Black Tea Partiers Rip Chris Matthews for "Monochromatic" Remark

On the January 5 edition of his MSNBC program "Hardball," Chris Matthews claimed that everyone participating in tea party rallies such as the one held in Washington, D.C. on September 12, 2009 were white. In a discussion with Mark McKinnon of the Daily Beast and Susan Page of USA Today, Matthews said: "And they're monochromatic, right?... Meaning they're all white. All of them -- every single one of them -- is white." Members of the Project 21 black leadership network disagree. They were there. Bob Parks, a Project 21 member from Virginia, said: "Here's a news flash for Chris Matthews. I was there. So was my son. Last time I checked, both of us are black -- and we weren't the only black people there. I know other black people who attended the September 12 rally in Washington, including some of the ones who spoke at the podium! I guess the MSNBC camera people missed them." Parks continued: "To me, this means Chris Matthews thinks that blacks who don't toe the liberal line are either invisible - and apparently irrelevant - or such sellouts that they've become white. Obviously, he doesn't have the guts to have us on 'Hardball' so he can call us all-white 'teabaggers' to our faces."...read more