There were two major modes of viewing the issue raised in the comment that were worth taking note of. First, there was the discussion of racism in the Tea Party, typified by Filler's comment (directed :
You are the type of person for whom no evidence of racism would ever be good enough.
Ta-Nehisi Coates has spent the past few days talking about racism in the Tea Party and those, like Metamars, who enable it, if anyone's interested.
Second was the view of the Tea Party as an example of American white supremacy, which was typified by Oaktown Girl's comment:
Just like 1776
Here's a good Tim Wise link unpacking the take our country back rallying cry. Hard to get a louder dog whistle than that:
How fascinating. That it is factually impossible to separate out the "racism part" from the rest of it is something many white folks seem not to understand. They seem to think there was once a time of innocence when oppression wasn't happening, or that we can easily extract from our accounting of those crimes the great and noble things about our forefathers and view them in some patriotic vacuum.
Protest is only seen as fundamentally American when those who have long had the luxury of seeing themselves as prototypically American engage in it. When the dangerous and dark "other" does so, however, it isn't viewed as normal or natural, let alone patriotic.
The discussion of racism in the Tea Party took up most of the comment thread. It represented far and away the most common perspective. But the song/video was clearly articulated from the perspective that Oaktown Girl introduced, the perspective of the Tea Party as an example of American white supremacy.
There are, as I see it, two fault-lines here worth noting:
(1) Is the problem racism or white supremacy?
(2) Is the problem one of individual traits or specific acts that need to be condemned on the one hand, or is it one of social and historical context that needs to be deconstructed and dismantled?
It's my position that it's the later in both cases, even though I, too, use the term "racism" much more often than I should. The two are tightly related, you see: The problem is white supremacy because the problem is one of social and historical context that needs to be deconstructed and dismantled. And the video/song does an excellent job of describing this reality.
I take it as a given that there's racists in the Tea Party, just like I take it as a given that there's racists in the Democratic Party. I also take it as a given that there's racists in the US Federal Government. Does that mean I have to declare that the US Federal Government is racist, as a whole, and bring that up each and every time I talked about the US Federal Government?
This is a pretty neat trick: admit that racism is everywhere, but then argue, in effect that since it's everywhere it's nowhere, and what's the big deal? It makes the one who notices, or speaks about racism into the odd man out. And that move, in and of itself, is profoundly racist, profoundly white supremacist.
Metamars continues:
The NAACP, to their credit, was careful enough to criticize racist elements within 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.
So do tell us, Filler, if in your inestimable opinion, they should reword their resolution and instead condemn the "racist Tea Party", or something along those lines.
Anyone with a lick of historical sense would understand why the NAACP would take a relatively conservative and consolidating consensus approach in criticizing the Tea Party. It wants to consolidate a certain understanding, and change a broad political dynamic. If it were to criticize the Tea Party as a whole, the way I do, the way Tim Wise does, the way the video/song does, then it would be taking on an impossible task for itself, because, of course, the racism/white supremacism goes far beyond the Tea Party, and unfortunately the Civil Rights vision represented by the NAACP is vastly outflanked by the mostly unconscious reach of that white supremacist worldview.
So, in short, what the NAACP did was good. Not only that, it was the smartest move for them as the organization they are. But that does not mean that their criticism was the be all and end all. Indeed, throughout most of its history, the NAACP's role has been similar to this. (It's why, for example, WEB DuBois had such a tempestuous relationship with the organization he was so strongly identified with.) The NAACP has always been necessary, and never been sufficient. No one group could be, of course. But it's also true that its position--echoed in a variety of other groups as well--has always been necessary, and never been sufficient. We also need the position of those who primarily, repeatedly, constantly criticize white supremacy as an all-encompassing system.
Such has been the role of intellectuals like James Baldwin, but it was also the role of Martin Luther King as well, as I was forcefully reminded this morning, hearing a clip of him being interviewed by Studs Terkle. King spoke, as he often did, of how hate hurts the hater as much as it does the hated. Perhaps his most pithy expression of this was when he said, "You cannot keep a man in a ditch, unless you linger there with him." It was King's systematic understanding that ultimately forced him to speak out against the Vietnam War, and to say of those who were surprised or offended by his doing so that they never really knew him. And it is that systematic understanding that I am very fortunate to have given to me at such a young age that I cannot ever remember a time when I did not have it. I'm believe my mother taught it to me as simple fairness. But she had a far sharper eye than most for seeing what it meant, where and how it was observed, and where and how it was not. And from that basic seed sense of fairness, all else I have learned has grown.
