NAACP: Tea Party blog racist
BEN JEALOUS & THE NAACP CITE TEA PARTY BLOG POST AS RACIST, by David Knowles (AOL)
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The war of words between the NAACP and members of the tea party movement is not dying down. After the venerable civil rights organization passed a formal resolution “to condemn extremist elements within the tea party, calling on tea party leaders to repudiate those in their ranks who use racist language in their signs and speeches,” a spokesman for the anti-taxation grass-roots group fired off a retaliatory, mocking blog post.
Conservative radio host Mark Williams, a frequent spokesman for the Tea Party Express, posted a satirical letter from NAACP President Benjamin Jealous to President Abraham Lincoln that began:
Dear Mr. Lincoln,
We [National Association for the Advancement of] Colored People have taken a vote and decided that we don’t cotton to the 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 as for us [National Association for the Advancement of] Colored People and we demand that it stop!
The letter continued:
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 Colored People 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.
On CNN, a spokesman for the NAACP called the letter “a feeble attempt as satire and parody,” and “offensive.” Shortly thereafter, however, Mr. Williams removed the letter from his site. In the comment section of his blog, Williams apologized for the decision to use the term “massa”:
To those offended by those errors in judgement [sic] I apologize.
But Williams continued to hold his ground over much of the post’s content, as in the following reply to one commenter perplexed at the racial overtones of Mr. Williams’ letter:
Real simple. … the NAACP does not speak for anyone outside of its narrow little group of backward looking people. In their world view they still cannot sit at a lunch counter or the front of the bus.
David Knowles is the AOL News Surge Desk writer. View this article, and others on AOL.com, by clicking here.