TEA ANYONE?

TEA ANYONE?
By: Ryan “BUGS” Williams-Virden
July 21st 2010

At this point it doesn’t matter what your opinions are regarding the Tea Party, the letter written by Tea Party chairman Mark Williams has exposed their collective racism (http://politicalcorrection.org/blog/201007150012). Let me be clear, I am not saying that every person that identifies as a tea party member is a racist; what I am saying is the ideologies, worldview, and eventual policies put forward by the Tea Party have racist consequences. While for many this is easy to understand and borderlines on the obvious; there are many for whom this is beyond hard to comprehend, it is absurd and is actually the product of reverse racism. It is this group I wish to speak with today.
Let me start by saying I see you, I know how you feel, I have family members who I love and respect that hold similar views and beliefs, I understand your frustration and your fears. With that being said I hope to be able to articulate my perspective in hopes that you will consider it fully and make any adjustments to your own that you deem necessary. Before I jump into it I want to address two of the most common rebuttals I am faced with, that I am just being emotional, and that I am biased. I assure you I am not simply reacting from a knee jerk, emotional place, but rather from a logical, fully evaluated position. Admittedly, I have faith in people and our capacity for compassion, love, and genuine desire to be good people. Many of my friends tell me this faith is misplaced-- which may or may not be true only time will tell. Dealing with the second charge, yes I am bias; we all are. It is impossible to be neutral. My bias is toward equality, which means when I evaluate positions and beliefs I am looking for how it helps or hurts efforts to create a more equitable world. Now that we have dealt with those lets move to the Tea Party.

RACE, EQUALITY, AND THE TEA PARTY

A common rebuttal to charges of racism is to cite examples of people you interact with that happen to be black or brown. Ask any person of color and they will tell you the number one response a racist gives is they “have a black friend”. Here is the dilemma, this person or organization more than likely truly believes they are not racist nor are they perpetuating racism. Many of them even believe racism is a terrible thing and deserves to be wiped-out. So understandably they are defensive to charges of racism. There is a truth at play here—people of color understand racism as more than your choice of adjectives, and relationships. People of color understand racism as existing in mentality, and thoughts. In short racism is more than if you don’t call black people niggers. In fact it is much more. Racism, while consisting of the very blatant dehumanizing attacks both verbal and physical also consists of the very covert non-obvious beliefs of whites. This is something people of color have known from the jump, but whites, by and large, have a very tough time coming to grips with. Naturally then they gravitate to organizations that reinforce their own understanding, and affirm their belief that they are not colluding with racism, on the contrary the real racists are the ones that made the original claim of racism. The problem is there is considerable evidence that racism is indeed more pervasive than individual beliefs and actions. Lets break some of this down.

Throughout the Jim Crow decades overt racism was still the norm; lynchings are common practice, racial epithets are accepted adjectives for people of color, and systematically barriers exist limiting opportunities and resources. Some of this changes during the Civil Rights Movement, public spaces are desegregated, voting and other rights are expanded to include people of color (although still not to women which is another essay). It is at this time many whites believe racism became a thing of the past, at least in its systematic form. If racism still exists it is on an individual level and is something they have little or no stake in. If we understand racism as being an individual character flaw then this stance could be accepted, however it is not. I am not going to go in to all the statistics but we see racism in areas of: education, housing, employment, criminal justice, and health. The achievement gap is disgraceful, foreclosures affected the black community disproportionately, the employment rate is double for blacks then it is for whites and wages are not equal, blacks and Latinos overpopulate our prisons, and people of color continually suffer from health issues at a much higher rate than whites. Put simply racism is power and privilege and it strictly belongs to whites. Many will say race has nothing to do with it, these discrepancies are due to personal choices, and while in some cases this might be the true there is no reason to believe whites are not making the same choices; so then why are they not seeing the same type of consequences? There is only one explanation that takes into account all the variables, race is at play and affecting the realities of both whites and blacks. There are very real consequences accompanied with accepting this conclusion, mainly that there is still major work to be done when it comes to ending racism, and that white people have a part to play. This is not something that is very comforting to a working class, struggling to make it white family. They are not trying to hear that they are benefiting from the color of their skin and that they should be working to end something they have been taught has nothing to do with them if they just don’t see color, and treat everybody the same. I know, my family was that family, and I could have very easily ended up a Tea Partier. A struggling family doesn’t want to hear about affirmative action, or social services that they have been told are going to families and people that don’t contribute and are just looking for handouts, significantly all of whom are black and brown. They believe they work hard for their money and others should do the same. They are right, they do work hard and others should too. What they are missing is that others are working hard and it is still not enough. What they are missing is there are people who are not working hard and are getting very wealthy doing so. They are missing something that has been purposefully kept from them, an accurate historical narrative. They are missing the truth about how our system works and always has worked. They don’t know about the legacy of slavery and how people of color (and ironically many of their own ancestors) were systematically kept from owning land and were therefore excluded from even the opportunity to accumulate wealth. They don’t know about Redlining. They have been told the playing field in equal and everybody has the same opportunity. They have been fed stereotypes and at some level are victim to them. They don’t see that they have more in common with the NAACP than the Tea Party.

