BOND

Many want to believe President Barack Obama’s elec­tion and re-elec­tion meant the nation had reached some racial nir­vana where struc­tur­al inequities and racist atti­tudes were on the decline, Bond said. Not so, the 74-year-old for­mer NAACP chair­man told about 450 peo­ple at the Sarasota Democratic Party’s annu­al Kennedy-King fundrais­ing din­ner dur­ing a 45-minute speech.

“Indeed, there is some evi­dence that it foment­ed them,” Bond said of racist atti­tudes. “Obama is to the Tea Party as the moon is to werewolves.”

Bond assert­ed that the Tea Party does­n’t like Obama because of what he represents.

“They see the nation’s demo­graph­ics turn­ing them into a minor­i­ty and they don’t like it,” Bond said. “They say they want their coun­try back. And we ask, what was that coun­try like? In their coun­try I could­n’t eat at a lunch counter and also vote. These were not the good ol’ days for me. If the pres­i­dent rep­re­sents the end of the America they knew, I say good for him.”

Bond’s mes­sage to Democrats con­trast­ed sharply with U.S. Rep. Allen West’s in Sarasota just 11 days earlier.

At the Sarasota Republican Party’s Lincoln Day Dinner, West said that Democrats have repeat­ed­ly failed the black com­mu­ni­ty. He not­ed that the Democrats in the 1850s want­ed to con­tin­ue slav­ery and Democrats in the 1950s and ear­ly 1960s opposed the civ­il rights movement.