NAACP using the Web to monitor racism

The organization launches a Web site to monitor Tea Party activists for alleged racist behavior

Politics just got uglier.  A new Web site recently launched by the NAACP does not discuss politics, issues, or even current events.  Its sole purpose is to monitor a rival political group and expose extremist activity in its ranks. 

The Web site, called TeaPartyTracker.org, was recently launched with the exclusive aim of monitoring the activities of the Tea Party movement, a growing group of activists essentially against overbearing governments. Yet the amorphous group is also criticized to be a bunch of white Republican males over the age of 45, who are united in their "intense frustration, anger and resentment over the belief that a black president is giving taxpayer handouts to other blacks."

The site was developed to support the NAACP’s Tea Party Resolution, which was passed in July after a year of mounting reports of racism and threats of violence at Tea Party rallies, reaching a crescendo in August 2009 during the health-care debates.

"People were coming out with assault rifles strapped to their back," said Hilary Shelton, Director of the NAACP's Washington bureau, in an interview with VatorNews.  "We called it The Month of Infamy."

Shelton also said that NAACP researchers traced two of the six Tea Party constructs back to known hate groups the Minute Men and the Council of Conservative Citizens (formerly the White Citizens' Council).

The Resolution, voted on by 2200 chapters, called on Tea Party officials to repudiate racist elements in its organization, and to respect civility in the democratic political process. 

“Part of the Tea Party Resolution called upon individual units to monitor Tea Party activities,” Shelton said. “Some of the tech minds in our group thought we should use technology to do this.”

The site features a blog, a breaking news twitter feed, video interviews, and a photo gallery to document cases of extremism at Tea Party events.

To do this, the NAACP partnered with Think Progress, Media Matters for America, and New Left Media to provide stories and photos.  Think Progress Editor-in-Chief Faiz Shakir commented in an email: “The NAACP reached out to ask us if we would mind if they republish ThinkProgress content on their own site. We were happy to grant them permission to do so… The tea party tracker site should help to highlight some of the unacceptable racism and intolerance that have been displayed at many tea party rallies.”

Individual users can also submit photos since, because, as Shelton told me, “these days it’s harder to find a phone that doesn’t have a camera in it than one that does.”  The only thing keeping the Web site from plunging full-force into the sphere of social media is accountability.  “We live in an age of photoshop,” said Shelton. 

Is the tracker site stirring the pot?

Indeed, some conservative groups have criticized the Web site, claiming that it is too easy to post distorted, photo-enhanced pictures, or even staged ones.  Brendan Steinhauser, Director of federal and state campaigns for FreedomWorks, which supports the Tea Party movement, told the Washington Post that “a lot of the signs that are going to end up on this site are going to be from left-wing groups infiltrating these rallies. It’s so clear that they are holding up signs to make us to look bad. It serves their purpose to do that.”

“We see no indication that that has been going on,” Shelton told me. “If anything, that should make it easier for Tea Party members to repudiate such acts.”

Nevertheless, the possibility that enhanced images could make it onto the Web site is troubling to some, especially given pre-existing accusations from several people within the Tea Party movement that the NAACP-documented cases of racism were actually staged. 

In an article on the conservative Web site The Daily Caller, conservative media giant Andrew Breitbart stated: “It’s called projection... The alliance of the left, the Think Progress, the Media Matters and the NAACP are projecting onto the Tea Party. The accusations are a projection of who the coordinated, well-funded left is. They are manufacturing the racism. They are the ones who are fomenting the violence, the ones who are the only perpetrators of violence over the last year.”

FreedomHouse’s Steinhauser further criticized the monitoring activity as a double-standard, accusing the NAACP and other liberal groups of failing to hold themselves to the same standard that they hold conservative groups.  “There’s such a different standard we’re held to... Both sides have to self-police. We should all hold ourselves accountable.”

NAACP's Shelton agrees with Steinhauer, reiterating that the NAACP’s Tea Party resolution calls on Tea Party leaders to repudiate acts of racism and extremism in the movement.  While TeaPartyTracker.org is a monitoring tool, “we don’t call upon anyone to monitor others.  We call upon the Tea Party leaders to do that.”

Neither FreedomWorks nor TeaPartyPatriots.org could be reached for comment.

Image source: patdollard.com