Speaking at the National Tea Party Convention, former United States Representative Tom Tancredo proposed a “civics literacy test” as a prerequisite to voting and announced that “people who could not even spell the word ’vote’ or say it in English put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House.” A former Roman Catholic turned evangelical, Tancredo is a member of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.
Tancredo’s offensive comment invoking the memory of the Jim Crow South is definitely not his first racist rant. Not too long ago, Tancredo asserted that immigrants must adopt “White, Anglo Saxon culture.” Without a doubt, the Tea Party organizers knew what they were getting when inviting Tom Tancredo.
Southern Baptist pastor Rick Scarborough of Vision America was also a featured speaker at the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville. Describing the United States as a “special country,” the Rev. Scarborough declared: “If we are to become 30 per cent Hispanic we will no longer be America…That would be a bad thing.”
With guys like Tancredo and Scarborough as popular keynote speakers, who can deny the centrality of racism and xenophobia to the Tea Party Movement? We live in a nation plagued with ongoing race-related problems. We live in a thoroughly racialized society.
What message then does it send to people of color when predominantly white, conservative evangelicals are seen out and about in support of this Tea Party Movement, a movement which proudly puts racists and xenophobes like Tancredo and Scarborough front-and-center?
Certainly these white, conservative evangelicals can find a way to express their views about the role and size of the government without identifying with a movement whose most visible representatives includes overtly racist individuals. Right?
Related posts:
- Black Southern Baptist Pastor Calls on SBC to Repent of Racism Recently Rev. Dwight McKissic, a leading African-American Southern Baptist pastor,...
- Does Richard Land Speak for Southern Baptists? This is a must read article by Bob Allen of...
- Prominent Southern Baptist Pastor Steve Gaines Lauds Pro-Choice Politician In the aftermath of the stunning victory of now Senator-elect...
- Southern Baptist Pastor Prayed For Death Of Rep. John Murtha Wiley Drake is back in the news…. From The Orange...
- Dwight McKissic, Racism & Southern Baptists Rev. Dwight McKissic is a prominent African-American pastor in the...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
NO, they cannot. The Tea Party movement has no center, no cohesion, just a loose bunch of people unhappy with the current government. Many are in the Tea Party because they do not like having a black president and others because they blame the Democrats for the debt (most of which was pile up by G. W. Bush, G. H. W. Bush and Reagan, like 80 plus percent of it).
The bail out is being paid back at a premium or interest that is fairly high. The government could do the same for mortgagees, but at an effective interest of 8 plus percent, what good would that do most middle class and poor people?
So the TPers are grasping at straws to cover for the racism.
No, they cannot find another place to express themselves. They are where they belong with the views that they hold. The teapartiers are extremist and racist through and through. Many are rather simple minded sheep who follow other simple minded people like Sarah Palin.
It’s always enlightening to come read your commenters, Big Daddy, to find out what I really think.
I do appreciate that you are not of their ilk.
Ah…there’s so much I would write were it not a public forum. Of those mentioned in the post, there are paths that have crossed mine, and I concur with your analysis of the racial sentiments of the people involved. However, like much of what goes on today, I think that some of the racism here rests on a foundation of classism. There are those who would be quite comfortable with a caste system or with a return to feudalism (so long as they could choose their own station).
I’ve never been to a Tea Party event, but I would like to come to a defense of individual evangelicals who may have become involved in the Tea Party movement along the way. My defense runs along a couple of lines:
1. You are a careful follower of political news; most people in the nation are not. Those in my congregation who have attended a Tea Party event include a number of people who, in my estimation, probably don’t know who Tancredo and Scarborough are.
This Tea Party movement is in its infancy. Its nature may not even be set in concrete yet, but if it develops along racial lines, then it will not succeed among evangelicals. I don’t fault people for not yet knowing what they’re getting involved with.
2. The involvement of evangelicals is evidence that evangelicals are not lemmings for the GOP, contra many who have delighted in falsely arguing so. Like “waco ethicist,” a large number of conservative evangelicals blame Republicans for unrestrained spending (although I’d like to see “waco ethicist” do the ethical thing and quantify debt accumulation by which party controls Congress rather than which party controls the White House).
If anything, this movement ought to be an ENCOURAGEMENT to Democrats (of the Blue Dog stripe, at least). The GOP does not own evangelicals. Contrary to popular opinion, they really are swing voters. Abortion and abortion alone costs the Democrats utter hegemony in American politics.
I’ll agree with Bart here on a couple of things. Most tea partiers don’t know who Tancredo is, and a whole lot more don’t know who Scarborough is. And the movement itself is certainly not represented by those who gathered in Nashville. That’s just the froth on the kettle, the politicans who are trying to identify with the movement and gain some political traction from it. Most of the politicans are too cornered by their party to have a lot of appeal, Tancredo and Palin are good examples of that.
Actually, a better measure of who accumulated the debt would not necessarily be the party that controlled congress, but the party that controlled the congressional budget apparatus, and used the veto as a threat to get their budgets passed. That makes Reagan, Bush and Bush guilty as charged.
As someone who has followed politics since 1980, the thinking during the Reagan era, the growth of the Religious Right, the Christian Coalition, then the Daddy Bush and Baby Bush eras, so much irrational behavior and irrational statements were made that have made me want to avoid religion like the plague. For any religion whose Bible claims “love thy neighbor”, it sure must’ve not been talking about political Christians!