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Monday, July 12, 2010

The Irony Behind the NAACP & Tea Party Racism

The NAACP is considering a resolution condemning "Tea Party Racism." Click here for the story.
They say, ""I think a lot of people are not taking the tea party movement seriously, and we need to take it seriously," said Anita Russell, head of the Kansas City chapter of the NAACP. "We need to realize it's really not about limited government" and "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."

These comments are extraordinarily ironic, considering the Tea Party movement would encourage, not only the U.S. to get back to its constitutional roots, but also for the NAACP to get back its roots as well.

When the NAACP first began, its mission was to help counter Jim Crow laws. (Click here , here, and here for informational stories). Jim Crow laws were a reaction to private businesses that were NOT segregating blacks. When the government acted, through Jim Crow, to mandate such segregation. The NAACP was a group of (what we would now call) libertarians who wanted to protect the right of private business not to discriminate. That's right. The original NAACP was all about property rights.

What a shame that the NAACP so often uses its former credibility as a crutch today, in the interest of pure politics. It is now a liberal/progressive advocacy organization, rather than a sincere civil rights organization (of course, they would not make that distinction). In their view, everything they don't like is racist.

Civil rights does not equal progressivism. In fact, it the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence, as imperfect as they are, are still the greatest civil rights documents of all time. As Martin Luther King said, it was not that the U.S. lacked the right values, but rather that it failed to live up to the "true meaning of its creed."

For them, leftist policies are their goal. Race-baiting is their weapon. I understand why black people moved to Democrats in the 1960's, after almost a century of being Republican. Republicans dropped the ball in the 1960's pretty badly. But arbitrarily labeling someone a racist, especially from the pulpit of a traditionally genuine organization like the NAACP is the height of irresponsibility.

However, associating one's race with a particular collectivist ideology is not the answer. Becoming a tool of the Democratic party cheapens the Civil Rights movement. And saying that a legitimate social movement isn't really what it says it is, is just political opportunism.

All these baseless and ridiculous allegations do is further polarize people. If somebody is making a legitimate argument, and you say "well, you're really just a big racist," then you lose the argument. Drawing on a prejudice that only exists on the far left does little to convince everybody else, and further enrages and encourages the Tea Party to makes its point more forcefully, drawing off the logical weakness of the opposition, hence the sense of inevitable success.

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