The tea party movement’s Not Racist Week continues tomorrow with a “National Black Conservatives Rally” in Washington on behalf of the group nearly everyone in the movement agrees went too far on the issue of race, the Tea Party Express. More than a dozen African American conservatives will pack the National Press Club to attack the NAACP and set the record straight about what the press release for the event calls “the unrelenting attacks on the tea party movement” and the “effort to dissuade Americans from rebelling at the ballot box in the November 2010 elections.”
The keynote speaker at the event will be perhaps the most prominent African American conservative, Alan Keyes. He’ll be joined by the Tea Party Express’ national spokesperson, Lloyd Marcus.
Marcus pointed to the extensive lineup of black conservatives on deck for tomorrow’s event as evidence that the movement is more racially open than some critics have painted it.
“Apparently the NAACP and other groups are afraid to acknowledge the fact that the tea party welcomes people of all races, and is a much bigger and more diverse group than they’re willing to admit,” Marcus said in a statement.
Of course, Marcus’ group is perhaps the one segment of the tea party movement that really did have a very public problem with race just a couple weeks go. The group’s former chair and spokesperson Mark Williams was out on the national news networks defending his claims that the NAACP is racist after his “satirical” blog post called NAACP president Ben Jealous “Tom’s Nephew,” among other things.
Williams, a professional when it comes to saying and writing offensive things, later resigned from the movement after other tea party groups slammed him and the Tea Party Express for the rhetoric.
The group never condemned Williams or publicly apologized for what he said, and it was kicked out of the Tea Party Federation (another national tea party group), by its national spokesperson, African American conservative David Webb.
Even at the best of times, the Tea Party Express is shunned by grassroots organizers who claim that it’s an impostor organization attempting to use the tea party name to bolster Republican candidates. The group has poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into big-name conservative candidates like Scott Brown and Sharron Angle, and has in the past been more than happy to serve as the movement’s national face. Now it hopes to be the national version of the grassroots Uni-Tea movement, which kicked off this weekend with a rally aimed at inviting more non-white faces into the tea party movement.
Tomorrow’s D.C. event appears to be similar to that rally, which saw multiple African American conservative speakers take the podium to tell a largely white audience of tea partiers that they’re not racists.
The list of speakers for tomorrow’s event, via the Tea Party Express website:
Ambassador Alan Keyes – Chairman of Conservative Majority PAC
Star Parker – President, Center for Urban Renewal and Education
Niger Innis – National Spokesman Congress of Racial Equality. Co-Chairman Affordable Power Alliance.
Herman Cain – Radio Talk Show Host, “The Herman Cain Show”, News Talk 750 WSB
Lloyd Marcus – Tea Party Express/ NAACPC, author of Confessions of a Black Conservative
Kevin Jackson – author of Amazon best-selling book, The BIG Black Lie, President of the Black Conservative Coalition and The Black Sphere, LLC
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson – Founder and President of BOND Action
Ted Hayes-NABS (National America’s Black Shield)
William & Selena Owens – Higher Standard Publishers
Mychal S. Massie – Chairman Project 21; The Nation Leadership Network of Black Conservatives
Frantz Kebreau – National Director, NAACPC (National Assoc. For the Advancement of Conservative People of ALL Colors)
Timothy F. Johnson, Ph.D. -The Frederick Douglass Foundation
Ron Miller – president of Regular Folks United and author of “SELLOUT: Musings from Uncle Tom’s Porch”
C. Mason Weaver – President Mason Media Company Author of “It’s Ok to Leave the Plantation/Motivational Speaker
Emery W. McClendon Dr. – Amateur Radio Military Appreciation Day
Ruth Bryant White – Editor In Chief of BreakingNewsJournal.Net, Leader on Conservative Moms For America and author of “Life Through The Eyes Of An Interracial Couple”
John Felix – President/CEO/founder of the Caribbean-American Cultural Association, Inc. of North America
Bob Parks – Member, National Advisory Council, Project 21; Video Producer, Media Research Center
Bishop Harry Jackson – Pastor of Hope Christian Church and Chairman of the High Impact Leadership Coalition
