A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
It was like pulling teeth, but Tea Party star Rand Paul finally blurted out his core, racist ideology in front of national TV cameras. Property rights trump Black rights, every time. "White supremacy is the connective link that holds the 'Tea Party' together - that, and relentless media coverage."
Rand Paul Tells On Self and Fellow Tea Partyers
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
"White people in the aggregate will try to preserve the essential elements of a White Man's Country in perpetuity unless the state intervenes."
Finally, a moment of clarity in American politics! Rand Paul, the Tea Party champion and winner of the Republican senatorial nomination from Kentucky, thinks business owners have the inalienable right to refuse service to Black people. It only took a few minutes for MSNBC's liberal-minded Rachel Maddow to pry the truth out of Paul - to make him elocute his racist beliefs before a national audience. What an idiot, say pundits of the left and right. If only Rand Paul had stuck with the code words that respectable white Republicans and Democrats deploy to sanitize an essentially racist American political conversation, he would still be the media's fair-haired boy. Instead, he's now the "Mad Hatter" - for blurting out on Maddow's show beliefs he and his Texas congressman father, Ron Paul, have always held, and which have served both men well in the white nationalist movement called the Tea Party.
Father and son Paul have never made a secret of their bedrock belief that the right to do whatever one wants with one's private property is the fountainhead of their of liberty. It is an idea fundamentally at odds with evolving human values, an obstacle to the advance of civilization, itself - but one that resonates deeply among whites who pine for the days when Blacks were the collective property of the white citizenry. "Our niggras," as the white folks used to say.
"Property rights is a legal construct to preserve what's left of a White Man's Country."
Just as "states' rights" was polite political cover for slavery and, later, legal segregation, so is property rights the legal construct to conserve what's left of a White Man's Country. That's what the Tea Party's kind of "conservatism" is all about. White supremacy is the connective link that holds the "Tea Party" together - that, and relentless media coverage.
Fox News anchor John Stossel last week expanded on Rand Paul's racist opening, to declare that elements of the 1964 Civil Rights Act should be repealed. Activists at the Internet-based Color of Change are calling for Stossel's head, or woe be unto Fox News - as if Fox does not thrive in a racist environment. Color of Change says, correctly, that "market forces," left to their own devices, would have perpetuated Jim Crow segregation, since whites overwhelmingly preferred to shop and travel and dine in white-only environments. Which is to say, that white people in the aggregate will try to preserve the essential elements of a White Man's Country in perpetuity unless the state intervenes. The market is responding to a racist demand.
There is a significant demand among white Americans to rid their lives of Black people. That's why Blacks are more segregated in housing and schooling than 40 years ago, and why about half of U.S. prison inmates are Black. Whites demand that it be so, in the economic and political marketplace.
Rand Paul seems to be sorry that he threw his Tea Party mob too much red meat. He says he can live with the Civil Rights Act, despite principled objections. And I'm sure he can. Money can still buy distance from all but a few Black people. The White Man's Country is still a going concern.
For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford. On the web, go to www.BlackAgendaReport.com.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
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Danny Haiphong is a long time Black Agenda Report contributing editor. He is now the host of his own Youtube channel.
Orion Meadows is a non-violence trainer with Institute for Nonviolence Chicago.
Michael Li is Senior Counsel in the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice.
