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Tea Party: No room for racism

Bob Costa / Mountain Area Tea Party Member Guest Commentary

(Updated: Thursday, July 29, 2010, 12:00 AM)

I started writing this July 13, while the NAACP was meeting to decide whether or not the Tea Party Movement was a racist organization. I could have saved them a lot of trouble because all they had to do is watch me to find out.

My name is Bob Costa and I'm 80 years old. I'm telling you that only so you can do the math to check out what I'm telling you.

I learned about racism when at 17 I joined the Army Air Corps at Christmas time, 1946 in Connecticut. My first duty was to travel from Connecticut to Texas for basic training. On that trip south I saw the water fountains at railroad stations marked "white" and "colored" for the first time and saw black ladies and gentlemen moved to cars further back on the train.

When I arrived at Lackland AFB, I and others were assigned the ground floor of a barracks building. There were no black soldiers in any of the barracks in which white soldiers were because the military was still under Woodrow Wilson's segregation order. FDR had not fixed that and Truman hadn't yet done so but would later.

Negroes, as they were called then and often called far worse, were deemed fit only to stoke the furnaces or do KP. Next morning I and a buddy were admiring through a window, a platoon of black soldiers marching nearby. A discussion followed in which I said that I thought they were as good as "you or me."

Instantly a fist flew out from behind us and I was on the floor with a stranger telling me, " You can say they're as good as you but don't you ever say they're as good as me."

The upper floor had filled overnight with a platoon from Little Rock, Ark. This was years before Central High School. I became an instant and lifelong defender of equal civil rights for all people but especially in America.

I was barred from a theater in D.C. because of my black companion. I swam with the blacks in the Anacostia pool on the day that was reserved for them, the last day before the pool was cleaned. One might think that was the ultimate insult but it wasn't. There were worse. This and more occurred years before Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr., one of my primary heroes.

My wife and I raised our four daughters to be equally fair minded. One of them once accepted a date with a young black boy and failed to mention his race to me before he arrived to escort her to a dance. When I opened the door for him I could feel her eyes boring into my back. I believe I was being tested or she felt it unimportant. I didn't flinch and made small talk with him until I was satisfied that he could be trusted with my daughter. Now you can decide if I personally am a racist.

But, how about the Tea Party movement? I can tell you this. I will be as active in the Tea Party movement only as long as it remains free of racism or until I'm dead or unable.

I believe in their principles, which include a return to constitutional limited government, free markets and fiscal responsibility. I believe these principles are the best for all people of all stripes for the individual's pursuit of the American dream.

Many people of color have found that with the improvements in our country, brought about by followers of Martin Luther King, Jr. and a lot of other citizens, black and white, and with hard work and a few smart decisions, they could share the dream.

I am disappointed that the NAACP voted apparently without investigation that the Tea Party was racist. I have yet to meet any individual or leader in the Tea Party with a single racist cell in their body.

Investigation could have been so easy. All they needed to do is to look at me. If I'm still involved, it is not racist because the minute I see it, I'm out of here.