How Racist Is The Tea Party Movement? Maybe A Little?

Despite these rather thin-skinned social scientists' rebuttals, I think it's actually quite hard to separate racism from genuine lack-of-familiarity with blacks, particularly with regards to the mostly-suburban Tea Partiers:

It should also be noted that the support for small government and "states' rights" expressed by Tea Partiers have rarely been entirely free of racism, or racial motivation. Dating back to before the Civil War, the South leaned hard on the doctrine of states' rights as a means of preserving slavery. During the 20th century, claims about states’ rights animated the Dixiecrats, who had fallen out with Truman’s Democratic Party as it installed a more racially liberal party platform. Indeed, research conducted almost 30 years ago, by David Sears and Jack Citrin, suggests that support for small government and tax revolts are motivated by some whites' desire not to have their taxes redistributed to help blacks and other minorities.

Young links another finding in our study -- that the Tea Partiers support government restrictions on civil liberties -- to mere conservatism. But, again, supporters of the Tea Party movement are more likely than other conservatives to support such measures -- even though the movement's supposed goal is freedom from government tyranny. Indeed, controlling for conservatism, Tea Party supporters are 28 percent more likely to say that it’s OK for the government to detain suspects indefinitely without filing charges.

Suburban and rural America has many islands of isolation where people live essentially black-free lives (excepting maybe watching crime dramas on TV). When I lived in Salt Lake City, I automatically assumed that any tall, black males walking around town had to have been team members on the Utah Jazz. Like, where else would they have come from? I also remember living in Tucson. My laundromat owner said she used to pick fruit in the Pacific Northwest, and they never saw blacks; ever (not till they moved to Tucson). And I met stay-at-home moms who never travelled west of Wilmot Road - for me, nearly an inconceivable level of social isolation; trapped on the far-flung periphery of the white side of town (the equivalent in Davis would be living in Davis, yet never travelling south of Covell).

There may be racism lurking among the Tea Partiers, but there is also an amazing amount of sheer naivete too.

Tea Partiers tend to dismiss racism complaints from the Democrats and others as representing nothing more than an effort to shut them up without fully engaging their arguments. Despite my leftist disdain for the movement, I think the Tea Partiers have a valid point here. Leave complaints about racism to better examples of racist events, I say. If the arguments are primarily about economics, engage the arguments on that level. It's a democracy, and everyone should get a chance to speak their mind.