The Tea Party Wears White hoods and White Sheets

When we were kids walking down railroad, tracks we would tell stories about Hobo Joe a train-riding vagabond who would get little children. None of us ever saw Hobo Joe but just the invoking of his name struck fear in our hearts. “Hobo Joe is going to get you,” we would say.

I don’t remember where we heard of Hobo Joe but he was real in our imaginations. So real that many days we ran to school across those train tracks so to avoid capture.

Nevertheless, Hobo Joe was not real. He was just a figment of our childhood imagination.

Currently to hear some Congressional leaders tell it the Tea Parties are racists and bigoted groups that enjoy picnic lunches at local lynching. On Congress’ recent summer break, many Black Congressman and woman went back to their home districts and held town hall meetings. These men and women made hateful, untrue and outrageous claims against the tea parties. Moreover, much like my childhood days these grown Congressional leaders began to spin imaginary yarns about fictional Neo White hood Klansman, “The Tea Party.”

According to these representatives, the Tea Party is going to “Get Black People” and do all sorts of unsavory things to them. The Tea Party is going to reenact “Jim Crow” the Tea Party is going to Lynch Black People, the Tea Party is going to war with president Barry Hussein Soetoro. And on and on the silly nonsense goes. (see 4:10min video)



You’d think that the Tea Party was Hobo Joe and that it was going to steal the children out of the Black community let some of those Black leaders tell it.

Listen on this side of “Jim Crow” one would think that Black people would have better things to do than meet and conjure up the spirits of slavery, racial discrimination and bigotry past.

But no Representative of the U.S. Congress are at home in their districts inventing a hallucinatory enemy, which they can hate.

I hate to disappoint those Blacks who are prone to hysterics but you won't have to flee to the underground railway, you won’t be forced back into the cotton fields, you won’t be lynch and the Tea Party definitely doesn’t ride horses dressed in White hoods and White sheets. Those imagines are but figments of the imaginations of members of the Congressional Black Caucus.

One thing I discovered when I grew up, Hobo Joe was not real. Likewise, It’s time that Black leaders grown up. And stop creating bogeymen in order to scare other Black people.

The World is a very complex and complicated place in which to live without creating unnecessary stupid and frivolous hatred.

I can think of ten things more frightening to the Black community than the Tea Party will ever be. For example 1. chronic unemployment reaching as high of 40% among Black males.

2. A disproportionate number of Black men incarcerated. 3. Black women disproportionately highly affected by HIV because black men engage in homosexual acts in prison and when release infect their women. 4. Black student’s achievement gap is ever widening in school. 5. A wide Black wages and earning gap. 6. Low numbers of Black males attending College. 7. Black on Black crime. 8. The Broken Black family unit. 9. Black children are more likely to live in poverty. 10. And finally, Blacks hooked on drugs and alcohol.

The Tea Party wasn’t even around when this type of destruction began among Black people. However the Democrat party was. And it might surprise some Black who are lifelong Democrats that it was the Democrat Party fought to keep Blacks slaves. What may also surprise you is that the Republican Party was formed to fight against the enslavement of Black people.

The next time a Black Democrat Congressman or woman stands up and says that The Tea Party wants to take Blacks back to slavery, someone ought to jump up and say, ‘ Blacks are already on the Democrat plantation they cannot go any further back than what they already are!”

Just remember the Democrat Party is the Party of the Klu Klux Klan and Blacks who are Democrats are suffering from Stockholm syndrome.