Who’s got the death panels now, GOP?

To be sure, whites have also benefited from the Great Society programs. But Tea Partiers, many of whom depend on Medicare and other government help themselves, don’t see themselves as beneficiaries as much as they see Blacks and minorities as moochers.

Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi discovered this last year when he went to a Tea Party rally in Kentucky to find old white people on Medicare-financed scooters griping about there being too many people [Black] on welfare.

Then there’s the most recent research done by Emory University political scientist Alan Abramowitz, which shows that next to conservative ideology, racial resentment draws people to the Tea Party. Next to that is dislike for Obama.

Ya think?

So it’s not surprising that a Tea Party audience would cheer the idea of a 30-year old comatose man dying for lack of health care. And it doesn’t matter if the hypothetical man is Black or white.

To them, what matters is that if they snatch away the safety net for everyone, they’ll head off the rise of another Obama or any other Black person they see as undeserving.

And they don’t care who else happens to die in the process.

This article was originally published in the September 19, 2011 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper