Is hating anti-American groups that happen to be Mexican racist in your opinion?
I guess I am. In re-reading your link, I see that they re-interviewed “many of” the same people in 2010:
Nor are the actual questions.
Yes. But without more detail, it’s impossible for me to independently evaluate those claims. It’s true that you’ve correctly summarized the author’s claims, but how strongly his data supports those claims is still up in the air.
Yes.
But of course I don’t agree that this is demonstrated by any evidence, other than the rather weak evidence that the author’s op-ed summarizes.
So my question, then, is: how would we falsify the claim that the Tea Party is racist?
This is clearly evidence relevant to the Tea Party’s views on race, and I applaud Bricker’s effort to make an evidence-based argument.
Assuming the poll is valid, this is conclusive evidence that a plurality of those currently calling themselves Tea Party are not so racist as to withhold verbal support for a candidate that most matches their stated preferences solely by race, as Jas09 rightly puts it.
It is also decent evidence that a majority of those currently calling themselves Tea Party members are not so racist as to dismiss the candidate that most matches their stated preferences solely by race.
But it is relatively weak evidence to establish Bricker’s conclusion that criticism of the Tea Party for being racist was off the mark. This is so for at least four reasons:
(1) The argument is based on a naive conception of racism. It is perfectly plausible, indeed commonplace, for racism to manifest in ways that treat different members of the race differently. A black man who sags his pants while wearing Timberlands and a puffy down jacket will be subject to a different set of negative stereotypes intertwined with race than either a white man dressed the same way or a black man dressed like Urkel. Analogously, when two black politicians have different positions on welfare, immigration, national security, and other race-related issues, you similarly see different manifestations of racism.
(2) There is a self-evident and substantial gap between being willing to verbally support a black candidate at this stage of the primary and not ever being motivated by racism to take political positions or make political criticisms.
(3) The criticism of the Tea Party was never that it was 100% racists. Only that a substantial portion of it was. That is not contradicted in any way by this evidence, even if Bricker’s assumptions about egalitarian split are true. Moreover, Bricker’s assumptions about the make-up of the portion of the party not supporting Cain may be weaker than you think. It is not at all clear that any of the alternative candidates come close to Cain on the issues (such as they are) for the Tea Party. If the vast majority of egalitarians in the movement have temporarily settled on Cain in part to demonstrate that they are not racists, then it doesn’t tell us a great deal about the remaining portion.
(4) We don’t know if Tea Party circa October 2010 is the same as Tea Party circa 5October 2011. The major difference is that the Tea Party has had a chance to respond to the performance of the people it elected in the mid-term. Dissatisfaction with them may have changed the party’s make-up.
The same way everyone else easily proves, in one quick step, that they harbor no racist beliefs whatsoever, consciously or subconsciously, and then, having proved it once and for all, is free from the issue forever.
Does the Tea Party not know about that one easy step?
This link refers to someone who held up a sign reading “Congress = Slaveowner, Taxpayer = Niggar.” [sic]
This is not a racist sign.
This is the racial equivalent of Godwinizing the debate. His sign analogizes Congress to a slaveholder, and the taxpayer to the slave, with no rights and at the mercy of the slaveholder.
His sign makes the argument that taxpayers are in an analogous position to slaves under the slaveholding system.
John Lennon and Yoko Ono released a song called, “Woman Is the Nigger of the World,” in 1972. In response, Congressman Ron Dellums, said: “If you define ‘nigger’ as someone whose lifestyle is defined by others, whose opportunities are defined by others, whose role in society is defined by others, the good news is that you don’t have to be black to be a nigger in this society. Most of the people in America are niggers.”
Was he racist? Were Lennon and Ono racist?
Note that I reject the concept that the taxpayer can be fairly analogized to a slave with Congress as the slaveholder. I believe that’s both inaccurate and needless provocative.
But it’s not racist… just wrong.
While the guy seems to be not the brightest, and way to willing to use an offensive term, you do realize that he wasn’t using it referring to blacks, right? He was using it to refer to American taxpayers, with Congress being the slaveholders. and you seem to be ignoring that your cite states that he was booted out of the event for the sign.
Oops. Bricker beat me to it.
No, they were absent that day.
Great post.
How would we falsify the claim that the Tea Party is racist, at least “racist” as that accusation has been made here on the SDMB?
By showing evidence that there is not a substantial number of people who claim to be Tea Partiers, who are not racist. Which a poll about Herman Cain does not do, no matter what the results.
Also, despite the assumption of your argument, most people I’ve heard opine along these lines, associate the term racist with those people calling themselves Tea Partiers, not the party itself. And it’s not really a political party in the sense that the Republican Party, or Democratic Party is anyway. It’s just a conceptual party consisting of loosely organized groups sharing the same title.
Lots of Tea Party members held up signs that most reasonable people would recognize as racist.
For example:
http://www.buzztwang.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/IMG_8866-780259-400x266.jpg
While lots of conservatives hated Mario Cuomo I don’t remember any of them holding signs that said “Go back to Italy” and certainly anyone who held up signs telling Anthony Weiner to “go back to Israel” would be branded an anti-Semite. And that’s ignoring the decision to refer to Obama as “Hussein”.
Were his name Barack Howard Obama does anyone think for two seconds such a big deal would be made about it.
