Tea Party Is ‘Bald-Faced Racists,’ White Privilege Conference Speaker Tells Sea of White People

Members of the tea party movement are “screw-loosers” who range from “sort of a generic racism” to “bald-faced racists,” and they tend to become more racist the longer they associate with tea party ideas. Also, “tea partiers are not overly concerned about the economy,” love “gun rallies,” want power in the hands of white people and hate President Barack Obama because he “broke the white monopoly on the presidency.”

Such was the message of a speaker on the first day of this year’s White Privilege Conference, currently happening at a posh hotel in downtown Louisville, Ky.

The speaker was Leonard Zeskind. The author and activist hosted a session concerning the tea party, a limited government movement that shared in the responsibility for returning the U.S. House of Representatives to Republican control four years ago.

Zeskind’s Thursday afternoon talk was entitled “The Denial of White Privilege, the Tea Party Movement and the Building of Our Response.”

The former factory worker turned “social change maker” began his lecture by stressing that his “area of expertise is the white nationalist movement.” He claimed to have begun paying attention to the tea party because, he said, white supremacists swelled in the tea party ranks after Obama was sworn in as president in 2009.

“All this business about government and ‘constitutional’ is a smokescreen that’s really all about, ‘I want this country back for me.’ And ‘me’ meaning ‘white people,’” Zeskind told an overflow conference room crowd.

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After noting that tea party supporters do not like to be called racists, the leftist activist suggested that tea party advocates mostly don’t like President Barack Obama because Obama “broke the white monopoly on the presidency.”

“Tea partiers are not overly concerned about the economy,” he confidently asserted.

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At the beginning of his talk, Zeskind had asked audience members to volunteer to speak about themselves.

“I live in the bowels of the tea party, and I have the privilege of teaching your children,” explained one White Privilege Conference attendee–a woman with a Southern accent.

“I teach at a very elite boarding school,” explained a second woman who said she is from the Boston area. She said the school is “full of tea partiers” who “try to, you know baptize” political opponents.

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This year’s event marks the sixteenth annual White Privilege Conference.

People–mostly white people–pay hundreds of dollars each to attend the multiday conference each year.

Taxpayer funds from several states go to pay for conference fees.