WHAT IF THE TEA PARTY WAS BLACK?

HBO’s Real Time host and comedian Bill Maher invoked some powerful imagery on ABC’s This Week on May 2, 2010. Maher said, “Can you -- can you imagine if some of the -- what's going on with the Tea Party rallies, if they were a group of black people, …” How would the American people react to a group of black people, peacefully assembling, demanding Constitutional protections and denouncing violence from their political opponents?

Most of the protest violence in this country has come from left wing anti-war groups like the ones that committed felonies and fought with police officers in St. Paul, Minnesota in 2008. Certainly some people would reject black tea partiers because of their race, but the majority of Americans would ultimately embrace them the same way they embraced the black freedom marchers from the 1960’s. I’m not sure Bill Maher knows any tea party patriots, he should talk to them before he tries to immune their motives.