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I'm sure you all remember being back in elementary school when the only thing cooler than Tamagotchis and POGs was trying to outdo your buddy's moose ears and KISS tongue every time the substitute teacher turns around to write something on the board.

Whenever the talking heads of the Left turn Sauron's eye on the Tea Party Movement, they purport to have a similar impression. Sure, when video cameras and news reporters are around, the Tea Baggers are murmuring some nonsense about being over taxed and wanting "freedom" – whatever that means… but as soon as the cameras are switched off and the reporters fade away, that's when white hoods are donned and goose-stepping ensues.

Nothing, of course, could be more absurd. At February's National Tea Party Convention here in Nashville, African-American Angela McGlowan shared the stage with the Syrian/Lebanese-American Joseph Farah. Both were very well received. Indeed, most tea party organizers will trip over each other trying to book the limited number of minority conservatives in hopes of not having their speaker lineup mirror the recipients of the Country Music Awards.

Now, whether these talking heads actually believe the nonsense they spew about the real motivations of the Tea Party or not is insignificant. What matters are the effects these accusations engender. Rather than focusing on legitimate issues like health care or overbearing tax rates, the accused begin uttering something about how many black friends they have and how their distant cousin once dated an Asian. They then throw in a few genuflecting comments about Michael Steele and Bobby Jindal, for good measure.

It's no coincidence that the day before the health care bill passed the House of Representatives, two members of the Congressional Black Caucus accused Tea Partiers of shouting the N-word at them 15 times. Conveniently, none of the TV cameras, voice recorders, or handheld video cameras picked up the alleged epithets, including the cameras the Congressmen themselves were holding (that footage has yet to be been released and I'm not holding my breath waiting for it). The point was to shift the debate from the radical transformation of one-sixth of our economy to determining just how racist Tea Partiers are.

Ascribing racial motivations in general is a favorite tactic of the Left. A regular columnist for two student newspapers here at Vanderbilt, Mike Warren, was a recent victim of this ad hominem when a commenter on one of his columns claimed he was only critical of Vanderbilt's endorsement of the health care bill because he is a "selfish, white male." Now in some respect, this commenter may have a point. A March Gallup survey found that, while 57% of white Americans felt the health care bill would improve conditions of the uninsured, only one-third felt it would benefit the country, and a meager 20% thought it would benefit their own families.

While I believe Mike's dislike of the health care bill is based on principle, for the sake of argument let's accept the commenter's assertion that he only feels this way because he believes the bill will be a disadvantage to him and the majority of his racial group. Rather than being able to defend his own interests as a white American, the commenter labels him "selfish" and intends the remark maliciously. Imagine, on the other hand, a white person accusing Jesse Jackson of only supporting affirmative action because he is black. The likely response would be "Duh!" and that would be that.

The Race Card

The underlying logic here is that minorities are not only allowed, but are strongly encouraged by the Left to organize around and support their own racial interests. Groups like the NAACP, the National Council of La Raza, and the Congressional Black and Hispanic Caucuses are promoted, while the NASCAR-like crowds at Tea Party rallies are vilified for even implicitly supporting their own racial interests. To a casual observer, this would constitute a double standard, but for the Left, there is no logical contradiction.

You see, whites are not allowed to advocate their own racial interests because they are recipients of "undeserved white privilege." Evidently, whites are not entitled to inherit the privileges associated with their skin tone, but are, on the other hand, mandated to inherit that other favorite catch phrase of the Left, "white guilt," which we are to share as a collective racial burden, despite the reality that most of our ancestors had nothing to do with slavery or imperialism. The result is that the only acceptable moral virtue for whites is to actively favor their own dispossession.

For all its talk about being post-racial, it sure seems that for the Left, it's all about race.