Denouncing the Tancredo Comments
I'm not into playing the race card for any and every little thing. I think that there are still legitimate forms of racism, and when we bemoan about every little ill-perceived comment, we detract from the real issues that Black people still face.
With that being said, I was gravely concerned after watching Rachel Maddow the other evening. I like to flip between Fox and MSNBC because I like to expose myself to different perspectives on the issues du jour. I haven't watched that much television as of late because I couldn't stomach the images of Haiti anymore, but just so happened to turn on the Rachel Maddow show and saw this:
Now, something is wrong with this. I'm not going to call Mr. Tancredo a racist. I'm not even going to call the people who applauded his comments racists. What I am going to say is something is gravely disturbing with this particular Tea Party crowd if Mr. Tancredo can get applause after he says we should go back to a time in history and re-emerge an instrument used specifically to prevent Black people from voting.
I struggled for many months before the election of our first Black President. I constantly asked myself, do I vote for the man who looks like me, especially given what people who look like me have been through in this country- or do I support the candidate who's platform most closely represents my world view? I finally settled on passing up the opportunity to vote for the first mainstream Black candidate because I wanted to live Dr. King's dream of judging people based on the contents of their character and not solely the color of their skin.
I chose not to vote for Obama because of his domestic platform which includes his rigid stance not to protect unborn life (at any stage of gestation), his very liberal position on just about everything, but more specifically his decision to raise taxes during an economic downturn. So needless to say, I am a staunch advocate of people educating themselves before they choose a candidate. However, excuse me, if I find it a little ironic, that Mr. Tancredo is asking that we go back to the days of civics literacy tests, used almost solely against Blacks, after this nation elected the first Black president. A little too ironic, don't you think?
To those who attend tea parties religiously, Blacks fortunate enough to have jobs, feel "Taxed Enough Already" also. However, you don't make it welcoming for Blacks who would want to keep more of our hard earned dollars, when speakers, seemingly the arbiters of conservative truth, proudly allude to re-instituting an instrument used to prevent Blacks from exercising their suffrage rights.
I'm always asked if I attend tea parties. I usually try to explain to people why I don't attend, with reasons that include a lack of concern and empathy for the issues that face my community. I feel an onus to help Blacks divorce themselves from their almost monolithic allegiance to Liberal Democrats, but I also want this side to have viable alternatives for the issues that confront us. Thankfully, after viewing Mr. Tancredo's OPENING speech, at the “Tea Party Nation”, now I won't need to verbally explain why I don't go-- I'll just direct them to that speech.
With that being said, I was gravely concerned after watching Rachel Maddow the other evening. I like to flip between Fox and MSNBC because I like to expose myself to different perspectives on the issues du jour. I haven't watched that much television as of late because I couldn't stomach the images of Haiti anymore, but just so happened to turn on the Rachel Maddow show and saw this:
Now, something is wrong with this. I'm not going to call Mr. Tancredo a racist. I'm not even going to call the people who applauded his comments racists. What I am going to say is something is gravely disturbing with this particular Tea Party crowd if Mr. Tancredo can get applause after he says we should go back to a time in history and re-emerge an instrument used specifically to prevent Black people from voting.
I struggled for many months before the election of our first Black President. I constantly asked myself, do I vote for the man who looks like me, especially given what people who look like me have been through in this country- or do I support the candidate who's platform most closely represents my world view? I finally settled on passing up the opportunity to vote for the first mainstream Black candidate because I wanted to live Dr. King's dream of judging people based on the contents of their character and not solely the color of their skin.
I chose not to vote for Obama because of his domestic platform which includes his rigid stance not to protect unborn life (at any stage of gestation), his very liberal position on just about everything, but more specifically his decision to raise taxes during an economic downturn. So needless to say, I am a staunch advocate of people educating themselves before they choose a candidate. However, excuse me, if I find it a little ironic, that Mr. Tancredo is asking that we go back to the days of civics literacy tests, used almost solely against Blacks, after this nation elected the first Black president. A little too ironic, don't you think?
To those who attend tea parties religiously, Blacks fortunate enough to have jobs, feel "Taxed Enough Already" also. However, you don't make it welcoming for Blacks who would want to keep more of our hard earned dollars, when speakers, seemingly the arbiters of conservative truth, proudly allude to re-instituting an instrument used to prevent Blacks from exercising their suffrage rights.
I'm always asked if I attend tea parties. I usually try to explain to people why I don't attend, with reasons that include a lack of concern and empathy for the issues that face my community. I feel an onus to help Blacks divorce themselves from their almost monolithic allegiance to Liberal Democrats, but I also want this side to have viable alternatives for the issues that confront us. Thankfully, after viewing Mr. Tancredo's OPENING speech, at the “Tea Party Nation”, now I won't need to verbally explain why I don't go-- I'll just direct them to that speech.
