The racist and homophobic, and sometimes violent, explosion by the almost all white teabaggers seems to have accelerated, according to this McClatchy newspapers story:
Demonstrators outside the U.S. Capitol, angry over the proposed health care bill, shouted “nigger” Saturday at U.S. Rep. John Lewis, a Georgia congressman and civil rights icon who was nearly beaten to death during an Alabama march in the 1960s…. Lewis said he was leaving the Cannon office building to walk to the Capitol to vote when protesters shouted “Kill the bill, kill the bill,” Lewis said. … A colleague who was accompanying Lewis said people in the crowd responded by saying “Kill the bill, then the N-word.” . . . “It was a chorus,” Cleaver said. “In a way, I feel sorry for those people who are doing this nasty stuff – they’re being whipped up. I decided I wouldn’t be angry with any of them.” Cleaver’s office said later in a statement that he’d also been spat upon and that Capitol Police had arrested his assailant.
Gay members are also being attacked:
Protesters also used a slur as they confronted Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., an openly gay member of Congress. … Frank said the crowd consisted of a couple of hundred of people and that they referred to him as ‘homo.’ A writer for The Huffington Post said the protesters called Frank a “faggot.”
The fact that so much of this racist, homophobic, and/or violent rhetoric and action has easily take place in and around the Capitol building suggests how pro-conservative so much of the leadership of this country has become. Where is the speaking out against this extremist activity by conservatives of integrity? Will we see assaults on members of congress soon from these extremist groups?
Indeed, it is also striking how seldom the whiteness of these extremist movements is seriously analyzed in the mainstream media. Whites usually seem to be let off the hook when they are operating out of extreme versions of the white racial frame and/or the extreme anti-government frame. I feel sure that if they were black Americans or other Americans of color, that reality would be centered in a good many stories. What do you think?
These attacks are seldom analyzed in the media because whites control the media. So, it’s not surprising that they would not go in depth with the tea party movements.
Also, if this had been blacks doing the same thing to white politicians, the news media will be riding it and distorting it to strengthen negative stereotypes. They would convey it as a riot and put a serious “spin” on the story. This is why I hate the news. They present blacks in a negative light almost all the time.
As far as the homophobia going on it’s just as sad as well. They see gays as threats almost in the same light as they see blacks.
I tell ya. Sometimes I wonder how long this kind of reality will last.
Thanks, Will … It is hard to watch this country getting more reactionary in so many areas instead of more progressive, which seems to be in fewer areas.
We move a step forward, then backward. and the elite white straight men seem to stay in control most of the time, no matter what…. Even the health care bill is a victory in some ways for ordinary folks, but also great for the white male run insurance companies and drug companies…..
and the mainstream media keep mostly being lapdogs for the class, racial , and gender elites…
Even in-depth feature articles in publications on the left are not seeing beyond their own white racial framing. For example, in last month’s story in Mother Jones “Oath Keepers and the Age of Treason” the author is left fuzzy (and one might argue somewhat won over by her article’s subjects) by her refusal to probe into the potentially unifying and underlying rationale of these groups: white supremacy.
http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/03/oath-keepers
What do you think of this article, Joe?
-Kate