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The True Makeup Of The 2010 Tea Party Movement
Posted by Les Payne at 4/19/2010 8:00 AM
Les Payne
April 19, 2010
The “overwhelming majority of supporters” of the Tea Party reveal themselves as likely racist, according to data in the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
This point was not made in the Times headlines saluting the supporters as simply “wealthier and more educated” than the general public. Nor did the story draw such a conclusion. However, the “detailed look at the profiles and attitudes” of the tea baggers went beyond anecdotal musings to indicate that their total dismissal of the 44th U.S. President has less to do with policy than with his race.
Nailing this broad-based sentiment among whites in deep denial about race is never easy. However, poll questions have been designed to detect a prevalence of racism among respondents.
Newsday once subjected white Long Islanders to the Gallup poll consisting of the control question: Do you feel blacks are better athletes? It was paired with four hardcore queries about false notions of blacks’ assumed values, intelligence, attitudes and work ethics. A “yes” on the control question coupled with acceptance of a hardcore negative stereotype indicated that the respondent housed strong “racist” tendencies.
The Gallup poll revealed that some 67-percent of whites in Nassau and Suffolk county were clearly “racist,” a result that shocked Newsday’s top editors. They declined to take the test themselves.
A recent Tea Party rally at the state office building in Suffolk County featured confederate flags on the Island built up after WWII as a series of segregated, white suburban townships. Another reminder of racial attitudes on Long Island showed up in the recent Times/CBS poll.
Question #47 put to the tea-baggers about President Obama is a variation of the standard poll query used to test white respondents for racism:
“Do you think Barack Obama shares the values most Americans try to live by, or doesn’t?”
Some 75 percent of the Tea Party supporters--with little to go on other than that Obama is black--slammed the duly-elected U.S. President as living by a different “value” system than most Americans. This racial bias, as indicated by the report, is overwhelmingly held by the supporters without regard to what Obama might say—or actually do.
This hardcore, “different values” question regarding Obama, while not conclusive singularly, is a strong, trace indicator of racism. Going beyond anecdotal evidence, the Times/CBS poll indicates a very high probability that “an overwhelming majority of the Tea Party supporters” would be graded “racist” by a fairly administered poll keyed to measure such tendencies.
Some 18 percent of all Americans—and thus a higher percentage of white Americans, some one out of four--support the ultra-Conservative “patriots” targeting the sitting U. S. President as a “socialist” who can do nothing right. Only 7 percent, in a poll with a 3-percent “margin of error,” have a “favorable” opinion of this Harvard lawyer-scholar ever eager to please his opponents.
This lily white Tea Party--with a statistically insignificant smattering of quite strange blacks--is made up mainly of middle-aged, married white Republicans who voted for McCain-Palin and get most of their news from Fox-TV.
And God, are they angry.
As the Times story indicated, they grant President Obama no benefit of the doubt, no margin of error, no possibility of learning-curve growth that all other presidents have experienced. For those attuned to polls, this new development about the racial tendencies of the tea-baggers should raise grave concerns about their true motivations and the dangers they pose to domestic tranquility.
There may well be a shit-storm coming.
Posted by Les Payne at 4/19/2010 8:00 AM
Les Payne
April 19, 2010
The “overwhelming majority of supporters” of the Tea Party reveal themselves as likely racist, according to data in the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
This point was not made in the Times headlines saluting the supporters as simply “wealthier and more educated” than the general public. Nor did the story draw such a conclusion. However, the “detailed look at the profiles and attitudes” of the tea baggers went beyond anecdotal musings to indicate that their total dismissal of the 44th U.S. President has less to do with policy than with his race.
Nailing this broad-based sentiment among whites in deep denial about race is never easy. However, poll questions have been designed to detect a prevalence of racism among respondents.
Newsday once subjected white Long Islanders to the Gallup poll consisting of the control question: Do you feel blacks are better athletes? It was paired with four hardcore queries about false notions of blacks’ assumed values, intelligence, attitudes and work ethics. A “yes” on the control question coupled with acceptance of a hardcore negative stereotype indicated that the respondent housed strong “racist” tendencies.
The Gallup poll revealed that some 67-percent of whites in Nassau and Suffolk county were clearly “racist,” a result that shocked Newsday’s top editors. They declined to take the test themselves.
A recent Tea Party rally at the state office building in Suffolk County featured confederate flags on the Island built up after WWII as a series of segregated, white suburban townships. Another reminder of racial attitudes on Long Island showed up in the recent Times/CBS poll.
Question #47 put to the tea-baggers about President Obama is a variation of the standard poll query used to test white respondents for racism:
“Do you think Barack Obama shares the values most Americans try to live by, or doesn’t?”
Some 75 percent of the Tea Party supporters--with little to go on other than that Obama is black--slammed the duly-elected U.S. President as living by a different “value” system than most Americans. This racial bias, as indicated by the report, is overwhelmingly held by the supporters without regard to what Obama might say—or actually do.
This hardcore, “different values” question regarding Obama, while not conclusive singularly, is a strong, trace indicator of racism. Going beyond anecdotal evidence, the Times/CBS poll indicates a very high probability that “an overwhelming majority of the Tea Party supporters” would be graded “racist” by a fairly administered poll keyed to measure such tendencies.
Some 18 percent of all Americans—and thus a higher percentage of white Americans, some one out of four--support the ultra-Conservative “patriots” targeting the sitting U. S. President as a “socialist” who can do nothing right. Only 7 percent, in a poll with a 3-percent “margin of error,” have a “favorable” opinion of this Harvard lawyer-scholar ever eager to please his opponents.
This lily white Tea Party--with a statistically insignificant smattering of quite strange blacks--is made up mainly of middle-aged, married white Republicans who voted for McCain-Palin and get most of their news from Fox-TV.
And God, are they angry.
As the Times story indicated, they grant President Obama no benefit of the doubt, no margin of error, no possibility of learning-curve growth that all other presidents have experienced. For those attuned to polls, this new development about the racial tendencies of the tea-baggers should raise grave concerns about their true motivations and the dangers they pose to domestic tranquility.
There may well be a shit-storm coming.
