Charles Blow writes in his New York Times column today about his trip to a Dallas Tea Party. Needless to say, Mr. Blow went to the Tea Party with his racial bean counter’s cap firmly on.
I won’t bother going over the whole thing because you know where his story inevitably ends up. I will quote his summation.
Thursday night I saw a political minstrel show devised for the entertainment of those on the rim of obliviousness and for those engaged in the subterfuge of intolerance. I was not amused.
For Mr. Blow, because the number of black speakers at the Tea Party did not match in ratio the number of black attendees, the whole thing was some sort of minstrel show. Lucky for me I read another black person’s first hand account from a Tea Party in Chicago. In this account by Shamara Riley there was a paragraph that stuck in my head.
As the event was scheduled to go from 12:00N-1:30pm, the public plaza was also interspersed with lunchtime eaters and curious folks. A couple of vendors sold tea party-related merchandise on the periphery of the plaza, where there was also a significant police presence. Also, on the periphery was a contingent of white gay liberal counter-protesters, waving rainbow flags. As I went into the plaza, I overheard one of them say, "These f_____s are racist!" Another one held up a white sign which said, "Don't Tread Spit On Me", a play on tea party slogan to refer to the allegations that tea party activists in Washington, D.C. protesting the health care bill spit on a black U.S. Congressman. It was interesting that one of the counterprotesters was alleging racism, because the racial makeup of the counterprotesters even less diverse than the tea party crowd of 2,000-4,000 folks.
This got me thinking, the left have been making much noise about the racial make up of the Tea Parties, but little attention is ever paid to the racial make up of their grassroots political movements. So I did a little test for myself. I first Googled images of the anti war protesters, then Code Pink protesters, and finally the much talked about Coffee Party. No surprise all of the images from these leftwing grassroots affairs are predominately white. Just to back up what I was seeing on Google, I went to Flickr and Photobucket to search for the same things. Yep, mostly white folks in those pictures too.
Maybe Mr. Blow should start worrying about the mintrel show on his side of the political fence.
Via: Memeorndum
Via: The New York Times
Via: Booker Rising
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3 comments:
Either way, the content of the Tea Partier's character is much more to my liking. ;-)
We had a similiar situtation on Thursday night. We actually had a decent size crowd of counter protesters; the woman who started the coffee party lives locally. They started walking around with this huge sign that said something about the KKK, they really funny part of it was the person who was on stage at the time was Black. Deneen Borelli, I am not sure if you know who she is. It was amusing.
I can't get over his use of the word "minstrel show."
Minstrel shows, a popular form of entertainment in the 19th century, often lampooned blacks with white actors in blackface.
The sole intent of some minstrel shows was to disparage blacks. Other minstrel shows were used by abolitionists to illustrate the abomination of slavery, even if their comedic depictions of black stereotypes would, today, be considered racist. The South even eventually banned minstrel shows.
The point is that the author of that comment intended to describe the Tea Party as a "minstrel show" without having the faintest idea what a minstrel show is. He casually threw the term around as he would with the term "racist."
Reality doesn't matter to these Orwellian Doublethinkers, only that they find comfort and commiseration.
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