The Tea Party is All About Race...or is it?

Having taken some interest in the tea party movement myself (from a social psychological perspective), I found the argument above to be quite intriguing. I do not think that race can be used as the ubiquitous answer to the tea party movement, but I do feel it is a straw among straws that broke the proverbial camel's back.

Part of the reason the tea party movement has become such a powerful force is the pervading idea that our country is at some sort of symbolic risk or danger. The issue of partisanship politics which is causing cavernous rift between Republicans and Democrats and Liberals and Conservatives accentuates this perceived danger. We have every strengthening group boundaries that put the "other side" into a position suitable for derogation. We see almost every day someone who has taken a pot shot at someone across the aisle for being either a Conservative obstructionist or a Liberal pansy. In this current climate with so much at stake including wars abroad, an unemployment crisis, and health care reform at the fore, the stress and anxiety caused by these issues and others legitimizes the use of any available cognitive strategies which can serve a sense making and/or palliative function. Such strategies include but are not limited to things like intergroup biases, system justification, mental rigidity, punitiveness towards deviants, and scapegoating. Prejudice and stereotyping is also known to occur in tumultuous times.

So why then does race rise to the mind of the author. Well because the little and loud complaints of the current president have been regarding his perceived threat to America. While he was campaigning, the fact that he had "exotic" heritage made it easy to key in on his background as untrustworthy. His opponents made use of his citizenship, his pastor, his name, all in the attempt to paint him as a threat to the safety of the country. Now that he's president, though, race is not the issue. Opponents now make use of politically threatening rhetoric like fascist and socialist, totalitarian, dictatorship, etc. to once again raise the issue of threat to safety and security. Use of race in arguments, to me, is not a bigoted response, so much as it is, a fear based response. Obama's election signaled a very progressive change in U.S. history, and a number of the policies he is suggesting are very progressive. A chief characteristic of the right-wing in this country, a predominant majority of the tea party, is their aversion to social change. In my estimation, race is the glaring branch many grab in order to better state their case of danger. If Hillary Clinton were president, it would be the sex difference. If it were John Edwards it would be his infidelity as it was with Bill Clinton.

The reason why it reeks of racial hatred right now is because of the threat to status quo that Obama has espoused both through his own history and through his proposed policies. The tea party movement, a populist, grassroots movement, supported by a strong undercurrent of fear and anxiety, feeds on this threat and scorns it whatever way it can. The thing that differentiates the tea party from other comparable groups is its fear of change, not race.