[COLUMN] The pot is calling the kettle black

Benjamin Jealous, president and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

LIMA, Ohio - The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People passed a resolution at its national convention Tuesday condemning the tea party movement for tolerating racism.

Is that not the pot calling the kettle black?

The NAACP has to be one of the most racist organizations on the planet and its attacks on the populist tea party movement make it a hypocritical one as well.

The flap between the tea party and the NAACP began when NAACP President Benjamin Jealous told the tea party: "You must expel the bigots and racists in your ranks or take full responsibility for all of their actions."

Perhaps he should learn that those who live in glass houses should not throw stones. Until the NAACP cleans the bigots and racists from its own ranks it really has no business condemning others.

Tea party officials realize the hypocrisy of the resolution and Jealous' unfounded accusations.

"You're dealing with people who are professional race-baiters, who make a very good living off this kind of thing. They make more money off of race than any slave trader ever. It's time groups like the NAACP went to the trash heap of history where they belong with all the other vile racist groups that emerged in our history," said Mark Williams, a national spokesman for the Tea Party Express.

Williams also pointed out that the NAACP is very selective about which hateful political speech it condemns.

"I don't recall the NAACP speaking out when George Bush was portrayed as Curious George or as The Joker," Williams said. "I don't recall the NAACP ever standing up and saying we need to civilize discourse when Republicans were in the White House."

The NAACP and Democrats have been trying to saddle the tea party movement with the racism yoke ever since the movement began shortly after President Barack Obama took office and began dismantling our capitalistic system in favor of a socialistic welfare state.

The problem is that the Democrats are unable to counter the truth that Obama's policies are dangerous to the future of the Republic and our personal liberties. So, rather than try unsuccessfully to counter the arguments put forth by the tea party movement, it is easier just to brand all those who oppose the Obama regime as racists. After all, if you oppose a biracial president, it must be because you are a racist.

Let me give you an example of that attitude. I attended a debate in September between Mark P. Fancher, staff attorney and director of the Racial Justice Project at the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, and Ilya Shapiro, the senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute.

Fancher, who is black, made the appalling claim that all Americans are racists and anyone who opposes Obama is simply showing that racism.

Another example is when charges of racism were leveled against the tea party when some black congressmen made the dubious claim that they were heckled, spat at and assailed with racial slurs during a demonstration at the U.S. Capitol in March.

Yet, astonishingly, not a single one of the hundreds, possibly thousands of cameras at the rally recorded this alleged exchange, including a videographer from a liberal blog who was there specifically to catch tea partiers behaving badly.

While the resolution and Jealous' comments are astonishing given the history of the NAACP, the real motive has less to do with racism and more to do with the November elections.

There is a real possibility that the Republican Party will win control of the House of Representatives and possibly even the Senate, thanks in part to the tea party and its rallies for limited government.

Jealous and the NAACP hope the increased rhetoric will spur its members to vote in November.

While Obama's poll numbers are way down, especially among independents, polls show that black Americans still overwhelmingly support the president with approval ratings of about 90 percent. Many of those polled, however, do not vote so the NAACP is trying to motivate them to do so.

Americans should find it disgusting that the NAACP is enflaming racial tensions in hope of garnering a few more votes for Democrats. Now that is racist behavior.