Tea Party shows its true colors

It's time to call the Tea Party and other like-minded souls out in the open. The Tea Party is nothing more than the Ku Klux Klan without the outfits.

How many people of color has anyone ever seen at a Tea Party rally? There's a reason for that.

The Tea Party and its followers try to mask their true beliefs behind false ideology, but yesterday all that was stripped away when they hurled racial epithets at Democratic Congressmen as they prepared to vote on health care reform.

Let's face facts here: The Tea Party and others that espouse its philosophy are not against health care reform or big government. They are angry for one reason and one reason only: A Black Man is occupying the White House. That's it in a nutshell. If it were anything else, why aren't they celebrating the fact that President Obama enacted the biggest tax cut for middle-income Americans in U.S. history? They can't because it's not his policies they are against, it's him. It makes absolutely no difference what he proposes, these racists will be against it.

People keep telling me we have made great strides in overcoming institutional racism in this country and, indeed we have. I see it every day in the intelligent young people -- the members of my son's generation and those younger. Racism, you see, can't be inherited; it has to be taught.

But, unfortunately, it still exists among many, people like Newt Gingrich and his ilk who continue to villify President Johnson for passing landmark civil rights legislation.

It's time to call the Tea Party out in the open. It's time for these people to explain why they have discarded political discourse for outright hatred and abuse. It's time to force them to take the hoods off and expose them for the racists they really are.