Information Warfare: The NAACP vs. The Tea Party

A few years ago when the NAACP decided to have a mock funeral for the N-word I wrote, ranted, raved and lambasted them for such a public display of wasted time, energy and effort. Not to mention the fact that they were trying to kill a word that still enjoyed a very colorful life in black movies, books, music and vernacular. Such an exercise in futility had me thinking at that time the organization had lost all relevance. I felt like immediately canceling my lifetime membership, and if I had a membership to begin with I would have buried my Colored Peoples card right along with that empty casket they claimed contained the ever evil N-word. I must say this last week has me singing a totally different tune to the point that in my humblest opine they’ve never shown more relevance in my lifetime. They recently voted on a resolution calling on the Tea Party to repudiate (refudiate if you speakth Palish) the overtly racist elements of the Tea Party movement and for them to end their affiliation with the white supremacist groups that are closely associated with the movement. The resolution was wisely worded and less of a rebuke and more like sage advice from an organization that’s been around for a century to one that will be lucky to see a decade. “We take no issue with the Tea Party movement. We believe in freedom of assembly and people raising their voices in democracy. What we take issue with is the Tea Party’s continued tolerance for bigotry and bigoted statements. The time has come for them to accept the responsibility that comes with influence and make clear there is no place for racism & anti-Semitism, homophobia and other forms of bigotry in their movement”, NAACP President Ben Jealous


Many of the same sentiments that I expressed vis-à-vis the NAACP’s burial of the N-word were expressed by most of the people that I discussed this issue with. To my great surprise they felt as though the NAACP should be out doing other things to advance colored people. Most of the people (black and white) that I spoke with felt as though the NAACP, an organization founded just over 100 years ago to combat racism was wrong for calling on the Tea Party, a wing (some call base) of a major American political party to curb the racist elements emanating from many of its members and affiliates. In other words they were being called out by many for actually doing the very job that they were established to do by the decree of the Niagara Movement. As bewildered as I was at the negative reactions from many of the people with whom I discussed this incident I was caught totally off guard by the official response from Mark Williams the then party spokesperson. “I am disinclined to take lectures on racial sensitivity from a group that insists on calling black people colored” is what Mark Williams told CNN. He would have been okay had he stopped at that rather innocuous quip. I don’t particularly cotton to being called colored so I’d go so far as to say the man had a good point and a way with words. However his official response to the NAACP’s resolution was to write a mock open letter to Abraham Lincoln in which he is speaking as the NAACP head Ben Jealous asking Lincoln to rescind the emancipation proclamation.




Dear Mr. Lincoln



We Coloreds have taken a vote and decided that we don’t cotton to

that whole emancipation thing. Freedom means having to work for real,

think for ourselves, and take consequences along with the rewards. That is just far too much to ask of us Colored People and we demand

that it stop!

In fact we held a big meeting and took a vote in Kansas City this

week. We voted to condemn a political revival of that old abolitionist

spirit called the ‘tea party movement’.

The tea party position to “end the bailouts” for example is just

silly. Bailouts are just big money welfare and isn’t that what we

want all Coloreds to strive for? What kind of racist would want to end

big money welfare? What they need to do is start handing the bail outs

directly to us coloreds! Of course, the National Association for the

Advancement of Colored People is the only responsible party that

should be granted the right to disperse the funds.

And the ridiculous idea of “reduce[ing] the size and intrusiveness of

government.” What kind of massa would ever not want to control my

life? As Coloreds we must have somebody care for us otherwise we would

be on our own, have to think for ourselves and make decisions!

The racist tea parties also demand that the government “stop the out

of control spending.” Again, they directly target coloreds. That

means we Coloreds would have to compete for jobs like everybody else

and that is just not right.

Perhaps the most racist point of all in the tea parties is their

demand that government “stop raising our taxes.” That is

outrageous! How will we coloreds ever get a wide screen TV in every

room if non-coloreds get to keep what they earn? Totally racist! The

tea party expects coloreds to be productive members of society?

Mr. Lincoln, you were the greatest racist ever. We had a great gig.

Three squares, room and board, all our decisions made by the massa in

the house. Please repeal the 13th and 14th Amendments and let us get

back to where we belong.



Sincerely



Precious Ben Jealous, Tom’s Nephew NAACP Head Colored Person





Race, Race Baiting and Racism





Before we go any further let’s bring a little clarity to what racism is and what racism is not, and moreover let us be of the understanding that racism is NOT the biggest problem posed by the Tea Party movement. The biggest threat posed by the tea party is their ability to drive the message of the day despite it being insidiously fallacious, misleading and to the detriment of most of the countries citizens, the environment and much of the third world. Sometimes that message is cloaked in a racially offensive or divisive sound bite, but the intent in MOST cases is to use race as a means to attract a certain voter. Racism and more specifically race baiting tactics are merely recruiting tools employed by conservatives to bolster their numbers due to the fact that they have little else to offer working class people of any race. Racism is NOT Mel Gibson in a drunken expletive and epithet laced rant secretly recorded by his gold digging baby’s mother. Racism is not even some clown yelling out the N-word at a Klan Tea Party rally. It may be offensive to many (half of which use the word themselves) but in and of itself it’s much closer to an egregious act of ignorance due to the public relations nightmare that goes hand in hand with public displays of overt stupidity. In order for racism to be threatening it has to be systemic and institutionalized whereby by those with the racist, ethnocentric, homophobic, xenophobic, islamophobic (feel free to add a phobia) worldviews are in position to discriminate, disenfranchise and most frightening legislate.

