention in Kansas City, Mo.

[...]

"'We're deeply concerned about elements that are trying to move the country back, trying to reverse progress that we've made,' NAACP spokeswoman Leila McDowell told ABC News. 'We are asking that the law-abiding members of the Tea Party repudiate those racist elements, that they recognize the historic and present racist elements that are within the Tea Party movement.'

"The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, in coordination with 170 other groups, including labor unions, is planning a protest march in Washington, D.C., Oct. 10 as the next step in building momentum against the Tea Party.

"The 'One Nation' march is designed as an antithesis to the Tea Party, and it's about 'pulling America together and back to work,' McDowell said."

So Leila McDowell is suggesting that "law-abiding" members (What Tea Party member is not "law-abiding?" Which Tea Party members have been arrested for violent political activities?)of the Tea Party essentially admit the "inherent racism" of their movement, "historic and present" (Historic? Just how old is the Tea Party movement? Less than 18 months, right? Did McDowell just cut & paste this statement from her standard "white guilt" NAACP press release kit?), and then step aside so that NAACP and Leftist political groups can continue in their "building momentum against the Tea Party." All in the name of... what?... good race relations, I guess.

Funny. The NAACP didn't seem to take exception when Kenneth Gladney was (at least) kicked while on the ground and called a n*gger by a White man from the SEIU. In fact, Missouri's branch of the NAACP held a rally in support of the White man and his co-defendant-- where they denounced Gladney as an "Uncle Tom" (video here). Apparently Blacks perceived as conservative don't deserve anything from the NAACP except insults and derision. That's good race relations for you...

By the way Ms. McDowell, perhaps you can explain to us all about this declaration at the Missouri NAACP rally. "I mean that we call him [Kenneth Gladney] a Negro in the fact that he works for not for our people but against our people. In the old days, we call him an Uncle Tom. I just gotta say that. Here he is, ironically the day after a young brother, a young man, I didn’t mean to call him a brother, but on the front page of the St. Louis Post Dispatch, ironically, he’s sitting in a wheelchair, and being kissed on the forehead, by a European. Now just imagine that as a poster's child picture, not working for our people.." Was this an example of "pulling America together and back to work"? Please, tell me.

And then, of course, there's the video of the Philadelphia New Black Panther Party leader King Samir Shibazz's shouted declaration that "I hate white people! All of them! Every last iota of a cracker, I hate him!" This is in addition to his more widely reported statement "You want freedom? You’re gonna have to kill some crackers! You’re gonna have to kill some of their babies!" (video here) Is a highly publicized NAACP condemnation of that forthcoming? None that I know of. But I guess statements like that don't qualify as "explicitly racist behavior" in the NAACP's book.

I am so tired of the racist Tea Party rhetoric. The evidence that the ABC article cites is the hotly debated "racial epithets thrown at members of Congress" issue (racial epithets heard by no one, including cameras' audios, except by the members of Congress in question), have "engaged in explicitly racist behavior" (no specific examples given), and "displayed signs and posters intended to degrade people of color generally and President Barack Obama specifically" (references to a few anti-Obama signs showing him as a monkey and a picture with someone holding a sign saying "undocumented worker" below a picture of Obama-- I didn't know the birther movement was inherently racist...). If the Tea Party engages in explicitly racist behavior (such as NBPP), why is it that there are only a few, highly contested examples of it?

Strange, huh?

UPDATE: Conservative pundits have responded to the NAACP's with various posts over at Big Government:

"I Condemn the NAACP: Get Back to Freedom" by R. Dozier Gray

"The NAACP should, in my opinion, be about freedom of thought, expression and existence for all people. Instead, NAACP seems desirous of only protecting thought and expression that agrees with them. I think that is wrongheaded."

"I Condemn the NAACP" by Maria Stroughter

"What saddens me is that this organization chooses to focus on imaginary slights, while real threats to this country exist in the form of New Black Panther members who have been caught on tape intimidating voters with billy clubs. Rather than condemning this behavior, it is largely ignored by the NAACP and a presidential administration that continues to refuse to prosecute such."

"Chicago Machine Democrats Deserve NAACP Condemnation, Not Tea Party" by Cedra Crenshaw

"As the NAACP prepares to condemn the tea party movement for phantom 'explicitly racist behavior', the Department of Justice and the NAACP overlook actual instances of explicitly racist behavior by the New Black Panther Party. Blatant disregard for actual racist behavior shows the NAACP to be nothing more than a tool of hard leftists; hard leftists who are intent on creating exploitable divisions."

