Yes, The Tea Party is a Racist Organization Populated by "White Crackers": Sharing My Recent Appearance on The Ed Schultz Radio Show

I was recently interviewed on The Ed Schultz Show by Ring of Fire Radio's--and guest host--Mike Papantonio where I discussed the connections between the Tea Party and the defenders of Jim and Jane Crow in the 1950s and 1960s.

As Charlie Rangel said so matter of factly, the Tea Party is indeed a group of "white crackers". One could massage that a bit by calling them a white identity organization that is trafficking in herrenvolk ideology in the service of the country's de facto White Political Party, but that would be too much of a mouthful to be a meme worthy quotation.

In the interview, I feel that I got across what needed to be said and made sure to emphasize how white supremacy and white racial resentment do the work of class inequality. I also got to slip in my observation that the Tea Party would likely not hold the rope at a lynching of a black person, or personally bomb a bus of freedom riders, but their members would most certainly attend and cheer on such events.

Unfortunately, the white base of the Republican Party, many of who support the very economic policies that are destroying the United States' economy, are more wedded to the psychic and material wages of whiteness (the latter especially, which are diminishing at a rapid rate in an Age of Austerity) than in an expansive view of the Common Good and the merits of alliances across the colorline.

For the Tea Party being "free, white, and twenty-one" still means a great deal. It does still have material utility in the Age of Obama; Whiteness just isn't worth what it once was. 

Perhaps generational replacement is the only viable way to remove such a poisonous yearning and belief from the body politic, as well as to even out the ledgers a bit more.