Racism

The tea party is made up of different groups and their organization is broken up among those different groups. You don't have leaders in the tea parties, only organizers, and each member can volunteer to be an organizer. How can the tea party come out against racism within their group, if it is just an assembly of people? Some may not even be registered members of the tea party but just show up at the rally. All large groups have some small elements of racism because racism exists among all ethnicities.

Although they generally lean conservative, the passionate activists who constitute the tea party phenomenon are for the most part members of a broad-based, grass-roots movement that has no formal leaders, political platform or consistent ideology. Yet what unites tea party supporters seems clear enough: a concern that government has grown too large and is spending too much; a fear of saddling future generations with crippling public debt; and a deep unease over a sense that the country is headed in the wrong direction.

About two weeks ago, I was waiting in a "Seven items or fewer" line at Wegmans in Hunt Valley. The woman in front of me had 18 separate items and a variety of difficulties in finding the money in her purse to pay for them. She was waited on for more than seven minutes. After she was finished paying, I said to the person at the register, "Do you all not discourage people who have so many items from using this line? It really is bad policy."

T he recent firing of an adjunct art instructor by Towson University because the instructor used a racial slur raises many important issues related to race and the power of language, political correctness, and the over-reliance by state universities and state legislators on adjunct employees. Less obvious, but more important, are problems that this incident demonstrates in the discussion of race in our country. First, focusing on the use of a racial slur - in this case, the notorious "N-word" - reinforces the narrow practice of thinking about racial justice only in terms of the treatment of individuals rather than the inequalities in outcomes between racial groups.

M aryland State Police have been under considerable scrutiny over matters of race relations over the years. Racial profiling in traffic stops is just one example. Despite the agency's decision to abandon the practice, allegations of "driving while black" incidents still pop up regularly. Just last month, the state agency was ordered by the Maryland Court of Special Appeals to turn over to the NAACP records showing how troopers have dealt internally with allegations of racial profiling.

If the tea party movement wanted to shake its image as the angriest bastion for the lunatic right -- with heavy emphasis on the lunatic part -- last weekend's first-ever National Tea Party Convention in Nashville did not help. Even more than Sarah Palin's appearance, what continues to resonate with the general public, post-convention, is kick-off speaker Tom Tancredo's racist attacks and his endorsement of a civics and literacy test for voters. That the former congressman from Colorado is an anti-immigrant blowhard should not surprise anyone who caught his ugly, voter-rejected act during the Republican presidential primaries two years ago. But that tea party leaders chose not to condemn his speech in Nashville suggests their ideologies are closely attuned -- much to their shame.

Racism is racism, even from the NAACP I am astonished that the Maryland NAACP is calling for a change in the state constitution because the governor might appoint a "white or Republican leader" ("Call for help on mayor," Oct. 13). That is a racist statement if I ever heard one. If the state GOP came out and said they wanted to change the constitution because an African-American or Democrat might be appointed, they would be lambasted in the media and their leader hounded into resigning.

Former President Jimmy Carter voiced what a lot of President Barack Obama's supporters have been thinking recently: that an underlying factor in the passionate opposition in some quarters to Mr. Obama's policies has something to do with his race. They point to the diffuse anger of "tea party" protesters and others, who go beyond opposing particular policies and passionately decry a country they say they don't recognize anymore. President Carter said he believes that "an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man."