July 16, 2010 | Read Time: 1 minute
The NAACP resolution condemning racist behavior among members of the Tea Party movement is drawing lots of attention. Is the strategy a good one?
Writing on an Atlantic blog, Dave Weigel, a journalist and political commentator, calls the NAACP resolution “headline-hungry act” and says he thinks it backfired.
Slate writer John Dickerson, in a podcast, asks whether the Tea Party should be held responsible for the repugnant behavior of what might be just a handful of individuals. Writing on a Los Angeles Times blog, Michael McGough says that asking the Tea Party to denounce actions by some of its devotees “implies the extremists/bigots/bombers are a sufficiently significant component of the organization that such a gesture is necessary.”
Atlantic writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, however, defends the NAACP’s resolution. He reviews statements and actions by Tea Party members and supporters and says he finds the NAACP statement justified.
He also notes the Tea Party’s response to the NAACP memo. A number of Tea Party leaders have said that it’s the NAACP supporters, not Tea Party activists, who are bigoted. Mark Williams, a national spokesman for the Tea Party Express, calls the NAACP “professional race-baiters,” reports NPR.
The St. Louis Tea Party also drafted its own statement calling the NAACP “bigoted,” and asked the Internal Revenue Service to reconsider the nonprofit group’s tax-exempt status, reports Fox News.
Mr. Coates says he often questions the relevance of the NAACP, but this moment has made him realize he’s wrong.
What do you think of the NAACP’s resolution? Has the group reaffirmed its relevance or gone too far?
— Caroline Preston
