Tea Party Member Takes Aim At NAACP
The following is a statement from Joseph Farah, founder, editor, and CEO of WorldNetDaily:
WASHINGTON - I take it personally when someone accuses me or any movement or organization of which I am a part of racism.
That's what the NAACP did last week when it passed a resolution at its national convention denouncing the tea-party movement as racist.
Yesterday in my column on this travesty, I took the NAACP's bait.
As the author of "The Tea Party Manifesto," as they guy who predicted the birth of the tea-party movement in 2008 as a direct response to the election of Barack Obama and as a person who has addressed tea-party rallies and conferences across this country, I did what the tea party couldn't do for itself because of its decentralized leadership and grass-roots nature.
I repudiated racism on behalf of the tea-party movement.
I did so because I believe I understand the hearts, minds and souls of the millions of Americans who have become politically engaged in the last 18 months under the banner of tea-party activism.
Here's what I said: "The tea-party movement seeks to promote the proper role of government in America – namely as the protector of all peoples' individual, God-given, inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, without regard to race, color or creed."
I also wrote without equivocation: "If anyone hates other people and wishes them ill because of the color of their skin, that person deserves to be vilified and berated."
I believe those statements absolutely represent the convictions of 99.99999999 percent of tea-party activists – and I have personally had the pleasure of meeting hundreds of them from around the country.
Now I want to ask Ben Jealous, chairman of the NAACP, if he will repudiate ugly, hateful racism – especially official, institutionalized racism – on behalf of his organization.
We learned recently that the Justice Department of the United States, presided over by Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, dropped prosecution of members of the New Black Panther Party, an overtly racist and anti-Semitic organization, who were videotaped attempting to intimidate white voters at a polling place.
The prosecutor in that case has come forward and offered sworn testimony under oath that he was ordered to drop the case because the defendants were black and the victims were white. He further stated that this kind of racist attitude is "pervasive" throughout the Justice Department under the leadership of Holder and Obama.
Yet, the watchdogs of racism in America at the NAACP have remained silent about this accusation racial injustice and institutionalized bigotry in high places.
So I want to call out Ben Jealous and the NAACP.
Will you call for a full and complete and impartial investigation of the Justice Department's actions and inactions in the New Black Panther Party case?
If not, why not?
Will you repudiate racism of all kinds in America, including the most overt and institutionalized kind when government enforces racial preferences in hiring, firing, college enrollments and awarding of contracts?
If not, why not?
Will you state as clearly as Martin Luther King Jr., the father of the modern civil rights movement in America, did that our goal as a nation should be to create a society in which all of us are judged, not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character?
If not, why not?
Having been smeared with the broad brush of racism because of my association with the tea-party movement, I leap at the opportunity to denounce bigotry and hate in all of its insidious forms.
Will Ben Jealous and the NAACP do the same?
Will they rebuke, repudiate and fight racism across the board?
Will they condemn the actions and hateful rhetoric of the New Black Panther Party without equivocation?
Will they demand an impartial investigation of the accusation that racism is "pervasive" at the U.S. Justice Department?
And one last question: If Jealous and the NAACP are not forthcoming with these statements, will it be fair to characterize them as racist?
If not, why not?
Read More: http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=181045
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joseph Farah – founder, editor, and CEO of WorldNetDaily, the world's leading independent Internet news source – joined Sarah Palin as one of two nationally televised keynote speakers at the first national Tea Party Convention in Nashville in February. He is scheduled to make a repeat performance at the second national Tea Party Convention in Las Vegas in July. His 2003 bestseller, Taking America Back, prophesied the movement today known as "the tea party." The former daily newspaper editor has authored, co-authored, or collaborated on more than a dozen books, including Rush Limbaugh's See, Told You So.
