OK, CPAC event on racial tolerance has gone nuts, there are neo-Confederates asking why whites are being systematically disenfranchised
— Benjy Sarlin (@BenjySarlin) March 15, 2013
Shortly after Donald Trump called for more white immigrants at CPAC, a breakout panel entitled “Trump the Race Card: Are You Sick and Tired of Being Called a Racist and You Know You’re Not One?” began. According to the CPAC schedule, it was sponsored by the Tea Party Patriots. A recent study by IREHR confirms their nationalist bent:
Local groups affiliated with Tea Party Patriots that described themselves as militias included the Southeast Michigan Volunteer Militia, the Billy Hill Militia in Oklahoma, and the now-defunct North Coast Militia.[226] Other Tea Party Patriot-affiliated groups actively promoted militia formation. The Pocatello Tea Party, for example, promoted the “Ten Reasons Why We Need a State Militia.” Among the reasons given, “Cultural subversion, corruption, and dissolution,” (including “Pluralism” and “multiculturalism”), “invasion by illegal immigrants,” “Schemes aimed at overthrowing the Declaration of Independence,” and “a staggering burden of governmental financial liabilities.”[227] In Springfield, Missouri the 9-12 Tea Party group advised followers to join the SW Missouri militia.
Other signs of the militia impulse include the omnipresence of Richard Mack at Tea Party-related events--not just those of the Tea Party Patriots mentioned earlier.
This is the group who sponsored a panel intended to claim they're not racists.
Talking Points Memo's Benjy Sarlin was in the panel, live-tweeting.
A CPAC session sponsored by Tea Party Patriots and billed as a primer on teaching activists how to court black voters devolved into a shouting match as some attendees demanded justice for white voters and others shouted down a black woman who reacted in horror.
The session was led by K. Carl Smith, a black conservative who primarily urged attendees to deflect racism charges by calling themselves “Frederick Douglass Republicans.”
Disruptions began when he began accusing Democrats of being the party of the Confederacy — a common talking point on the right.
“I don’t care how much the KKK improved,” he said. “I’m not going to join the KKK. The Democratic Party founded the KKK.”
Lines like that drew shouts of praise from some attendees and murmurs of disapproval from one non-conservative black attendee, Kim Brown, a radio host and producer with Voice of Russia, a broadcasting service of the Russian government. Read on...
ThinkProgress was also there.
When asked by ThinkProgress if he’d accept a society where African-Americans were permanently subservient to whites, [Terry] said “I’d be fine with that.” He also claimed that African-Americans “should be allowed to vote in Africa,” and that “all the Tea Parties” were concerned with the same racial problems that he was.
At one point, a woman challenged him on the Republican Party’s roots, to which Terry responded, “I didn’t know the legacy of the Republican Party included women correcting men in public.”
See Diane Sweet's post for more race-related goings-on. Warning: Breitbart hacks involved.
