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Tea Party Racists And The Lynching of President Obama

For OpEdNews: Jack Blackshear - Writer

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What a day it was back in Waco, Texas on May 5th 1916! A beautiful spring day
and folks were anxious to be outside a good day to lynch some N-word.
Let's say you were looking through a trunk in the attic and came across this photo. How
would you know what held the attention of the crowd that day? It could be anything
politician making a speech, circus in town, who knows.

The heinous torture and murder of a man would not naturally spring to mind. But that is
exactly what these well dressed citizens of Waco were watching that day, and, by their
presence, empowering. I wonder if the mother of the victim managed to get a view the
gallows from some hiding place out of sight of the mob. If she did, what went through her
mind as she watched the rope tighten and saw the look of horror on her son's face the
second before his neck snapped? Did she think of the baby she suckled, remember the little
boy she read to we will never know.

With only a wardrobe change and the addition of a hundred or so hateful signs this crowd
could be transformed into a Tea Party rally. Of course their victim is not hanging from a
rope. But the only metaphor for their actions is a modern day lynching. Both crowds, old
and new, are conservative, church going people and sure of their superiority.
This is an early photo of Sarah Palin's Real Americans. Little has changed in the last century
except that the N-word on the gallows is now the President of the United States. It is
tempting for white Americans to show pride at how far African Americans have come. "Only
in America", you might say. But for a large minority of Americans, it is always a good day to
lynch a N-word.

Some 3,446 African Americans were lynched between 1882 and 1933 by mobs made up of
people looking very much like those you see in the photo. This is not the final tally. There
were certainly many more carried out under cover of darkness in secluded places and down
dirt roads now lost from memory.

When the Civil Rights Movement came along, the lynch mobs made a comeback.
African Americans marched for their rights and endured threatening crowds of racists who
showered them with bricks, drenched them with fire hoses and attacked them with dogs.
But they persevered and the angry mobs once more faded into history.
Now, with the election of Barack Obama, the horrors of the past are coming back. The
culprits are ultra-conservative organizations backed by corporate wealth and a compliant
news media. They have been so successful in creating a purpose built organization in the
Tea Party that rallies all over the country are now common place. All of them are attended
by angry mobs whose sole goal is to demonize President Obama. The participants carry
signs, not rope, but their aim is still the same to do the maximum damage they can get
away with.

For many Americans, the fear of blacks in positions of power is normally tucked away in a
corner of their minds seldom visited. But when Barack Obama came along as a candidate
for President, that fear began to stir. At first it just lay there with its eyes open; then, when
Obama was elected, it stood up and became a part of their everyday lives.

Right wing leaders like Dick Army were crouching in the shadows, waiting to turn
this fear into hatred and meld it into the Tea Party.

Just consider their luck. The country was in a historically bad recession and people were
looking for someone to blame. The first African American had just been elected president
presenting opportunities to exploit racism. Right wing ideologues like the Koch brothers
were worried about their profits and willing to bankroll any plan to stop Obama's agenda.
Front organizations like Freedom Works and Americans for Prosperity stepped in with
organizational skills and turned the mob loose in the summer of 2009. Town hall meetings
were broken up and speakers intimidated, reminiscent of the bully boy tactics of the Nazis
before the Second World War.

Tea Party warriors were heady with victory and wanted more, but none of it would
have been possible without help from Limbaugh, Beck and O'Reilly. In 1871 the Ku
Klux Klan delivered hatred in person, today Fox and Rush do it over the airwaves.

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Jack Blackshear is a retired international oil executive who strongly supports President
Obama and Progressive causes. During his 37 year career, he lived in Libya, Mozambique,
South Africa, Angola, Japan, Malaysia and Kurdistan; experiences he (more...)

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