Posted by Vanessa at 2/10/2010 10:16 AM 
Categories: Reflections and Observations,Black Conservatism
Tags: Tancredo Black Conservatives
Categories: Reflections and Observations,Black Conservatism
Tags: Tancredo Black Conservatives
Yes indeed it is just another one of many examples as to why the Republican party is having a hell of a time trying to get black people in their camp. This isn't just a knock on the black voter but also a knock on the voters of citizens whose orgigins are foreign. This isn't surprising. I'm not shocked. Liberals aren't shocked and conservatives shouldn't be shocked either; this is common. The Tea Party is a direct back lash to Obama not to big government and out of control government spending. Those are "cover" issues for the uncomfortable feelings of having a black man (muslim in their eyes) in office. If they were truly protesting against growing government, out of control government spending, where the hell were they for the last eight years? Lets stop acting scared to call things what they are. I won't tip toe over the fact that these statements are racist statements and the people who cheered them are at the very least in support of the racist implications of his words. There in lies the reason why the Tea Party rallies look more like the children of the southern racist segrgegationists of yesterday than any thing else.
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Vanessa,
While I think Tancredo is something of a political opportunist and that he was saying stuff to appeal to the jingoist elements of the tea party movement, at the same time, to be fair, he wasn't quite proposing a return to Jim Crow laws. Jim Crow was about organized financial and racial voter discrimination, not about discrimination based on understanding of how our government works. Voter laws have historically been discriminatory to the poor, uneducated and people who are of a certain race or who are "foreign".
I think Tancredo meant to point out that the Democrats focused their appeals for support toward uneducated and illiterate people and did a con-job on them and he is right. The Democrat message is not intellectual but a "feel good" message against which no amount of reason can prevail with folks who cannot because of language barriers or intellect or cultural bias to be that way, respond to reason. They don't know where the money is going to come from, but they are certain Obama has a "stash" of it somewhere because they trust him and no amount of logic will ever convince them otherwise.
It is important that we teach civic responsibility to our kids and we do a miserable job of it. Because we do, we have a very real problem in that a quite large segment on both the right and left respond only to gut level emotional appeals. They avoid what they do not or choose not to understand. Besides living by your emotion's is easier than living by your wits. Tancredo's sin is using the Democrat's emotionally based tactics to appeal to our own right wing kook fringe.
We really need to do emotional appeals, don't get me wrong. Without a powerful emotional element, we cannot reach half the voters in America who live primarily by their unexamined emotional beliefs. BUT lets make our appeals based on emotions like pride in country, love of freedom or fear of tyranny and NOT on fear of foreigners or of people not of our color or religion or culture.
I don't think Tancredo was really proposing intellectual Jim Crow laws. I think he was pointing out that a lot of Obama voter's weren't really thinking about what they were doing, just voting emotionally. And he's right, but in appealing to that visceral element of the movement he's is repeating the very process by which such outlandish laws get written in a moment of high collective emotion.
Don't take Tancredo's awkward attempt to get a big cheer from the kook fringe as evidence that the Tea Party is a bunch of nuts. The Tea Party is new. As it grows it will adopt leaders who reflect its values and slough off ones who discredit the movement. There are too many people who do think and who did study civics in this movement and they are from all races, creeds, religions and social levels. What they share is a deep love of freedom and the brains to see what the President and Congress are up to.
Tom
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Van, first of all, I'm for neither party....to me, they're both a joke. Its basically thesis versus anti-thesis so they can create synthesis out of the ignorant masses. But please explain to me why this subtle racist atmosphere that you felt watching this tea bag convention still has you committed faithfully to this party like a wife in an abusive relationship that makes excuses for getting slapped around by her misguided husband because she thinks there's still some "good" left in him and that he doesn't always "act like this"? .....I'm breaking out the garbage can sized popcorn for this
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Max, that was low and racist to boot. It buys into a major false stereotype of the Republican Party and all conservatives as undershirt wearing, beer swilling racist rednecks and it's every bit as racist as the finest example of undershirt wearing, beer swilling, racist rednecks.
And it's Tea "Party". The use of a derogative reference like tea bag (which refers to a homosexual sex practice), when you apply it to the Tea Party movement clearly identifies your position liberal, independent or free-thinker - whatever you call yourself.
