A Nation Dispossessed: The Tea Party Movement and Race

Abstract

This analysis combines both qualitative information and quantitative data. The author reviewed numerous first person reports of Tea Party rallies, conferences and meetings from every corner of the country, and read most of the movement’s own literature. The Tea Parties are described as a unique movement appearing at a specific historical moment. The movement encompasses constituent national networks, core members and more loosely aligned supporters. Its supporters are overwhelmingly white and middle class. Matters of race and national identity motivate many Tea Partiers as well as a sense of dispossession from their place of privilege in the racial order. This analysis takes at face value the movement’s dress, symbols and invocation of the constitution, as well as its claims to embody the aspirations of a narrow body of ‘real Americans’. By making an exclusionary claim on the nation’s founding moments, they actually set themselves apart from other Americans.