MSNBC Panel Wonders Why Blacks Would Ever Align with Racist Tea Party

Matthews And Guests Utterly Perplexed That Blacks Could Support ‘Pure Racism’ Of The Tea Party (Mediaite)

MSNBC host Chris Matthews and two guests on Wednesday investigated what they identified as strains of homophobia, xenophobia, and racism within the tea party. One of the guests was a filmmaker who is investigating the phenomenon of African-American conservatives who sympathize with the tea party. Matthews was vexed by the existence of black conservatives. He expressed surprise that African-Americans, who were dependent on the federal government for civil rights legislation, would support an ideology that backs state’s rights.

Matthews opened the segment congratulating MSNBC for their efforts at trying to show “the real face of the tea party” which he said was characterized by racial rhetoric and outright racist imagery.

“My study suggests that there is a strain of racism in the tea party,” said University of Washington assistant professor Christopher Parker. “There’s definitely a racist strain, but it goes beyond racism. It goes to homophobia and xenophobia as well, Chris.”

Matthews asked if tea partiers longed for a “dreamy nostalgia” of a time when there were “no gays, where blacks were slaves, where Mexicans were in Mexico.”

Parker agreed with the Matthews and said that tea party conservatism is “reactionary” and “scared of losing the America that they know and love to these other groups of people.”