The NAACP’s labeling tea partyers as racist while ignoring the inflammatory actions of the New Black Panther Party shows it has become a political arm of the Democratic Party, conservative black leaders say.
Officials of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People deny that they intend to stamp the entire tea party movement as racist. Instead, they contend, they just want the movement to disavow racist elements within it.
The feud erupted after the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights group passed a resolution at its annual convention in Kansas City, Mo., Tuesday condemning tea partyers “who use racist language in their signs and speeches.”
Tea party leaders have long disavowed such signs, and some have suggested that Democratic operatives have planted some of the placards to embarrass the movement.
Black conservative leaders tell Newsmax the resolution shows that the NAACP has lost touch with its original mission as an advocate for black rights.
“A a frequent speaker at tea party rallies around the country, I can assure the NAACP that the tea party movement’s concerns are about President Obama’s policies and not his race,” says Deneen Borelli, a Fellow with the black conservative group Project 21. “I’m deeply concerned that the NAACP is being used as a political tool to do the dirty work of the progressive movement.
“Instead of criticizing tea parties, the NAACP would be better served denouncing the racist comments made by a member of the New Black Panther Party and their voter intimidation outside a Philadelphia polling place in the last presidential run.”
The NAACP should take a balanced look at what the tea-party movement stands for instead of trying to make it seem as if a few signs represent the entire movement, tea party leaders say.
William Owens, a black Tea Party Express speaker, says, “The NAACP is trying to address some of the racial slurs from within the tea party movement, and as a result, they are marginalizing the more important issues that the tea party movement is addressing: government intrusion, fiscal irresponsibility, putting upon people more and more taxes.
“They are doing an injustice to the black community by not giving a fair and balanced perspective on the legitimate concerns that the tea party movement expresses — especially how it affects not just black America but all of America,” says Owens, founder of Communityfaithpolicy.com and author of “Obama: Why Black America Should Have Doubts.”
Owens believes the NAACP chose to take on the tea party movement to divide Americans.
“I think it’s just sidestepping the major issues,” Owens says. “You are going to find signs in every movement that express sentiments of racism, but those are far and few in between when you look at the issues involved.”
Echoing that view is Lt. Col. Allen West, a black, tea party-aligned Republican candidate in Florida. The NAACP resolution betrays the civil rights organization as a partisan extension of the Democratic Party, West tells Newsmax.
“My mother was an NAACP member, and I think they have gotten away from their original mandate, intent, and purpose of their organization area,” says West, who is running for Congress in Palm Beach and Broward counties in southeast Florida.
“They should not be a political organization; they should be about what their title is — the advancement of colored persons or the black community,” West says. “I really question the direction the NAACP is taking because people now are going to see it as a political hack organization.”
The civil rights group has aligned itself with the Obama administration’s game plan of using race to suppress free speech and has put the black community’s real problems on the back burner, West says.
The NAACP should be addressing problems such as unemployment, crime, the high incarceration rate, and the high school dropout rate instead of venturing into partisan politics.
West contends the resolution springs from Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals,” which says: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”
The NAACP hopes to scare blacks into offsetting the high level of GOP voter enthusiasm of the tea party movement heading into midterm elections that some say could devastate Democrats, West says.
“So far they have failed to regenerate that Obama momentum, whether it be in the electoral defeats in the election is Virginia or New Jersey, or some of these special elections we’ve seen in some of these states,” West says. “They are very nervous about the typical midterm elections with low turnouts that you are going to see because you aren’t going to see a singular person called Barack Obama.”