The Tea Party and Racism

Judy Thomas at the Kansas City Star does some actual investigative reporting on the tea party and racism, and I think presents a pretty thorough outline of the discussion. Keep in mind as you read the article that the Council of Conservative Citizens discussed in this article is a known white supremacist group whose website was linked to by St. Louis tea party blogger Gateway Pundit on more than one occasion.

Here's how they were described in the article:

The Council of Conservative Citizens, a St. Louis-based group that promotes the preservation of the white race, has sponsored its own tea parties in some Southern states.

The council’s website has referred to blacks as “a retrograde species of humanity” and said non-white immigration would turn the country into a “slimy brown mass of glop.”

And here's a screenshot of Gateway Pundit linking to them:


He later linked to a video on the White Supremacist website claiming, with no evidence whatsoever, that black children (Hoft called them "thugs") assaulted a white child on a school bus. Furthermore, he kept his link up even after his own commenters complained that it was to a supremacist site.

Keep that in mind as the tea party is whining about the suggestion that there are elements of racism in their group.