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Cord Jefferson: Is the Tea Party the New Black Panther Party?

[Cord Jefferson is a staff writer for The Root.]

They were armed to the teeth. They were mad. They gathered at public buildings, guns tucked into their waistlines, demanding limited governmental authority and the right to self-determination. They believed the Democratic White House to be an untrustworthy, imperialistic power, one that "robbed" them under spurious circumstances. They were wary of the "Zionist media," and they loved to quote at length from America's founding documents, specifically violent, revolutionary passages like, "it is their duty, to throw off [an abusive] Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security." They were members of one of the most fringe political organizations in modern American history.

They were the Black Panthers. Had you anticipated Tea Partiers?

As the Tea Party movement continues its steady ascent toward the mainstream, it has also begun filling out its ranks with a small but vocal cadre of African Americans. To many outsiders, this is unconscionable; how could any person of color align himself with a group whose protest signs frequently depict President Obama morphed into a primate? And yet in some ways, the coupling makes perfect sense.

In January, political philosopher Noam Chomsky said in an interview about the Tea Party, "These are people with real grievances. For the past 30 years of neo-liberalism, wages for the majority have stagnated; benefits, which were never very great, have declined; working hours have shot way up; they've gone way into debt to try and preserve the consumerist lifestyle that's been rammed down their throats by the advertising industry. They're in bad shape -- not Third World-style bad shape -- but bad shape by the standards of a rich industrial country." Assuming that the Tea Party is not an inherently racist entity, as every black Tea Partier says it isn't, is it so hard to imagine that African Americans might be attracted to a group whose underlying gripe is a broken government that doesn't accurately represent its people?...

To be sure, reconciling most of the Marxist underpinnings of the long-defunct Black Panthers with the laissez faire philosophy of the Tea Party is impossible. It's important to note, however, that the Panthers' idea of socialism was very much one of limited government intervention, at least when they were talking federally. Consider their demand that every black prisoner be released, citing the "racist" government's unfit justice system. Consider their demand for a U.N.-supervised plebiscite concerning the possibility of African-American secession (secession is also a popular Tea Party talking point). Consider Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver's declaration that "the American flag and the American eagle are the true symbols of fascism" (Tea Partiers believe the U.S. government to be fascist, too)....
Read entire article at The Root