Bigotry, Balderdash & Butterfield

On October 16 2010, Congressman G. K. Butterfield gave an interesting and bothersome speech at his Appreciation Rally. Gathered at the intersection of Nash Street and Pender Street, in front of a crowd of his adoring supporters most of whom were Black, Congressman Butterfield said, (1)

"...You must understand that the Right-wing Republican Tea Party, if given one iota of a chance, will take us back to the days that I just spoke about [of slavery, racial oppression and segregation]. Do we want to go back? They say that they want to take back our country. Why do they want to go back? Do they want to go back to slavery? Do they want to go back to disenfranchisement, to segregated schools, to no schools, to 'separate but equal', to not being able to vote? Where do they want to go back?...”


“…I need for all of you…Between now and November 2nd to get fired up and go back into your neighborhoods, go to your churches, into your workplace, and to where you hang out and to where you have friends and to people you call on the telephone. I want you to SHAKE 'EM UP and let them know there's some mean evil forces at work and they are out here to take us back and we cannot allow that to happen...We've got work to do in this community...We've have work to do because if you think it's going to happen with us staying at home, it will not happen..."

Bigotry at its finest, the Congressman manipulates his listeners into believing that his extreme opinions about the Tea Party are not merely his opinions, but facts. In doing so, the Congressman creates a false impression of the true purpose of the Tea Party movement, attempting to negatively sway those who know nothing about what the Tea Party actually represents.

When Butterfield told his predominately black audience to “get fired up” and to go into their neighborhoods, churches, workplaces, and hang-outs, to “SHAKE ‘EM UP and let them know there's some mean evil forces at work” who “are out here to take us back” to the evils of slavery, disenfranchisement, racial oppression and segregation, was he not purposefully inciting one group of people against the other in the worst possible way? Was he not pounding the “hot button” race issue in the hopes of motivating his audience to keep him and his Democrat colleagues in office? As always, with any matter involving race relations, if a white Republican had made similar race-based statements to a predominately white crowd, the speaker would be labeled a racist and his speech would be disregarded as negative and fear-mongering.

Hearing these kinds of statements, such as the statements made by Congressman Butterfield, only divide, agitate, and anger the very soul of Americans. Congressman Butterfield represents a political party that often talks about tearing down walls, ending hate, and uniting together, but yet makes statements that do nothing but incite anger and division. Unfortunately, such statements seem to reach a rather broad audience, spreading untruth on an even larger scale. How can we talk about unity while encouraging division? “Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring?” (James 3:11, NIV)

According to the NC State Board of Elections website 102,237 citizens in the 1st Congressional District re-elected Congressman Butterfield.(2)  Was his re-election the result of faithful Democratic straight-ticket voting? Are the voters really in agreement with such statements as the ones quoted above regarding the Tea Party movement? Or was his re-election more of a naïve belief that Congressman Butterfield was just plain “right for the job?”

It is one thing to expose bigotry where it exists, but to play the race-card where it does not exist – and never will – is nothing less than reckless, dishonest and downright delusional. In fact, for the Congressman to make statements like this toward those he has labeled a “mean evil force” is false propaganda and classic textbook projection, to say the very least.

Obviously, Butterfield forgot that it was his Democrat Party which kept blacks in slavery and started the KKK in 1866 as its terrorist wing to lynch and terrorize blacks and the Republicans who stood with them.(3)  It was Butterfield’s Party from 1870 to 1930 which “used fraud, whippings, lynching, murder, intimidation, and mutilation to get the black vote, and passed the Black Codes and Jim Crow laws which legalized racial discrimination and denied blacks their rights as citizens.”(4) 
It was Democrats like President Franklin D. Roosevelt and President Harry Truman who “rejected anti-lynching laws and efforts to establish a permanent Civil Rights Commission.”(5