Mark Williams is well within his right to write letters to dead people. No one begrudges him for having a vividly sophomoric imagination. What we take issue with is the fact that he as a spokes person and leader of the Tea Party movement, one in which thanks to Congress woman Michelle Bachman now boast a congressional caucus in its name , would pen such invective for the public to see and his followers to heed. As an arm (strong arm) of the Grand Old Party Mark Williams and the Tea Party make no bones about their plans to install like minded politicians to fill every elected position in this nation from your local school board to the oval office. The more successful that he is the further back we go as a nation. The more the Tea Party controls the daily narrative day in and day out the more likely they are to see their conservative utopian dream come to fruition. Mark Williams and the Tea Party dreams are America’s worst nightmare. I applaud the NAACP inserting itself into the information civil war taking place today in American politics. It’s because of their interjection Mark Williams has been excommunicated by the Tea Party. And while that represents one of many a win is a win.



More Bright ideas

As if Mark Williams literary melt down was not enough bad press for the movement another Tea Party darling and the maker of the ACORN Pimp Chronicles, Andrew Brietbart decided it would be a good idea to remix a speech given to the NAACP in the hopes that it would impugn and discredit the organization. If his plan would have been to pull the wool over the public eyes for 24 hours or less the hair brain scheme could be considered a success. Unfortunately for Brietbart, The Tea Party and Fox News who looped the tape ad nauseam---that 25th hour came and with it came the revelation that the tape was doctored and the message being conveyed to the NAACP by the speaker Shirley Sherrod was the exact opposite of the one being conveyed in the Brietbart cut , paste and smear job. Even though the administration jumped the gun in firing her and looked rather foolish in the process it’s an undeniable fact that once again the Tea Party and its affiliates were caught red handed nefariously using race to conjure a scandal. The argument on Fox now is the administration is the big loser in this week’s events when in fact next to the Tea Party, Mark Williams and Andrew Brietbarf they are the week’s biggest losers because once again their major headline story was a complete fraud. Sure they want to focus on the firing and it having not been their decision, but they are the ones that gave legs to the story in the first place and there is nothing that they can do to shake that solid truth. Honorable mention for the week’s biggest losers has to go out Sarah Palin for being so quick to “refudiate” the NAACP for their resolution then goes totally silent when the NAACP’s claims are just as quickly proven to be true. Mention also goes to the handful of token black faces that continue to show up at these rallies to play cover for them, or placate them on facebook and the blogosphere by denying the obvious.

More superlatives



The president gets the award for biggest lesson learned. He’s always talking about teachable moments and my hope is this was a learnable moment for him. I have no doubt that he at least tacitly approved of or urged Sherrod’s resignation and while I understand his reasoning it’s time he finally accept the fact that the duplicitous forces on the Fox News network and in the republican tea party will stop at nothing to distort the truth. There is no floor to how low they will go to infect politics with race baiting in order to divide and conquer . The lesson learned is not that they are this unscrupulous-- that’s a tactic long employed by Fox news. The lesson learned is to no longer react to the dirty tricks being employed by them. No longer make decisions based on what Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity says and thinks. He literally needs to use his presidential bully pulpit to tell them to (STFU). To his credit he tried to do that early in his term and got hit from all angles of the media for doing so. Hopefully the REAL news organizations learned the lesson that Fox is dangerously deceptive and needs to be discredited across the board. Van Jones and ACORN are but two examples of such successful smear campaigns and both Jones and ACORN could have used a little extra backing from the POTUS and a broader perspective from the MSM when they were edited out of politics by Breitbart and Fox News.

The biggest winners no doubt are the NAACP and Ben Jealous. Even though they jumped the gun in their initial response, they corrected themselves and more importantly they laid a piece of bait and almost to a tea (all pun) the conservative movement snatched it hook, line and sinker. They were able to sideline two of the major voices and forces in the Tea party movement in just one week of activity. Even bigger than Ben Jealous and the NAACP’s win--- Shirley Sherrod’s long week took her from being an evil racist villain to a sympathetic victim caught in the cross fire, to the American hero that the unadulterated truth revealed her to be. Were it not for Brietbarts bright idea the country would have never learned of this woman of such courage, strength and character. Her life is an amazing story that will be indelible inscribed in our countries history. The biggest winner is the public at large and those who sport a progressive ethos. The truth was spared and in the process the deniers of truth were caught with their pants down and their hand in the cookie jar. As November nears we will see more Tea party/FOX/GOP shenanigans. Hopefully the lessons learned this week will stick long after the 25th hour.