The subtle racism you say you sense is coming from the anti-ILLEGAL immigration stance a sizable number of us take. We're not talking about black people who are (1) not immigrants and (2) not illegal. It applies to a policy that not only does not address, but actually condones an open border that encourages millions of people to swim across looking for work so that "Big Chicken" and "Big Roses", "Big Slaughterhouses" and "Big Dairy" have a renewable source of workers that they can pay slave wages to. Among this flood of invading strangers are, without a doubt, whole truckloads of terrorists. If ever a terrorist nuke comes into this country, it will likely come through Mexico.
And as to the "touch feely, don't let us think about that too hard" crowd that elected this president, black people don't have a monopoly on that kind of irresponsible voter. Rich white kids are just as solidly in the can for Obama as any Detroit ghetto community and with every bit as little evidence to support their belief in his ability to bring them the kind of "change" they are looking for. That is, unless that change they are looking for is the complete collapse of the economy and the transformation of our entire country into one of those "People's Villages" they had in the Soviet Union and China.
Remember those, where everyone lives in identical leaky two-room flats and buys smuggled shoes from the back of black market trucks?
Personally, I love the Tea Party movement, but since they don't engage in the kind of political thuggery and bullying the Progressive movement has shown a willingness to do, I suspect it'll be a one-sided fight unless Americans suddenly grow a spine.
It's been known to happen - usually when we have to go to war to protect the Union. We may almost be there, but let me tell you this. If the Tea Party is called to stand on the Concord bridge again, the crowd will be "red and yellow, black and white, man woman and child". You want to hear some real racism? Hang out behind the scenes with the old guard Democrats and listen to the paternalistic talk. The Democrats treat black voters like simple-minded children and it disgusts me! And somehow they convince a sizable number of black voters that because they are promising goodies that they are the ones who really love them.
Reminds me of the child catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang offering candy outside his child trap.
Talk about an abusive relationship.
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And, I'll tell you where we were the last 8 years. We've been complaining about the spending every step of the way - not the spending on the war on terror, but the waste and entitlement crap the Dems loaded the budget with that they had to be given to get the war funded. Since we never had a bullet proof majority in either house or senate, we had to buy Democrat support for our troops with pork. And where Republicans were at the trough, we raised hell too. Also, if you listened to talk radio, Rush, Hannity, Beck, Levin and commentators like Coulter and Williams uniformly criticized the big deficit spending we were doing AND the continuation of the Democrat's housing programs like CRA that waltzed us right into the housing crisis by pushing banks to make risky loans based on government promises to back those loans if they went bad.
Anybody remember how indignant Barney Franks and Maxine Waters were when Bush warned them that something bad was fixing to happen with housing. They protested that the housing program was doing just what it was supposed to. If they meant collapse the housing market 6 months later, they were right.
Which is why we suspect that Obama's purpose is to collapse the economy as Saul Alinsky recommended in his book "Rules for Radicals" as a prelude to establishing full bird socialism.
You just keep deluding yourself that the Tea Party is about racism. Stop up those ear holes and close those eyes. Uncle Obama is going to take care of you, mmm, mmm, mmm!
Meanwhile, we'll go about slamming the door on the health care takeover, the energy industry takeover, the manufacturing industry takeover, the banking industry takeover, the housing industry takeover, the transportation industry takeover and the systematic debilitation of our military.
Wonder why the rising death toll in Afghanistan under the new "rules of engagement" doesn't get any coverage anymore or hand-wringing from the left? Is it because they approve of knocking off more and more of those nasty evil soldier guys?
I look at the left and it just amazes me at the mental gymnastics it takes for the left to believe what it believes.
George Orwell has a term for it - "doublethink".
I'm just sayin'
Tom
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Vanessa:
Out of this (and the other points of outrage that will no doubt come in the future) we need to develop "The RULE" by which all are bound to and then enforce this uniformly.
Tom Tancredo was calling his ideological opponents "stupid". There is nothing new about his. The Tea Party opponents believe that everyone in that same room was stupid.
The frustrating part about Black people and our SENSITIVITIES is that while we allow others to throw out the most vile and ignorant attacks against others - we PRETEND that certain points that could be said with give generalized reference to our long time struggle are off limits.
Absent a RULE and with the presence of our own UNCHECKED mouth pieces - these comments and the feigned outrage will only ever be what I call "SELF-CHUMMING" actions. Meant to get a rise out of both sides.
To the people who say "This is why the GOP can't attract Black people" I have two points:
1) Historically: Fannie Lou Hamer!!! She checked her own ego at the door and walked into the den of White racists at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City back in 1964. She realized that this was not all about her. Instead it was about representation for Black people.
2) IF this "ignorant comment" is enough to keep you out of the Republican Party - WHAT is going to keep you from being a Democrat?
*Failing Schools?
*Violent Streets?
*Areas of Low Economic Activity?
*Areas that have "red push pins" on the CDC national map representing high rates of infection?
