The Loud Talker

The NAACP recently issued a new report by Devin Burghart, Leonard Zeskind and the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights that “exposes the connection between numerous Tea Party leaders and racism.” (get the full report here)

This paper was sponsored by The Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights (IREHR). It describes itself as “a national organization with an international outlook examining racist, anti-Semitic, white nationalist, and far-right social movements, analyzing their intersection with civil society and social policy, educating the public, and assisting in the protection and extension of human rights through organization and informed mobilization.”

The Forward gets off to an encouraging start: “We know the majority of Tea Party supporters are sincere, principled people of good will.” The authors then write “it is important that we have a reasoned political debate without the use of epithets, the threat of violence, or the resurrection of long discredited racial hierarchies.”

Overall, the report is informative. As just an average guy and not a career politician or political expert of any kind, I enjoyed reading the detailed information provided about six of the major Tea Party organizations. (FreedomWorks, 1776 Tea Party, ResistNet, Tea Party Nation, Tea Party Patriots and Tea Party Express). The authors provide information on the founders of each group, some basic financials, the stated goals or missions for each group and their membership demographics. They also refer to smaller groups including SmartGirl Politics, Americans For Prosperity and Red State among many others, and promise to deliver a report providing more detail about these groups.

Beyond the history of the tea party groups, the rest of the report is a biased delivery of standard leftward talking points. After all, when you can’t win an argument on facts you can either admit you are wrong, or you can resort lies and name-calling. Allow me to summarize:

• Any reference to people that want secured borders, including groups like the Minutemen or supporters of AZ1070 are called “anti-immigrant.” Correction #1: We are anti-illegal-immigration. They use the phrase “anti-immigrant” 29 times in this report.
• The authors seemingly obsess over the “birther” element of the tea party movement. The word “birther” appears 12 times, as does “birth certificate.” Correction #2: The vast majority of tea party people are tired of birthers. They are not the mainstream.
• The word “racist” is used 58 times in the report, “racism” is used 26 times. Yet other than discussing the backgrounds of a very small number of people in the movement that have radical views or are/were associated with groups that virtually all tea party people disavow, the report offers zero proof of legitimate racism or violence. They mention two specific tea party signs that were offensive. (how many thousands were displayed?)

The focus on the far-right is obvious, hence the racism motif presented throughout this report. As an aside it would be great to see their focus on the far-left to see what they come up with when looking at groups like ACORN, the ACLU, or the Obama administration for that matter.

As you dig deeper into the report and try to find the actual substance, you quickly find that there is none. The authors trot out the failed yet still popular lies that Barney Frank was called a fag, John Lewis was called a nigger, and members of the Congressional Black Caucus were spat upon. None of these have been proven true, but facts don’t matter when you are playing the race card.

The authors hint at racism throughout the tea party movement, but other than their discussion of a few fringe personalities, they provide no proof. Here are just a few comments that typify the non-statistical portions of the report:

• “The Tea Party movement as a whole is a multimillion dollar complex that includes for-profit corporations, non-party non-profit organizations, and political action committees.”
• “The result of this study contravenes many of the Tea Parties’ self-invented myths, particularly their supposedly sole concentration on budget deficits, taxes and the power of the federal government. Instead, this report found Tea Party ranks to be permeated with concerns about race and national identity and other so-called social issues.”
• “Nevertheless, the impact of President Barack Obama’s election, and the fact that the First Family of the United States has ancestors who were once the property of white people, has had an effect. It is not direct and mechanical, like a cue ball hitting the nine ball into the corner pocket. But it is identifiable nonetheless.”
• “Theirs is an American nationalism that does not always include all Americans. It is a nationalism that excludes those deemed not to be “real Americans;” including the native-born children of undocumented immigrants (often despised as “anchor babies”), socialists, Moslems, and those not deemed to fit within a “Christian nation.”

The report also uses the common trick of pointing out comments from blogs and then finding the person that posted the comment and tying that person to a fringe group, then looping back around to try and connect it to the actual Tea Party. This technique is used more than once. And I have to ask the authors, do you really want to go down the path of comparing the content of posts between liberal versus conservative blogs and web sites? I welcome that challenge any time. The same can be said about death threats. They mention angry voicemails left at the NAACP after its resolution condemning “racist elements” of the tea party. Shall we compare those messages to the threats people like Glenn Beck receive? Or for that matter people at FreedomWorks or Tea Party Express? Again, I say bring it on.

For me, this report jumped the shark when it actually presented concern over the political opinion of the lead singer of a band that appeared at a Washington D.C. rally. Really? The band? They also complained about a sign that said “Honk if I’m paying your mortgage” because they felt it was insulting to the poor that many entitlement programs are aimed at.

Let me leave you with the closing statement, which actually may be all you need to read to get the gist of this report:

“It is here, at the conjunction of nativism, opposition to birthright citizenship, the denigration of President Obama, and the fear of the new majority in American life, that the unstated racism embedded within the Tea Parties becomes vocal and unmistakable.”

I think you get the point. Overall, the historical data provided about the larger tea party organizations is interesting, but if I were a college professor I would give this paper a failing grade if the goal was to persuade.