The accusation is totally absurd, and honest members of the NAACP should agree with me.
This is why. During the 9-12 event in 2009, thousands of tea party protesters had to walk by a giant tent/cookout event staged by the NAACP called "The Black Family Reuinion" while en route to their buses from the capitol building. Now, if these predominantly-white protesters were merely out there because they didn't like the president's racial makeup, wouldn't they have taken the opportunity to show contempt for the black people at the "Black Family Reunion"? Why are there no recorded incidences of the slightest bit of conflict between the mostly white protesters and the thousand + black picnickers?
Maybe the real problem is that the leaders of the NAACP are so far left that they cannot even bring themselves to try to empathize ever so slightly with their political opponents on the right. Therefore, they cannot understand why anybody would oppose the Obama agenda of a limitless government. Thus, they precariously claim the essential force behind the tea parties is racism.
Furthermore, most protesters aren't protesting Obama, and if they are, it's only because he's a far-left politician, not because he's black. (Many tea partiers glow over black conservatives.)
But how megalomaniacal (and decidedly ignorant) it is for NAACP leaders to assume that all protesters are simply protesting Obama. Most are simply angry over government growth, and/or social liberalism. And, although such people were conspicuously not as demonstrative during the Bush years, it is likely only because spin doctors such as Rush Limbaugh and the FOX News pundits convinced them that Bush's spending wasn't a major problem. These spin doctors made the conservative masses put a false hope in socialistic Republicans like McCain and Bush. Another reason few people thought about protesting during Bush's term was that back then there was no stimulus, health care overhaul, etc. Finally, the fact that people began protesting at a time when Obama came to power is not the main issue. The main issue is that they began protesting when the hungry-for-socialism Democrat Party came to power.
Moreover, I believe the NAACP's leaders are using political posturing to make their organization seem relevant. As both the black picnickers and white protesters can attest, however different their political views may have been, they got along quite well on September 12th. And, beyond that day, the real world shows increasing signs that blacks and whites are finding more things that bring them together than this that drive them apart. In an increasingly racially harmonious world, what purpose does the NAACP have?--other than to make themselves relevant by making baseless calumnies of political, not racial enemies.
Finally, the leaders of the NAACP are left-wing politically and black racially, just like Obama. They probably feel they're doing Obama a favor by calling his most demonstrative critics racist. Perhaps they're hoping he'll reward them.
The correspondent added that the lower-level NAACP members whom he has met in his travels seem like honest people who "would wouldn't make such a baseless accusation."
After having read Mona Charen's book Do-Gooders, this post seems naive. Of course the Left is going to calumniate! Of course they'll try to 'Bork' everybody who opposes them. I don't think their attempts to smear the tea party will work though. You can't lie about such a large aggregate of people and get away with it. Smearing one Right-wing politician at a time is probably a better tactic than alienating the millions of people in the tea party--some of whom are democrats.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I've lost respect for the local NAACP too after they complained about there being too few black teachers in local school districts despite the fact that no black people are applying. Their complaint is the stupidest thing I've ever heard of, and the only reason they get away with it is that people are afraid to criticize them. So the NAACP actually expects the school district to recruit from other areas, but then the other areas will complain about underrepresentation of black teachers. Don’t these idiots realize it’s the fault of their own black people for not becoming teachers? Maybe they say such dumb things as an attempt to bait people like me into criticizing them, whereupon they can fire back and call them racist.
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