I was getting news over the web and I ran across this headline on the FoxNews website. “Tea Party Protesters Dispute Reports of Slurs, Spitting Against Dem Lawmakers.” It got my attention along with a number of other articles on their homepage which gave the impression that the fight must continue against the demon that his health care because it is just the first shot of socialism happening in this country. Like I said, that’s my impression.

Here are some of the other headlines I saw on their homepage. “IRS to serve as Health Enforcers, but lacks authority.” “Tea Partiers to Dems: You’ll Pay in November.” “Health Fight Shifts from Congress to the Courts.”

So with that cheerful assault I went to the article about the disputed reports. According to the article, there are ‘conflicting claims’ if there were racial slurs or spitting that occurred, which boils down to the lawmakers saying it happened and the representatives of the protesters either saying it didn’t happen or if it did happen it was done by people not associated with the Tea Party movement. There was a quote that really stood out to me.

"Never did I hear any type of racial slur," said William Owens, a black Tea Party activist from Nevada who joined in the D.C. protests Saturday.

I don’t know, but when I see FoxNews has to point out that the person who said there was no racial slur was said was a black Tea Party activist, I have to question it. It seemed too convenient to me that with the lack of minorities in the tea party movement there just happened to be a run of the mill black tea party member who was at the encounter and say it didn’t happen. So I did what anyone with half a brain would do if they had a question about this. I googled him.

It turns out William Owens Jr. isn’t just some well-meaning concerned citizen from Nevada. William Owens is the founding member of the Multi-Culture Conservatives Coalition. He’s also a writer who has written several conservative books, the most recent being “Obama: Why Black America Should have Doubts.” On a video on his website where he talks about the book, this man acts like he’s the white man’s guide to understanding the black psyche. He has a real superiority issue in his tonal pattern, in my humble opinion. In digging some more on his site, he and his wife, who also wrote a book, travel the country giving lectures about black people and the conservative movement.

Here’s the real killer for me. The first link I pulled up on Owens goes to an article he wrote criticizing Chris Matthews for calling the followers of the Tea Party Movement teabaggers. In the article he also addresses the complaint that there are no minorities in the crowd. Owens brags about how he and his wife have talked at many Tea Party events, even going so far as to brag about how he was featured in a CNN 2009 Year in Review coverage of the Tea Party movement. With all of his participation, it seems odd that he’s just an activist according to FoxNews. It’s reminiscent of the sham that occurred during the health care debates during the summer of 2009 when you would have ‘ordinary citizens’ give some very impassioned talked to congress people at the town hall meeting saying how the health care bill would hurt them. They would go on the cable shows to repeat their message however cleaver staffers, at least on MSNBC and CNN, would do some digging and find that the supposed ordinary citizen was really an organizer who was working for the Tea Party or some other conservative group.

FoxNews presented Owens as just some stalwart activist when in fact the guy admits in his own words he’s out there selling book, giving speeches and was so well known he was featured on CNN. If I were a thinking man, which I am, I would say the reason why Owens was used in the article was because of the key description they gave him; black.

My curiosity got the better of me and I started looking at some of the other links to Owens. One link took me to a site where they had links of articles about Owens. There was mention of a man named Lloyd Marcus. In the article he wrote about Chris Matthews, Owens mentioned Marcus. I clicked on the link and what a surprise, it took me to a FoxNews article written January 19, 2010 about the growing number of black conservatives in the Tea Party movement. The movement is so vast that the article mentioned 3 black people, all of whom are what I would call semi-major figures in the movement. What I mean by that is you have Owens, who gives speeches and writes books, you have Marcus, who is a singer for the movement, and you have Charles Lollar, who is a politician in Maryland. There were no other blacks mentioned in that article and in looking at a few more articles those same names came up. So I guess in a group of thousands having 3 blacks is a growing movement. Yes, I know that was a sarcastic statement, but by looking at the crowds at the rallies I would say you have a better chance finding five black students at UCSD than you would finding five black people at a Tea Party rally.

I think it’s stupid to talk about how black conservatives are growing in the Tea Party movement yet when it comes to finding them you can dig up three who have been used over and over again. It’s even more shameful that FoxNews can have a long report on Owens in January yet in March they make him seem just like a regular concerned citizen.

 

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William Owens: Token Tea Party Black Man - March 23, 2010
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