Skip to main content

Tea Party Turtle Talk

There is no reason simply to suspect the Tea Party of racism.  They provide proof of it.  

John Tanton, who has said that, "Black Americans are a 'retrograde species of humanity', organized the rally.  Ken Crow, once the president of Tea Party of America, now with Tea Party Community, spoke to the crowd of Black and White attendees.  He apparently had Hispanics in mind, maybe because of the Black people in attendance.  Senator Jeff Sessions was there, to speak about his opposition to the immigration bill.  Congressman Steve King was there, also as a speaker.  Senator Ted Cruz was also on the roster.  And Mr. Crow was there, to speak of breeding:  

"From those incredible blood lines of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and John Smith.  And all these great Americans, Martin Luther King.  These great Americans who built this country.  You came from them," he said.  "And the unique thing about being from that part of the world, when you learn about breeding, you learn that you cannot breed Secretariat to a donkey and expect to win the Kentucky Derby.  You guys have incredible DNA, and don't forget it!"

[The man should be scorned, not only for for his ugly racist remarks, but for the damage he does to syntax!]

I really do not understand how or why we tolerate all the reporting about Tea Party Republicans, and pretend that they are just fiscal conservatives, a bit to the right of the right wing.  It isn't just, "Taxed Enough Already"--TEA--, it is an expression of the ugliest side of human life:  it is racism.  

And how does the man cite Thomas Jefferson who, as everybody knows, had a family with a Black woman?  

I do not understand either how Mr. Crow, whose first name is Ken, not Jim, had the temerity to add Martin Luther King to his litany of racist heroes, or what the Black attendees in the audience were thinking:  The Nation magazine reports they were rather quiet, at that point.  

It is plain:  our nation is changing dramatically.  The multicultural nature of the country, which has been obvious since the first Europeans invaded the continent, soon to import Black slaves, and later to welcome cheap labor from Asia and Latin America, is reaching maturity.  So far, except for the earliest years when Native Americans outnumbered the "incredible DNA" of the Fathers of Our Country--Jefferson and Washington and Ted Cruz--the majority of our population has been White.  In just a few more years, Whites will still be the largest--Shall I use the language of Ken Crow and say, "breed"?--but soon Brown-skinned and Black-skinned people, together, will outnumber Whites.  And that scares the sense out of Tea Party patriots.  That's right: "the sense".  It exposes their ignorance, their notions of racial superiority, and their lack of even understanding that human beings are all of one species.  We are a human family, all descended from African origin, and spread out like runaway children across the globe.  

And that scares the daylights out of Tea Party people.  They chant discredited slogans about what it is to be human.  They think they are descendants of Secretariat, and maybe they are:  aren't race horses Arabian; that is to say, Muslim horses?  Don't race horses almost always turn left?  (You must understand:  my DNA is mostly of the donkey sort, and I have trouble with this scientific stuff.  I am no Ken Crow or Steve King.)  

The point is this:  when people get scared, even if there is no real reason to be so, they say and do stupid stuff.  They talk Turtle Talk.  You know, Flat Earth stuff.  Shem and Ham and Japheth stuff.  God's Chosen people stuff.  Racist talk.  Pure, ugly racist talk.  

We ought to be embarrassed to admit we even listen to them, much less elect them to public office.  But we have.  


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard

Caliche Busters and Government Work

When I was young and both stronger and smarter than I am now, I put my might and brain to work doing nothing useful, unless it might be thought that hand/foot/eye coordination might come in handy.  Those were skills to be learned and practiced.   I found an iron bar our grandfather had shaped in his blacksmith shop.  He took old car, truck, or wagon axles, and made tools from them for digging post holes.  He sharpened one end to a tip, and the other to a blade.  Washington State, like many places, had a hard layer of soil, probably created by water and limestone, or some such materials, that made digging holes a miserable chore.  The bar chipped through the natural concrete so that a shovel could take it up.   I found Grandpa's iron bar, and since I was young and dumb and strong--or so I thought--decided to punch a hole down to hardpan and ultimate truth.  I knew how to do that.  Raise the bar vertically with both hands, and then slam in straight down.  On the second try, aimi

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back:  two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed!  Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore.  The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil.  We farmed, too, of course.  All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor.  Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them.  Even when all they wanted to do w