A speaker at a conference on white privilege, partially funded by taxpayers, let loose a torrent of mind-boggling vitriol against Tea Party members — in front of a mostly white audience.
Here are some quotes from Leonard Zeskind, who hosted a session titled “The Denial of White Privilege, the Tea Party Movement and the Building of Our Response,” via the Daily Caller:
“All this business about government and ‘constitutional’ is a smokescreen that’s really all about, ‘I want this country back for me.’ And ‘me’ meaning ‘white people,’” Zeskind told an overflow conference room crowd.
“We consider the tea party a post-Cold War nationalist group,” he went on to explain. Tea party aficionados “have an internal life around gun rallies” and “around constitutional study groups.”
“I don’t think I have to convince you that they have sort of a generic racism,” Zeskind informed the audience, to many approving nods. He also used the term “bald-faced racists” to describe the tea party. (And the term “screw-loosers.”)
After noting that tea party supporters do not like to be called racists, the leftist activist suggested that tea party advocates mostly don’t like President Barack Obama because Obama “broke the white monopoly on the presidency.”
“Tea partiers are not overly concerned about the economy,” he confidently asserted.
[…]
Zeskind said he doesn’t know “how people could do it” but compared black people who support limited government and gun rights to “Jewish kluxers.”
Zeskind repeatedly referred to black people as “black folks.” He bizarrely suggested that “black folks” didn’t know about the tea party movement when it began because it wasn’t a topic of discussion “at the barber shop.”
Zeskind also adamantly suggested that there are “no gay people in the tea party,” and that constitutional government and a free-market economy cannot coexist.
It’s useless to list everything that Zeskind got wrong. It’s far easier to list what he got right: nothing.
But a couple of rebuts to his shockingly ignorant rant should be given. There are many black Americans in the Tea Party — in fact, there are many black conservatives. Just as Rep. Mia Love or Senator Tim Scott. Or Ben Carson. Or Colonel Allen West. And the idea that the Tea Party doesn’t care about the economy is about as ludicrous as it gets.
You would think that if you’re going to take the stage at a public forum you might read a little bit about the target of your hate. Zeskind’s opinionated, fact-free hyperventilating against the Tea Party is an example of the “scholarship” associated with this relatively new academic discipline. And to think that tax dollars went to support this lunacy.
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