Last week the U.S. Census Bureau predicted that whites would become a minority in America by 2050. Saturday, Good Morning America–from the network that broke the exclusive police video “proving” George Zimmerman was uninjured in his confrontation with Trayvon Martin by covering Zimmerman’s head with their banner–gave us their unique take on this statistic.
The headline on the Good Morning America blog Saturday read “Hate Groups Grow as Racial Tipping Point Changes Demographics.” The first paragraph reads “The number of radical hate groups and militias has exploded in recent years in reaction to the changing makeup of America, and new census figures showing the majority of babies born in 2011 were non-white could fuel those simmering tensions, experts who track hate groups warned.”
Interchangeably used in the article are the terms Radical Hate Group, Extremist, Radical Right Wing Groups, White Supremacist Groups, and Radical “Anti-Government” Groups. The crux of the article is the statistic that “according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the number of radical ‘anti-government’ militia groups increased from 150 to 1,274 during the years of the Obama presidency.” The implication being that this is a racist reaction to having a black President, never mind that Obama won 43% of the white vote, the largest percentage won by a Democrat since Carter.
A quick trip to the SPLC website gets you to the source article “The ‘Patriot’ Movement Explodes,” which lumps all the above movements together with, you guessed it… the Tea Party. If you want to see how they get from the “Patriot” militia movement to the Tea Party read “Unsweet Tea: Exploring the Ideas of the Antigovernment Movement”, also on the SPLC website.
If you identify with the Tea Party whose governing principles are “Fiscal Responsibility, Constitutionally Limited Government and Free Markets,” then you belong to a radical hate group that fears the oncoming tide of minorities soon to take over the country.
Unfortunately ABC, the SPLC, and the left generally completely misunderstand (or intentionally misrepresent) the conservative view on this issue. It comes down to this: melting pot vs. multiculturalism. Conservatives believe that if you want to come to this country you should do it legally, and your primary cultural identification should become American.
The so-called explosion of groups such as the Tea Party has absolutely nothing to do with the racial makeup of the United States or the skin color of the President. It has everything to do with freedom. Government overreach, deficit spending and micro-managing of the economy limit our options as a people and a country. The current government has taken this to a new extreme. Conservatives have no problem with a black President. We do have a problem with one who preaches the politics of division and seeks to manage our lives right down to the types of food we eat.
The left has always sought to divide Americans by the most superficial definitions–skin color, sex, and most recently economics. The politics of division makes it much easier to pander to distinct groups within America and create monolithic pools of dedicated voters. But identity politics is by its nature damaging to the country as a whole, and suggests that certain groups of Americans may have disparate goals. Preaching the success of one group has a negative impact on another when nothing could be further from the truth. Perhaps the greatest strength of the free market is that success for one individual translates directly into success for those around him and for the country.
The liberal mainstream media is completely invested in this narrative as evidenced by the fact that this article totally manufactures the conservative reaction to the Census Bureau announcement. In fact, the Census made exactly this same announcement in 2004. They revised the apocalyptic date to an even more horrific 2042 in 2008. And now they have revised it back to 2050, so if anything this would be an eight year reprieve.
The final paragraph is perhaps the most telling. “The thing I think to understand is that the radical right is not entirely composed of people who are insane. These are people reacting to real changes in the real world around them,” said Potok, the man who wrote the “Patriot Movement” and “Unsweet Tea” articles for the SPLC. He is correct, and one of those changes is a new media that has taken over the job of the old, advocacy-based mainstream media.