Does the Tea Party Really Want to Lynch Black Folks? AlterNet makes up "statistics"

This article quoted a "recent public opinion research" and linked to another article about the research, but no links to the research. This "recent" poll was April 2010; here is the link: http://goo.gl/x8fCc

Nowhere in that poll is anything about "Tea Party members are more likely to believe that blacks are not hard working, are lazy". This appears to be made up.

This article makes statements about TEA party members being “oppressed” and that they "believe that they are victims of prejudice" without backing it up. That means those statements are also probably made up.

The article then goes on to describe the horrors of lynchings with no backup or reference to the TEA party. The attempt in logic goes like this:

TEA party members are white.
Blacks were lynched by whites
Therefore TEA party members lynched blacks.



Does the Tea Party Really Want to Lynch Black Folks? Why Andre Carton was Wrong, But Not for the Reasons You May Think
Posted by Chauncey DeVega at 2:51 pm

August 31, 2011

In a talk about the economy earlier this week, Representative Andre Carton (a member of the Congressional Black Caucus) suggested that the Tea Party are the same people who in another time would have loved to see black people “hanging on a tree.”

Such language is by its very nature controversial. It is also overwrought because an allusion to lynching and the “strange fruit” of this country’s recent memory conceals more than it reveals. In much the same way that black conservatives and their white handlers deploy the horrid language of “the plantation” and “run away slaves” to describe African Americans who make a choice to support the Democratic Party, an appeal to lynching as a means to describe the motives of one’s political foes has to be handled with great care and precision.

For those reasons, Carton’s suggestion was problematic. But perhaps not in the ways that many would assume.

Let’s begin with a simple question. What do we know about the Tea Party? Who are its members? What do Tea Party members believe? What is their rhetoric? What are their dreams and goals for the country?

From recent public opinion research, we know that the Tea Party’s membership is made up of older, almost exclusively white folks, and that they want to “return” the country to “Christian values” and “the Constitution.” We also know that their animus and upset did not take full form until the election of Barack Obama, America’s first Black President. Moreover, public opinion data has revealed that Tea Party members are more likely to believe that blacks are not hard working, are lazy, and complain too much about racism. Tea Party members, as a function of their Conservative political orientation, are awash in racially resentful attitudes. The Tea Party uses the language of secession and the neo-Confederacy. They also advocate violent solutions to removing an “illegitimate” and “Socialist” President: these are the Tea Party’s dreams of civic virtue and justice.

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Does the Tea Party Really Want to Lynch Black Folks? Why Andre Carton was Wrong, But Not for the Reasons You May Think « SpeakEasy