"NAACP Is Not At All Serious: They’ve Missed the Real Issues" by LTC Allen West (USA, Ret.)

"This NAACP Resolution is consistent with the Obama administration tactic of demonizing and blaming someone else for your own failures and shortcomings, and not take responsibility and accountability."

"The Racism of the NAACP" by Jeff Dunetz

"Take for example this rant by SEIU Executive VP Gerry Hudson where he portrays African-American workers as easy dupes 'it doesn’t take a whole lot to argue African-American workers to another place,' and stereotypes those white workers are 'so f***ing rabidly racist.'"

"Essentially he is saying that the black people he represents are all weak-minded idiots and the whites are all racists. In the old days the NAACP would have blasted Mr. Hudson for his racist comments about Blacks and Whites. But these 'ain’t' the old days."

"Tea Party Preempts NAACP" by Bill Hennessy

"At midnight, the St. Louis Tea Party Coalition sent a resolution condemning the NAACP’s false and defamatory statement to the organization’s Washington bureau. We took this action because we will not stand for their lies.

"The Tea Party’s principles are simple and clear:

Smaller federal government
Lower taxes
Fiscal responsibility
National security
Federalism

"Those are precisely the tools to lift all Americans out of poverty. They’ve worked every time they’ve been tried. In America, we just haven’t tried them in awhile, due in large part to the NAACP’s advancement of socialism."

"Black Activists Condemn NAACP Resolution Against Tea Party Movement" by Bob Parks

"As the NAACP plans to use their group’s prestige to bash the tea party movement, members of the Project 21 black leadership network are urging delegates at the NAACP’s national convention not to turn the NAACP into a pawn for progressive political bosses.

"'As a frequent speaker at tea party rallies around the country, I can assure the NAACP that the tea party movement’s concerns are about President Obama’s policies and not his race,' said Project 21 fellow Deneen Borelli. 'I’m deeply concerned that the NAACP is being used as a political tool to do the dirty work of the progressive movement. Instead of criticizing tea parties, the NAACP would be better served denouncing the racist comments made by a member of the New Black Panther Party and their voter intimidation outside a Philadelphia polling place in the last presidential election.'"

UPDATE 2: The NAACP has, unsurprisingly, passed passed the resolution condemning the Tea Party.

According to KansasCity.com (h/t Jacobson at Legal Insurrection):

"Late this afternoon the NAACP passed a resolution calling on all people — including tea party leaders — to condemn racism within the tea party movement.

"Passed on the fourth day of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s annual convention in Kansas City, the resolution also urged people to oppose what it said was the tea party’s drive 'to push our country back to the pre-civil rights era.'"

According to Jacobson:

"As originally proposed, the resolution was to call upon 'all people of good will to repudiate the racism of the Tea Parties, and to stand in opposition to its drive to push our country back to the pre-civil rights era.'

"The NAACP shut down the video feed and barred cameras from its vote, but reportedly the resolution was scaled back slightly, to use the term 'racist elements in the Tea Parties.'

"Make no mistake, either under the original or the revised version, the NAACP has placed itself firmly within the Democratic smear machine which for two years has been attempting to portray all opposition to Obama's policies as racist.

"The purported basis for the resolution is that racist signs and epithets have been hurled at Tea Party rallies. I have addressed this before. While any such behavior should be, and has been, condemned, we are talking about a literal handful of incidents out of millions of people attending thousands of rallies carrying hundreds of thousands of signs.

"Moreover, the notion that the Tea Party movement stands for turning the country back to a pre-civil rights era is a gross and disgusting distortion, and an outright falsehood. A lie is a lie and the NAACP is lying."

[...]

"The target of the NAACP is not so much the Tea Party members, but other blacks. The NAACP seeks to isolate the Tea Party movement from a natural constituency, black social and economic conservatives. The resolution puts any black who associates with the Tea Parties at risk of being labeled an Uncle Tom or some of the other race-based epithets hurled at black conservatives by black liberals."

I'm very glad that Jacobson brings up the notion that the NAACP's actions are most directly directed at Black Americans and not so much at the Tea Party itself. By painting the Tea Party a racist group, the NAACP places even more pressure on Black Americans to conform to the NAACP's Leftist political agendas. This is the same strategy employed for many, many years by Black political leaders and activists.