We KNOW why you don't like the Republicans. However you will find your consciousness when you tell us WHY YOU DON'T LIKE THE DEMOCRATS despite so many of your permanent interests being assaulted while you STILL vote for them.
As a community those with the establishment power also get to define the rules - it is time that we place those people who actually have POWER OVER US THAT WE HAVE GRANTED TO THEM PER OUR VOTE on trial and in our focus more than we do people who ultimately have no power over us.
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Amen, Vanessa! Preach it!
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Tom,
I am automatically suspicious of one who sites sources of reference which include names exclusively from one side of the political spectrum (Rush, Hannity, Levin, Beck, Coulter and Williams). Granted, Williams is more moderate but the rest of the bunch are far right and all have a distain for Liberals and Democrats. I suggest you diversify your television and radio listening habits.
You love the Tea Party Movement and thats cool but why has the Tea Party emerged now? Wasn't the government spending out of control, growing exponentially, taking away rights and the privacy of its citizens, experiencing illegal immigration, hemorrhaging jobs, and bailing out wall street before the Dems won the election? The answer is yes. But the Tea party emerges now to "Take Back Our Country". Do you see the hypocrisy in all this or are you doing mental gymnastics to reconcile this crap?
Illegal Aleins can not impact a presidential election in any significant way. Period. He (Tancredo)wasn't just referring to illegal aliens. They (aliens) didn't put Obama in office. A great deal of educated folks, many of our youngest and brightest from Universities all around the country voted for Obama. Many of whom would give you a free intellectual a$$ whooping any time any place for calling them ignorant for choosing not to vote for the Penguin and the Dunch from Alaska.
What does that tell us about you? Eight years of the worst president since James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson & Herbert Hoover (take your pick) in which the country was on the brink of another repeat of the 1930's and you vote for another Republican? Why? Becuase of the Fiscal conservative lie? Because the "They kept us safe" lie? I bet you voted for Bush twice because he said he was a fiscal conservative, not into nation-building and into policies that promoted small government huh? He turned around and slapped all of you in the faces hard by squandering a $200 billion surplus and spending us into nearly a trillion dollar deficit, he launched a preemptive war and began nation building in Iraq, they created laws in the Patriot Act that now have the Feds listening to your phone conversations and he grew government probably to its biggest level ever. With your hands covering a pink face thats been slapped so many times by Republicans, you're gonna call Obama supporters deluded? Ignorant? Uneducated? Misguided? You are The Official Moron of this post. I nominate you.
T.O.M.
The Official Moron Mmmmm Mmmmm Mmmmm
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Desmond, Desmond,
You obviously didn't read my post for comprehension. You saw Limbaugh's name, made assumptions and spit out several pages of Democrat talking points. You accused us of not complaining about deficit spending in the Bush years. What I said was that if you listened to or read any of those conservatives who were actually conservative, you would have known that conservatives consistently opposed wasteful spending all during the Bush years.
You keep saying we didn't criticize the deficit spending. That's not true I don't care what it says on the Democrat propaganda sheet.
But given the past year's deficit spending, a multi-billion dollar deficit would be a pleasant change from the trillions these guys are pumping out. Also, most of the deficit spending happened in the last 2 years with Democrats controlling the House and Senate. Until the Dems took the majority, the economy was doing fairly well despite the deficit. The hockey stick jump in spending took place in 2007 and 2008 as did the collapse. Bushed warned congress a couple of dozen times that housing was going to collapse if they didn't get it under control. Folks like Barney Franks and Maxine Waters were loudly proclaiming that the federal housing programs were doing exactly what they were supposed to. As I said, apparently they were supposed to collapse the economy.
You don't get it and you never will. You read from the Democrat propaganda sheet and believe it all, especially the part at the end where they tell you how much smarter your are than everyone else.
They told my generation the same crap. It was crap then and crap now. Don't buy it. You don't have to be smart to get through Harvard, just well funded.
I mean how do you make logical sense of your own argument. A multi-billion dollar deficit was bad so to fix that you better than triple it and run trillions in deficit spending? The only book where that makes sense is "Rules for Radicals" the section on collapsing the economy deliberately to open the doors for a socialist takeover.
I'm really not afraid of an "intellectual ass whipping" from a bunch of overgrown children who just spent 4 years in college learning to chug beer and dance on tables in wet T-shirts. I think I can handle it.
I went to college and grad school too and have an IQ that ranks about 95% of Americans, so don't give me a bunch of pseudo-intellectual, look-down-your-nose arrogance that assumes any conservative is a knuckle dragging redneck with an IQ equal to their shoe size.
I'm done here. The power of your illogic is overwhelming, I admit it.
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