Tea Parties Not Racist

According to John B. Judis of The New Republic:

It just has racists in it.

 

 There have been organizations in America fueled primarily or entirely by racism—by hostility to blacks as blacks or by opposition to, and rejection of, racial equality. These include, obviously, the White Citizens Councils, which were formed in response to Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, and the Ku Klux Klan. Then, there have been covertly racist movements like those around the presidential candidacy of Alabama Governor George Wallace. Leaders of these movements may insist they are not really racists, but are merely worried about "states' rights," or the power of "pointy-headed bureaucrats." In fact, they are trying to deflect criticism from what is widely understood to be the point of their movement or candidacy.

Then, there is a third category that is more difficult to assess. It consists of movements that include overt racists, but that do not make explicitly racial appeals and whose leaders, as well as many of its members, strongly deny that they are motivated by race. Still, there are undertones in concerns about "law and order" or "welfare queens." And the movements themselves are primarily or even exclusively white. Psychologists have speculated that within such movements you would find a disproportionate number of people who harbor racial resentments.

There is some reason to believe that the Tea Party could be this third kind of movement. The New York Times/CBS and the University of Washington Institute for the Study of Ethnicity, Race, and Sexuality have both run polls that include questions that are intended to draw out racial resentment. Both polls are flawed in how they define Tea Party members. They survey people who "support" rather than (as other polls do) "participate in" or are "part of" the Tea Party movement. That elicits a sample that is different from the people who show up at rallies or meetings. And the University of Washington poll is limited to seven states, several of which are likely to house more than the usual share of racists. Still, in the absence of any more accurate measure, these polls suggest that the people who "support" the Tea Party are more likely than the average American to harbor racial resentments.

....

My critic asserted that "it wasn't until a black man sat in the White House that the Tea Party came into existence," which is an argument that I have often heard, but there was a virulent anti-government right-wing during Bill Clinton's administration, and if Hillary Clinton had defeated Obama and won the presidency, I'd wager my mortgage that we'd have a movement very similar to the Tea Party demanding her removal. The movement behind George Wallace's presidential candidacy would not have existed without opposition to racial equality—but it's perfectly possible to imagine a Tea Party without birthers and people dressed up as pimps.

....

...I am not suggesting, as Christopher Caldwell did in the Financial Times, that "the Tea Party has no explicit program beyond giving the Republican party some spine and integrity." That's errant nonsense unless you believe that the Republican Party really wants to be an extremist movement, but is being prevented from realizing its true nature. What I am suggesting is that it's very possible to believe that the Tea Party is not the latest manifestation of the Ku Klux Klan or White Citizens' Councils—while still believing that it is a terrible menace, nonetheless.

So he's not a fan of the Tea Parties, but neither is he a fan of destroying any meaning the word "racist" may still have by using it to mean "anything the Democrat elites don't like".