Judis: The Tea Party isn't Racist

At The New Republic, John B. Judis argues that the Tea Party movement is many things, but not necessarily racist:

Once upon a time, leftwing thinkers used to blame the opposition to liberalism on capitalist rapaciousness. But since the Sixties, it has become more common to depict conservative movements, which invariably include some racists, as pure and simple expressions of the color divide. Typically, Bob Fertik of Democrats.com described the rightwing opposition to Bill Clinton in the 1990s as a product of “racist rage” that “lasted six full years and fueled Clinton’s impeachment … and let George W. Bush get close enough to steal the election in Florida.”

Now what about the Tea Partiers? Clearly, there are people in the Tea Parties who are racist, and who are in the movement because of that. At the April rally in Washington, I met one Tea Party enthusiast from Sarasota who was eager for me to take his picture along with the rubber mask he had constructed of very dark brown, simian-like Obama, perched in front of a teleprompter with the word “Liar” on it. He told me that what got him involved with the Tea Party was Barack Obama’s association with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Someone else was dressed up in a costume suggesting that Obama was a pimp. And there were the usual “Go Back to Africa” signs. But several nuts and a handful of egregious signs (some of which were probably written by Lyndon Larouche supporters, who have glommed onto the Tea Party) don’t prove that a political movement is being driven by racism. Let me make some distinctions.

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