Mark Williams, just one of the many halfwit and racist ringmasters of the Tea Party circus, recently penned the following “parody” letter from Ben Jealous (head of the NAACP) to Abraham Lincoln:
Dear Mr. Lincoln
We Coloreds have taken a vote and decided that we don’t cotton to that whole emancipation thing. Freedom means having to work for real, think for ourselves, and take consequences along with the rewards. That is just far too much to ask of us Colored People and we demand that it stop!
In fact we held a big meeting and took a vote in Kansas City this week. We voted to condemn a political revival of that old abolitionist spirit called the ‘tea party movement’.
The tea party position to “end the bailouts” for example is just silly. Bailouts are just big money welfare and isn’t that what we want all Coloreds to strive for? What kind of racist would want to end big money welfare? What they need to do is start handing the bail outs directly to us coloreds! Of course, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is the only responsible party that should be granted the right to disperse the funds.
And the ridiculous idea of “reduce[ing] the size and intrusiveness of government.” What kind ofmassa would ever not want to control my life? As Coloreds we must have somebody care for us otherwise we would be on our own, have to think for ourselves and make decisions!
The racist tea parties also demand that the government “stop the out of control spending.” Again, they directly target coloreds. That means we Coloreds would have to compete for jobs like everybody else and that is just not right.
Perhaps the most racist point of all in the tea parties is their demand that government “stop raising our taxes.” That is outrageous! How will we coloreds ever get a wide screen TV in every room if non-coloreds get to keep what they earn? Totally racist! The tea party expects coloreds to be productive members of society?
Mr. Lincoln, you were the greatest racist ever. We had a great gig. Three squares, room and board, all our decisions made by the massa in the house. Please repeal the 13th and 14th Amendments and let us get back to where we belong.
Sincerely
Precious Ben Jealous, Tom’s Nephew
NAACP Head Colored Person
Now, if you click the “penned” link above, you won’t find it. Â Mark Williams has taken it down, claiming that “I have removed the parody letter you came here to read and urge you to fight those who seek to divide us by race, no matter the color of the racist.” Â Right. Â And for creating and spreading this incredibly racist and ignorant screed, he was roundly condemned, right? Â Well, CNN rewarded him with yet another television appearance. Â Justin Elliot asks:
The obvious larger issue here is why CNN keeps inviting Williams, who has called Allah a “monkey God” and said he believes President Obama is Muslim (that last one was on CNN) — and basically admitted that he says wacky, racist things so he “goes viral” — back on and treating him as a reasonable pundit.
This is the level of American social and political discourse these days. Â Why would anyone treat this man as a reasonable part of our ongoing public conversation? Â Fairness? Â Usually these claims of “fairness” are an irresponsible and mindless excuse that our media uses for giving a platform to incendiary and viewer-drawing idiocy. Â But, as Ta-Nehisi Coates says, it can be genuine:
I have, in my writing, a tendency to become theoretically cute, and overly enamored with my own fair-mindedness. Such vanity has lately been manifested in the form of phrases like “it’s worth saying” and “it strikes me that…” or “respectfully…”
When engaging your adversaries, that approach has its place.
Not here. Â And not with people like Mark Williams. Â Ta-Nehisi goes on:
But it’s worth saying that there are other approaches and other places. Among them–respectfully administering the occasional reminder as to the precise nature of the motherfuckers you are dealing with. It strikes me that this is a most appropriate role for the nation’s oldest civil rights organization.
The NAACP was right.
J. Tyler Ballance
I am not a Tea Partier, but I want the question raised by Mr. Williams’ satire to be addressed, both by the NAACP and the African American community, who are clearly not led or represented by today’s NAACP.
The NAACP is by definition, thought, word and deed, a racist organization.
The NAACP has never been the representatives of the African-American community that they claim to be, rather they are a self-serving, hate group that exists solely to line their group’s coffers with money that they can extort from, “Whitey.”
The NAACP was aching for a way to vault itself back into the media, and they decided that trying to claim the satire by Mr. Williams was indicative that the whole Tea Party movement is a bunch of racists.
What the NAACP won’t do, is answer Williams’ underlying criticism of them for promoting a sense of dependency on government among the black community, rather than encouraging self reliance and independence from government aid programs.
Americans can see real acts of hatred when they occur and distinguish such acts from satire.
The question that remains unanswered is why the NAACP continues to fund its activities through racial extortion, instead of promoting and supporting real economic progress for ALL Americans?
Here in the Twenty-first Century, the typical American is made of at least eight ethnic groups. Racist groups like La Raza and the NAACP are being run over by the reality that America, and Americans can no longer be dissected into their politically convenient, opposing factions.
It is unfortunate that so many members of the media have, once again, taken the NAACP’s racism bait, turning their attention on the messenger (Mr. Williams) rather than on asking why the question about why the NAACP continues to promote a plantation mentality among African Americans, remains taboo.
MB
Tyler, I bet you don’t think you’re a racist at all.
J. Tyler Ballance
MB, your comment illustrates my original point.
The more open and honest discussions of issues we have, the better off we will all be.
The NAACP deserves sharp criticism, and those who raise that group’s corrupt practices are always personally attacked, in lieu of any response that addresses the issue of NAACP corruption, and racism.
It simply won’t fly with the citizens any longer, in part because so many of us have multiracial relatives. We simply are not willing to line-up along racial lines any longer, much to the dismay of the NAACP and their ilk.
MB
Tyler, you get this right:
However, after years of reading comments you write that come off as incredibly racist, I really don’t think that’s what you’re aiming for. Or maybe even possible, unless and until you acknowledge the racism that forms and permeates your comments on these matters.
I’m working on a longer piece about the following quote, but I think now’s a good time to put it out there:
J. Tyler Ballance
Your charge is, of course, baseless.
You are doing exactly as I have pointed out in the previous post. You assert that someone who openly criticizes the self-anointed, unelected, NAACP, or the protected class of African-Americans, has to be racist for daring to question the organization’s purity.
Well, they are not pure, ,the Emperor has no clothes, that ship has sailed and any other metaphor you wish to insert…it is OVER for the NAACP. Americans are pushing back against their propaganda.
Even President Obama wrote in his book that, given the changes in American society (including the growth in muti-ethnic families) groups that relied on the tired old racial victimhood or old rhetoric that calls for more quotas and race based preferences were feeling a growing amount of push-back from the rank and file suburban citizens.
He did not say that anyone should abandon quest for improving the lot of those less fortunate (regardless of which race they identify with, instead he urged that the supposed leaders of the old movements (presumably the NAACP, La Raza, etc.) recognize the reality of the changes that have occurred in our American families, and deal with the reality of our new century.
Some pundits took his meaning to be that we are magically, post racial, but the reality is that we still have some divides, but they are no longer as clearly defined and, in many cases, blurred to the point of being irrelevant.
One example is my own family, which contains nearly every ethnic group. Another is my neighbor, who, like Obama, has a White mother and an absentee black father. My neighbor is a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and flies the CSA First National flag, along with Old Glory from his porch.
Americans have mostly moved forward, in spite of, rather than because of, the inflammatory acts of the NAACP.
Like cigar chomping union bosses, Nixon and the “solid South” the NAACP is a thing that belongs in the past and is best ignored and forgotten.