Monday, October 25, 2010

More About the Tea Party and Racism

Kevin Drum points out another finding from the Washington Post study of the Tea Party: 11 percent of members contacted admitted that Obama's race, er, colored their outlook on him. Drum observes: "The taboos against admitting that race makes a difference are pretty strong, and if 11% of the tea party groups were willing to admit this in writing, it suggests that probably at least a quarter of them have similarly overt views. Maybe more. That's a helluva lot." Indeed. Wonder if this will change Jason Riley's mind about anything.

2 comments:

Ben Boychuk said...

"... and if 11% of the tea party groups were willing to admit this in writing, it suggests that probably at least a quarter of them have similarly overt views..."

At least a quarter. Or maybe half. Hell, could be 110 percent. It's fun to speculate.

Joel said...

Unfortunate that Drum plucked a number out of thin air like that, but on the other hand he's right about one thing: self-reported racism tends to indicate more widespread racism. I won't quantify it, and I won't even say that racism is the dominant force behind the Tea Party movement - that's sore loserdom! - but it's not insignificant, either.