They may be crackers, but they like an occasional Oreo. A great many Teahadists are racist, I dare say a majority. But even the racists will tolerate a few “good ones” out there. Cain is their Rochester, a black guy they’ll consider hiring knowing he’ll just say “Yowsuh” and do the bidding of the party elite. I have no worries about the Republicans actually nominating a black guy, they’ll go through this false show of affection and then show him to the back of the bus.
That hasn’t been my impression. From “The Tea Party is not socially conservative my ass :”
I suppose “these shitheads” could mean “not the party itself,” but that’s not how it reads to me.
I can dredge up a number of similar quotes, if it’s necessary to support my claim.
OK, you’ve said how I can’t do it.
How CAN I do it?
If this were the thesis:
“A huge supermajority of members of the Tea Party are so virulently and openly racist that they would never even be able to bring themselves to pretend to show any respect or support for a black person in any context at all”
Then I would be willing to tentatively agree that Bricker had cleverly come up with strong evidence against that thesis.
However, given that the thesis is something more like:
“The original catalyst for the popularity of the Tea Party, which seemed to explode so quickly into relevance and visibility, while aided and abetted by financial and logistical support from powerful and rich organizations, was largely Obama’s race. The issues that were their stated reason for existence (taxes and deficits) are in fact important ones, and there’s no reason to doubt that significant numbers of Tea Parties are in fact honestly concerned with and motivated by those issues, but there was no sea change in either taxes (which in fact went down) or deficits (which had started ballooning upwards with Bush many years earlier) that correspond in time with the Tea Party’s creation – so, combined with the xenophobic and outright racial messages frequently displayed, and the general racial makeup of the Tea Party itself, the logical conclusion is that the election of a black president was itself a huge factor. Furthermore, while the proportion of Tea Partiers who are openly racists may not be all that high, the proportion of open racists who support the Tea Party very likely is.”
I don’t see how Bricker’s point is really relevant at all. Granted, I’m sure many liberals (possibly including myself) have been a bit too eager to glibly condense the above thesis (or whatever version of it they happen to subscribe to) into a punchier, shorter version of some sort… ie, “the Tea Party is Racist”. But of course boiling down complicated and multi-faceted issues into punchlines and catchphrases is about 95% of the public political discourse these days…
Perhaps, but was there ever a claim that Mario Cuomo was born in Italy and was hiding his birth certificate to conceal the fact? Was Anthony Weiner suspected of being born in Jerusalem?
I agree that because Kenya is involved, racism becomes something to consider. But despite that, I read this sign as specific to the President and his supposed status as ineligible to the office by virtue of his foreign birth than any generic racism.
Most people would vote for the Grand Wizard of the KKK if he had a credible plan for fixing the economy. There are more important issues at hand than whether a group or candidate meets some kangaroo definition of racism.
I think that’s not really the question you mean to ask. We could falsify it by running various well-established psychological tests on every Tea Party member that test for racial biases. So if you mean to suggest that the claim is faith-based or somehow anti-scientific, then I disagree. It is an assertion of fact that is, at least in principle, testable.
What I think you mean to ask is this: given the kind of evidence that presumably supported the claim in the first place – which was not scientific testing but instead anecdotes, tangential polling data, and background beliefs about society – what evidence would disprove the claim among those who believed it?
Certainly one piece of that evidence is the data you’ve presented here. I just think it is not alone sufficient, for the reasons I gave above. You could also present evidence that the various anecdotes of racist behavior by Tea Party sympathizers were condemned by the majority of Tea partiers or people who speak for the majority. You could point to counter-anecdotes, like people who represent a majority of Tea Partiers supporting things Obama did that they happen to agree with, say, or otherwise engaged in some conduct that suggests that their disagreements were not motivated by race.
I suspect, however, that even this would be insufficient for most people, since my guess is that whether you believe the Tea Party was motivated by racism or not has a lot to do with your background beliefs about society in general.
Suppose you believe that most Americans, even those acting in good faith, harbor racist beliefs or associations of varying intensity that are irrevocably intertwined with their beliefs about government policy, including treatment of the poor and about foreign policy and national security. And suppose you also think that most people are rationally ignorant when it comes to the factual details of the policy disputes of the day, and form their beliefs in a pretty crude fashion. If you believe those things, it is easy to see why you’d conclude that at least part of what motivates certain Anti-Obama rhetoric – on immigration, his place of birth, government spending on the poor, and other issues – was related to this racism and made even more salient by the fact that the President is black.
So convincing reasonable people who believe the claim about the Tea Party would probably involve starting at a more fundamental level. But that’s true of a ton of political and social beliefs, which are formed over a lifetime of experience based on anecdote, study, and other forms of knowledge.
I suspect you’d give the same answer if I asked you what would disprove the claim that Occupy Wall Street was motivated in part by class resentment.
A sufficiently exhaustive and fairly worded set of polls and research could probably give some good evidence. Barring that, try travelling back in time and replace Obama with:
(1) A white man with precisely Obama’s policies
and
(2) A black man named “Dave Johnson” who did not have a Kenyan father or spend some time in Indonesia while growing up, again with precisely Obama’s policies
and see whether the Tea Party comes into existence and prominence in the same fashion. Sadly, my time machine is in the shop right now, or I’d do it.
(Heck, just for fun, throw in (3) Hillary Clinton.)