Race card

Meet Kevin Jackson, the black Tea Party activist disgusted at the prejudices of Obama’s supporters

Kevin Jackson talks a lot of sense. He also says things that make you wonder if your ears are playing up. As the newest star of the Tea Party circuit gives you his views on Obama, Palin and David Cameron, you repeatedly ask yourself, ‘Did he just say what I think he said?’

I am interviewing Jackson, a Republican blogger and author of The Big Black Lie, a critique of liberal America, because I heard him on US television saying that voting for Obama was racist. ‘They wanted the black president,’ he told Fox News. ‘Racists that they are, they voted for the man because he’s black, not because he’s qualified.’

There is no way Jackson, a national spokesman for theteaparty.net, could have got away with saying this if he were not also black, which might in itself be a racist situation.