It was the Democrat Party of President Lyndon Johnson, who called Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “that [N-word] preacher” because he opposed the Vietnam War. It was the Democrat President John F. Kennedy who voted against the 1957 Civil Rights law as a Senator and then as president opposed Dr. King’s 1963 March on Washington.  It was the Democrat Party which embraced the late Senator Robert Byrd who was a high ranking official of the KKK and called Dr. King a “trouble-maker”. It is the Democrat Party who supports Planned Parenthood which was founded by Margaret Sanger who referred to blacks, immigrants, and indigents as “...human weeds,' 'reckless breeders,' 'spawning...human beings who never should have been born.”(6) 

Oh, and I’m sure Butterfield knows, as someone with such an impressive legal career, about the case of Plessy v. Furguson in 1896 where the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the Democrats in establishing the “separate but equal” doctrine.

Of course, we could expound much more on the Democrat’s very extensive, racist history.(7)  We could talk about how the North Carolina Republican party was started with 101 whites and 46 blacks while not a single black person was part of forming the Democrat party. We could talk about how blacks didn’t start really participating with the North Carolina Democrat party until the largest migration took place after the 1964 and 1965 Civil Rights Bill purely for the votes, not because they were commitment to addressing the social ills at that time. But I digress.

Congressman Butterfield’s allegations against the Wilson NC Tea Party, and incidentally, the Republican Party, have no foundation in truth (8) and are lame attempts at projecting onto the Tea Party movement beliefs that are nothing more than a distorted perception of conservative politics. As a matter of fact, according to USA Today and Gallup, the Tea Party movement is 51% non-Republican and is “generally representative of the public at large” as it relates to “age, educational background, employment status, and race”.(9) This is also true of the Wilson NC Tea Party, except that it is 60% non-Republican (10), contrary to our Congressman’s claims.

Luckily, the American people are smarter than to fall for politics as usual. More and more of our citizens are seeing these tactics of emotional manipulation by using controversial topics, such as race, as a way of trying to divert voters from looking at the reality of our government and the dire state it is in; it is an age old trick of smoke and mirrors that Patriots are no longer giving credence to.

Wilson is a small, all-American town. This is our world, our home, our life. We are neighbors, friends,
family, and co-workers, and we all are working together to unite this county so we can come together like never before. Therefore, we don’t need anyone, especially our leaders, to use their influence and power to drive us apart with lies that are meant to pit us against one another on the basis of race, political party, economic status, religion or any other difference we may have in our neighborhoods. If we have any anger or resentment in our hearts, let us sit down and have an honest, open dialogue together, along with the public servants we have put in office, such as Butterfield. Let’s face the “Giants” in our county, those issues that separate and bankrupt us on every level. Truly, it is only the truth that will set us free.

Author: Joel M. Killion
Date: 12/16/2010

(1) Each quote from Congressman Butterfield’s speech was transcribed verbatim from video footage which can be viewed at www.wilsonncteaparty.com/video/gk-butterfield-appreciation (Part 1) and www.wilsonncteaparty.com/video/gk-butterfield-appreciation-1 (Part 2)
(2) http://results.enr.clarityelections.com/NC/22580/39565/en/summary.html

(3) For more details about the Democrat Party and the KKK read A Short History of Reconstruction by Dr. Eric Foner.
(4) http://www.nationalblackrepublicans.com/DYK-HistoryTest
(5) http://www.nationalblackrepublicans.com/DYK-HistoryTest
(6) http://www.dianedew.com/sanger.htm
(7) For more information regarding the true history between blacks and the Democrat Party, go to nationalblackrepublicans.com and frederickdouglassfoundation.com/blackandtherepublicanparty.html.
(8) For an accurate account of the Republican Party’s civil rights history, go to http://claremont.org/publications/crb/id.928/article_detail.asp
(9) Source: http://www.gallup.com/poll/127181/Tea-Partiers-Fairly-Mainstream-Demographics.aspx
(10) In October of 2010, after analyzing their 400 members, the Wilson NC Tea Party found that 237 of their members are non-Republicans, making them a 59.25% non-Republican movement.