This is what the Tea Party capitalizes on. They thrive off the fact many within their ranks know that they don’t have it as good as the should or could, and are pissed about it. So instead of an honest assessment of the situation, that would likely lead to solidarity with people of color the Tea Party promotes an atmosphere that labels people of color the enemy, whether it’s immigrants, or blacks they are to blame. They oppose policies that serve to level the playing field for people of color, and in actuality working class whites like affirmative action, a livable wage, fully funded public education, universal health care and other social services; or in one concise statement the Tea Party’s adherence to the free market and the dismantling of government. Here is where many of you might be tempted to turn away and write me off, others might have all sorts of rebuttals in mind. I ask for you to put those thoughts and feelings on hold briefly and hear me out.

FREE MARKET AND RACISM

This is perhaps the hardest argument for people to accept. That the free market is actually something we should be weary of, or worse that it promotes racism. All you have to do is turn on the TV to receive a constant dose of pro- free market testimonials. There is even no shortage of people of color who support the market; even Obama has sworn his allegiance. This however does not mean that the consequences of free market practices are not harmful or racist. What it does mean is that it is complicated and in order to understand it we must be diligent. First lets define what the free market is. The free market is essentially the unregulated relationship between producer and consumer. It means that what is produced, how much of it is produced, and what the prices are is determined by what the consumer wants, how much of it the consumer will buy, and how much the consumer will pay for it. At first glance there appears to be nothing wrong with this system, but lets dig deeper. Fundamentally consumers do not dictate what is produced. Yes, we can have an effect but that effect is minimal. Cash crops have always dictated what got produced and how much of it. This is the nature of capitalism-- produce what is going to make money. Increasingly marketing has accelerated the decline in power the consumer has over what is being produced. Today the reality is we buy what is produced, not vice versa. Another fundamental flaw lies with who has the ability to consume. Slaves had no purchasing power, poor whites had very little, so it follows what was being produced was what those relatively few white men with money desired. This is still the case today in so much as poor people, mostly people of color, are given to consume a product that puts money in the pockets of wealthy white men, an example is Wal-Mart or McDonalds. Often times poor people have no choice but to eat at McDonalds or shop at Wal-Mart due to their economic situations, it matters little that McDonalds is nearly void of nutrition and is extremely unhealthy or that Wal-Mart consistently exploits workers, you buy what you can afford. People of color and poor whites were also excluded from making the market work for them through entrepreneurship by means of discrimination or simply not having enough capital or credit to qualify for loans. Something others had accumulated through no means of their own. So we can see clearly the free market is not so free when you are dealing with those at the bottom of it. The reason it has sustained this long is because it serves the top extremely well. If you are lucky or more likely privileged enough to be in a position to do so the free market can make you very wealthy, very quickly. The problem is it always comes at the expense of others. This is why Milton Friedman the guru of free markets always needed a crisis to implement free market economies “Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.” In Chile this crisis was a CIA backed coup of the democratically elected president Salvador Allende, in Britain it was a ridiculous conflict off the coast of South America, and here in the US it was 9-11, in Iraq it was the shock and awe campaign, it was Katrina, it was the panic created before the bailout. Without exception free market policies have needed a dramatic event that leaves people distracted in order to be implemented. I believe this is because people by and large want equality and they can see that the free market will not provide that. Those that support the free market here in the US do so because they believe it will allow for them to get wealthy while not harming others. It is because of racism and its dehumanizing tactics combined with greed that the reality of those that are indeed being harmed by the free market has become irrelevant.

HOW DID WE GET HERE AND WHAT CAN WE DO

When we view racism as being systematic and more than individual biases we begin to make sense of the situation. Race became a major factor in the United States because of the need for cheap labor, of course cheap means free when dealing with slavery. Many whites didn’t own slaves and were not benefiting from the despicable practice. Never the less those very same whites would be instrumental in shaping race in the country. What ever way this group went the country would go; this was not lost on those in power and they offered this group incentives coming in the form of rights and opportunities in return for their allegiance; it is textbook divide and conquer. This is by no means the birth of racial tension, but it is a major contributing factor and one that is still affecting our realities today; we see this legacy manifesting in the rhetoric of the Tea Party. In a very real way being white can be considered credentials for membership into a club. Like all clubs not everybody is treated equal or afforded the same perks, but they are members regardless. There is a sense of loyalty to the fellow members, and one would not openly side against the club, hence the term race traitor. If we were collectively historically literate we would see through this nonsense immediately. We would know that Irish, Greek, Italian, Slavic, Turk, Polish, (the list goes on) were once not considered white and therefore were not included in the club. It is only when for political survival it became necessary to expand the definition of white that we see immigrants from these communities being allowed access. Make no mistake those in power are not ignorant of these facts; that is why education remains a major battlefield. In order to maintain the status quo the education must stay diluted. The recent banning of ethnic studies by Arizona, and massacring of the curriculum in Texas are current examples of attempts to control the narrative. The Tea Party counts on a collective ignorance, an undying commitment to free markets by the media and those in power, and our basic need for self -preservation. They count on racism, and please understand that is exactly what it is when the realities of millions of people is not worthy of consideration, when the very people who were never allowed to own property or accumulate wealth get blamed for their poverty and circumstances-- that is racism. The good news is we can deconstruct this monster; we can reject the free market. We can start to change the framework of the conversation simply by asking one question “how will this effect the realities of others?” If we can make this simple change there is hope. Ironically once again the struggle will be largely shaped by the decision many low- income working class whites make (however, it is my belief the struggle will not be decided by this group). Will it be the Tea Party, and free market uninhibited selfishness, or will it be a more evolved brave decision to examine the reality of all peoples at long last and demand equality for all humans.