“In what year did the Congress gain the right to prohibit the migration of persons to the states? The power of granting patents, that is, of securing to inventors the exclusive rights to discoveries, is given to the Congress for the purpose of? If a person charged with treason denies his guilt, how many persons must testify against him before he can be convicted?”

Those are just a few of the questions voter registration literacy tests of Alabama imposed on their black citizens to prevent them from voting. Of course, before one could even begin to mark the answers, one would first have to get pass the nooses, lynch mobs, police batons, racial epithets, and attack dogs waiting impatiently at the precinct entrance; and God forbid one lose their pencil by the time they had limped their way into the sanctity of the blue curtain.

There is no question that the troubling opening remarks of Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO) at the Tea Party Convention set this country back a good 46 years. But leave it to the age of Obama to expose how far we’ve really come with race relations.

The trouble is, Tancredo knew exactly who his audience was—a crowd of overwhelmingly white and homogenous nativists, angrily occupying the conservative fringes of the political spectrum. And he knew they would all reward his remarks with pitch fork praise and shameless applause.

No doubt we heard the kind of reckless and insensitive language of a congressman with nothing to lose—politically or morally. And as racist as it was of Tancredo to suggest that this country should reinstate civic literacy exams as pre-requisites for voting, it was just as equally racist of the audience to erupt in applause, and no less racist of those who didn’t applaud but who chose to remain seated and silent, lacking the moral fortitude to demand their money back.

Yes, they are just as guilty as all those who in 1956 remained seated and silent in diners that would not serve African-Americans; or those who in 1952 sat quietly in the front seats of the buses in Montgomery; or those who in 1949 took quiet advantage of admission to Ole Miss’ and University of Georgia.

Those who would continue to align themselves with a movement glad to sit itself front and center before leaderless cowardice, preaching a return to secession and voter disenfranchisement cannot rinse themselves of the racist implication, no matter how hard they scrub.

Mere Tea Party tokens like Alan Keyes and Angela McGlowan do not legitimate the demystifying bigotry onto which the Tea Party Movement spreads its platform. And white members of this movement cannot hide behind the skin color of tokens such as these, and then re-emerge before the public sphere with amnesia masked as a question mark across their gasping lips, as if they had been racially naïve all along.

No doubt Tancredo’s remarks have symbolically shamed a Congress that until February 5th couldn’t be more shameful—a body of representatives too collectively partisan and stubborn to legislate on behalf of the public interest.

With not one congressional caucus publicly demanding his admonishment or resignation, and a Republican Party too politically abandoned to sever their Tea Party ties, happy Black History month.

Popularity: 2% [?]