Imagine if the Tea Party was Black - Tim Wise

Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition. And imagine that some of these
protesters —the black protesters — spoke of the need for political revolution, and possibly even armed conflict in the event that laws they didn’t like were
enforced by the government? Would these protester — these black protesters with guns — be seen as brave defenders of the Second Amendment, or would they be viewed by most whites as a danger to the republic? What if they were Arab-Americans? Because, after all, that’s what happened recently when white gun enthusiasts descended upon the nation’s capital, arms in hand, and verbally announced their readiness to make war on the country’s political leaders if the need arose.

Read the whole piece at Ephphatha Poetry.

I do think that the post is slightly off the mark in one area. While clearly the far right forces driving the Tea Party movement are entirely devoted to defending the privilege of wealthy whites, the mass of Tea Party protesters are the manipulated working class and underclass whites who have only ever had limited access to the white privilege they are unwittingly defending. In that respect, the average Tea Party dufous is more to be pitied than feared. They have been tricked into trying to protect a system which preys on them every bit as much as it preys on non-whites.