Written by Winston P. Nagan   

Finally, a Tea Party leader has confessed the truth of the Tea Party. The Tea Party fears race. They believe that the black President of the US dislikes them. More than that, they believe that the party he represents really despises what they stand for. And what do they stand for? They stand for the fear of the majority white members of the Tea Party. That fear is that the diversity of America does not like white America. Hence, white America has something to fear from American diversity. The President and the Democratic Party are very representative of this demographic diversity.
One of the central consequences of the issue of race in the United States is that it utilizes the politics of fear. The politics of fear may take many forms, depending upon how it may be used to mobilize electoral support. For example, white fears have often been stoked by political factions playing the crime card. The unstated assumption is that crime is largely generated by blacks and therefore, black crime is something white victims must fear. Another version of this is that if you are against capital punishment, you are for crime. If you are for crime, you are for black criminals and against their victims, namely whites. If you are against drugs, you are simply part of the war against black or Hispanic drug dealers. Hence, the War on Drugs is a war also vested with racial elements. The racial factor has certainly permeated modern American politics. When it was clear that the majority of the electorate was white, it was then easy to talk about a moral majority, implying that the rest were simply an aggregate of immoral types.
In 2008, the comfortable identification amongst some of the electorate with a white moral majority was undermined when whites, and many others, elected a black President. It did not matter that this black President was the epitome of the values of most white Americans. In fact, he was as American as can be imagined. However, the idea in the Tea Party faction of a black leader vested with the prestige of the title President of the United States was a matter that was psychologically indigestible. It sent shockwaves through the American Right Wing. They have still not recovered. Their leaders in Congress stated quite bluntly that the only thing they had to do in politics now was to make sure that he was a one-term President. That was succeeded by a second shock. He won a second term. Having to swallow this bitter pill twice has only amplified the level of anger in this splinter of the Republicans, the Tea Party.
I have considered for some time what exactly it is that the Tea Party stands for, and at every turn I come back to the same theme. The Tea Party, or large numbers of them, are essentially moved by racism. In short, a small constituency of our countrymen remain un-reconstructed racists and nothing will change their attitudes. Their racism has been reinforced by their absolute antagonism of a black President. In fact, when the President adopts a Republican idea, they immediately repudiate their own ideas. Race even trumps policy.
Now, the racial antagonism of the Tea Party has drifted in the direction of immigration. This essentially means that the concept of an ‘other’ is now being applied to Hispanics and Hispanic Americans. More than that, the antagonism to the other is focused on child refugees crossing the border. The protests have a cruel edge to them, almost in defiance of all the humanistic values that American culture has represented. The cruel targeting of children represents the heartless fear encompassed by the disease of racism.
It now becomes clearer that the fanatical opposition to Obamacare is because the beneficiaries are largely black and other minorities. Minimum wage reform is perceived as a benefit for blacks and Hispanics and, therefore, it is opposed. Unemployment insurance is perceived to be a benefit to blacks and Hispanics and is also opposed. And thus it continues, with one exception, the war on women. The war on women is on women of all races and therefore the question is: ‘what is distinctive and moves the psychology of the war on women?’ I suspect that the war on women is really targeting the idea of the thinking woman, the woman who can make choices. Such a woman may strike fear in the hearts of insecure white males. The thinking American woman is also, therefore, an ‘other’, a target of irrational discrimination based fear.
And now we come to Congressman Mo Brooks. Congressman Brooks has now confessed on behalf of all of his Tea Party pals that he has a great fear of racism. He fears that he will be the victim. I suspect that rooted in this fear is guilt. It is his own racism that he fears may draw a form of crude payback. In truth, no minority thinks of him as a symbol of fear, rather he comes off as a symbol of pitiable humanity. If he represents manhood in the Tea Party, then the Tea Party stands for the most pitiable version of American manhood. Nancy Pelosi should sponsor legislation to provide free psychological counseling to all the Mo Brooks’ in Congress to reassure them that they have nothing to fear in the Nation’s Capitol but their own dark shadows.