One refrain among many liberals and Democrats that I hear (or at least have heard) quite often is that Tea Partiers are all just a bunch of racists in disguise. They hate black people, and because Obama is black himself, they're marching and rallying not because they have actual political views or feel marginalized (as nutty as their political beliefs may be) but simply to 'lash out' against blacks. To me, this always seemed like a very unintellectual cheapshot. It's lazy! Are we not better than this?
Ok, sure, there are plenty of dumbass, ignorant and/or extremist signs at the Tea Party rallies. Of course, considering how nutty they are, it should come as no surprise, really. Some of them can, in fact, be classified as racist or bordering on racist. However, I have yet to see an actual poll or video definitively proving that the vast majority of the millions of Tea Partiers in this country don't like black people at all. I have heard of supposedly one survey that was done of Tea Partiers on Billo's or Chris Matthew's shows, but it/they didn't really seem to indicate a much-higher percentage of antipathy towards blacks than the population at large.
One big reason why many liberals claim the Tea Party is 'racist' is simply due to the fact that the vast majority of rallies or groups have whites in them. ...So?? Look, those are the demographics of this country! Most whites in America tend to be Republicans and/or conservatives. The Tea Party is a far-right movement, so I'm not sure why it would be surprising that most are white. And why does the fact that a rally or movement has almost all of the same race really matter? Was the Million Man March racist because it was all blacks?? Are you implying that the Tea Partiers conspired to keep blacks and other races out of their rallies, as impossible as that would be? And what about guys like Allen West, who are black Tea Partiers? Do they "hate their race"??
Another argument is that the Tea Party supposedly has 'caused a climate of violence on the Right.' Now, whether or not that's entirely true is debatable. After all, Glenn Beck was the driving force behind a lot of the propaganda, such as with the guy who targeted the Tides Foundation. The guy who shot up the Holocaust Museum was already a Nazi, so it couldn't have been that hard to rile him up. Plus, a lot of the language came from the GOP itself, not the actual Tea Party.
Look, in any large group, especially a political movement, there are always gonna be fringe elements who make the movement look bad at some point. I'm not saying I agree at all with the Tea Party, but we need to take these claims of "racism" with a grain of salt. The Tea Party is a movement targeted towards all of Congress and the presidency, not just Obama. Besides, even if the Tea Partiers were slightly racist, what does that mean? At best, they may be subconsciously racist to some extent, but if they never act on these feelings (esp. to commit hate crimes) and don't even realize they exist, what's the big fucking deal???
Is the possibility that someone may be a subconscious bigot enough to totally degrade what they're saying, whether or not it may have actual merit or substance? Let's grow up, lefties. I'm getting so tired of this left-wing obsession with race and racism. Stop being so damn PC and oversensitive!