Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Black Conservative Tea Party Backers Take Heat

Angela McGlowan

In this Feb. 10, 2010 photo, Fox News political analyst Angela McGlowan announces at the Tupelo, Miss., City Hall, that she is running for the 1st Congressional District as a Republican. Black conservatives are taking heat for their involvement in the mostly white tea party movement, and McGlowan has spoken at several tea party events. (AP Photo/The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, Thomas Wells)

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) - They've been called Oreos, traitors and Uncle Toms, and are used to having to defend their values. Now black conservatives are really taking heat for their involvement in the mostly white tea party movement—and for having the audacity to oppose the policies of the nation's first black president.

"I've been told I hate myself. I've been called an Uncle Tom. I've been told I'm a spook at the door," said Timothy F. Johnson, chairman of the Frederick Douglass Foundation, a group of black conservatives who support free market principles and limited government.

"Black Republicans find themselves always having to prove who they are. Because the assumption is the Republican Party is for whites and the Democratic Party is for blacks," he said.

Johnson and other black conservatives say they were drawn to the tea party movement because of what they consider its commonsense fiscal values of controlled spending, less taxes and smaller government. The fact that they're black—or that most tea partyers are white—should have nothing to do with it, they say.

Read the rest of the article at Breitbart here.

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