The NAACP statement on the Tea Party

There has been a lot of back and forth on the NAACP statment that I simply haven't engaged in. Some interesting exchanges have gone on on the blogs of The Atlantic that I thought were worth highlighting, specifically some from Ta-Nehisi Coates, here and here. Coates also has a post here titled "Why Black Writers Tend Not to Shout", about how he and other black writers are usually very circumspect because their audiences are often largely white. So they equivocate and try not sound particularly pushy about issues like this. Coates notes that the NAACP's forthrightness on this point was a relief for black writers who typically try to avoid these confrontations. Factually, Coates sounds right on target on this. But I have to say I found it supremely ironic that of all people, Coates wrote this one. He can be very in-your-face in his own comment section, and very dismissive of commenters. I know from personal experience. I've only commented a handful of times before and he's gone into weird attack mode almost every single time, and not just towards me. Usually I comment on posts of his on the Civil War (he's a Civil War history buff). Those posts are his way or the highway - let me put it that way.

I know I can be blunt and I feel perfectly free to disagree strenuously with commenters on this blog too. But then again, I never claimed to be meek and mild, did I? :)

I like Coates's final post on this issue a lot. It is here. I left this in the comment section, which pretty much sums up my views on the NAACP statement on the Tea Party:

"I agree whole-heartedly.

There is a lot to criticize in critiques of the Tea Party movement that frame all Tea Partiers as racist, or that downplay the fact that it fundamentally is a small-government movement (however hypocritical, however poorly executed). The worst commentary on the Tea Party movement has been the commentary that blindly dismisses all of them as racists, and dismisses even the idea that they may be expressing genuine differences of opinion. That has been the worst sort of response.

But the NAACP has provided the best sort of response - the sort of response people should have been making all along, namely that

(1.) Elements of the Tea Party have incontrovertibly racist positions and motivations. This phraseology that they used - discussing "elements" was precisely the right note to strike.

(2.) That these elements should be denounced, not just because the NAACP doesn't like the Tea Party movement, but because if the Tea Party movement itself wants to have any relevance it can't continue to coexist with these elements.

If people confuse these points or fail to understand them, that's on their heads. I thought the NAACP statement was perfectly understandable and right on target.

Now, was it a tactical error? I suppose that depends on how you define it. If you think that ensuring we all communicate our views to each other in a marketplace of ideas is dependent on descending to the least common denominator of public discourse, that it is dependent on getting rid of all nuance and contingency and specificity, then yes, I suppose you might describe the NAACP statement as a "tactical error", because clearly there were willfully ignorant readers that missed the point.

But honestly, I don't want to participate in a public discourse like that, I don't think the NAACP wanted to either, and I applaud them for transcending it."