the NAACP passes a resolution calling on the tea party to "repudiate racist elements" within the movement. this causes a big kerfuffle by right wingers who (wrongly) claimed that the the NAACP was calling the entire tea party racist. in fact, by referring to "racist elements" the NAACP was implying the opposite: that there are parts of the tea party that are racists and parts that are not, and that it is possible for there to be a tea party without the racist parts.
so then tea party express spokesman (and vice-chair of our country deserves better PAC, the tea party's parent political action committee) mark williams posted a satirical letter purporting to be a letter from the "head colored person" to president lincoln, saying that they don't want to be emancipated after all. (williams later pulled the letter from his web site, but not before ta-nehisi coates could post a copy).
williams' posting pretty effectively proves the NAACP's point. it seems obviously racist to me. in fact, that satire doesn't work at all, unless you buy into some pretty racist assumptions. and so the tea party federation has tossed mark williams out. in other words, they repudiated that example of a racist element in the tea party movement.
which is what the NAACP asked them to do in the first place. in protesting the resolution and screaming about the NAACP, the tea party waltzed right into doing exactly what the civil rights organization wanted.
