Perry and Glaude GS ’97 discuss race, Tea Party movement

Before a crowd of roughly 30 students and community members, Glaude, who is chair of the African American studies program, stressed the need to “pay attention to the symbolic languages and anxieties associated with the party.”

While national leaders are typically cast as scapegoats, Glaude argued that criticism of President Barack Obama has differed drastically from that of his most recent predecessors, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Rather than focusing on his policies or leadership style, members of the Tea Party have consistently challenged his identity, questioning his nationality and religion.

“How is it that Rush Limbaugh can say anything he wants? How can Sarah Palin launch questions about Michelle Obama’s devotion to America and initiate racial implications?” Glaude asked.

Perry noted that the members of the Tea Party movement come from disproportionately white, male and Christian demographics. The fact that this group engages in explicit race-baiting language, especially concerning Obama, is proof that white social and economic anxieties have been racialized, she argued.

“White ‘Americanness’ might not be the kind of security blanket it once was in the world,” Perry said. While being white may have offered socioeconomic advantages in the past, this does not necessarily hold true in an age characterized by outsourcing, undocumented immigration, Islamic migrants and black presidents, she explained. Perry said that as the world becomes increasingly globalized, “investment in the white world is not as paramount to the global capitalist as it once was.”

Glaude cited similarities between the Tea Party and the white backlash to the civil rights movement of the 1960s. In both cases, racialized fears and anxieties were channeled into political strategies aimed at stalling progressive policy changes.

It is “a fiction that this is a real populist movement,” Perry said, arguing that powerful corporate interests control the movement.

Glaude said that the Tea Party has directed attention away from the racial implications of the policies favored by the movement. When the Tea Party accuses the administration of racial favoritism in its policies, the government responds by backing away from progressive stances, and “we all move closer to the right,” Glaude said.

Glaude noted that African-Americans have replaced explicitly racial politics with arguments for policies based on economic class for well over a century. According to Glaude, Obama has followed suit by saying, “I have to be the president of all Americans.”

However, Glaude said that Obama’s focus on listening to all Americans has not encompassed all African-American interest groups. Glaude asserted that Obama feels more comfortable working with some members of his political base, such as gay-rights groups and labor organizations, than with groups advancing political causes for African-Americans, because of the stigma of racial favoritism he would then face.

As long as this notion of American is still wrapped up with the ideal of whiteness, however, “the color of colorblindness is still white,” Glaude said.