Tea Party Should Hail NAACP Resolution on Racism
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson
The NAACP’s resolution calling on Tea Party activists to repudiate “racist elements” in their ranks has met with predictable outrage from Sarah Palin and others on the right. The truth is, the NAACP pulled its punches. It backed away from a blanket condemnation of the party as racist—a tactful and crucial distinction that the national convention was right to make.
It’s also true that Tea Party leaders admit that people at their events have spouted racist slurs—slurs the same leaders claim to have denounced. That’s an arguable point. Meanwhile, the question remains: Is the Tea Party racist or not? And what kind of a threat does it represent?
