African American members of the national Tea Party movement angrily refute widely reported claims that the Tea Party is inherently racist, saying the movement is against President Obama‘s direction for the country.
“These people do not oppose Barack Obama because of his skin color. They oppose him because of his policies,” Lloyd Marcus, a spokesman for the group, told The Associated Press.
At the Washington, D.C., news conference, irate black tea partiers also ripped the NAACP for drafting a resolution condemning racism within the Tea Party and even accused Democrats of being slavemasters.
“Democrats have re-enslaved America,” said Kevin Jackson, president of the Black Conservative Coalition. He said Tea Party activists will shrink the size of government and construct another Emancipation Proclamation, the document that President Abraham Lincoln signed that effectively ended slavery.
“This time, even the white folks get freed,” said Jackson, who also accused Obama of viewing fellow blacks as “mongrels.”
No black conservative forum would be complete without hearing from the bombastic Alan Keyes. Keyes unsuccessfully ran against Obama in 2004 in Illinois for the U.S. Senate. He said the president “got elected on a virulent form of racism” by exploiting his race during the 2008 campaign. –terry shropshire
