Over the past year-and-a-half, America has witnessed the birth and infancy of a political phenomenon: a grass-roots collection of self-proclaimed patriots who have come to call themselves the Tea Party. The Tea Party’s causes: lower taxes, smaller government, and, well, seemingly, any other conservative cause that piques the interest of the Tea Party’s fractured leadership on a given day. Despite the Tea Party’s disorganization, however, the activist group has grown in power, prompting a widespread following from conservative politicians and the “liberal media” that its members love to loathe. As a political junkie dismayed by the political apathy of the “MTV-generation,” I am encouraged to see people take a more active role in government. But, I cannot help but conclude that the Tea Party, and all that it represents, is too entwined with ignorance and closed-mindedness to make productive contributions to our country’s political discourse.

To put the excesses of the Tea Party into perspective, it is necessary to take a brief history lesson—not back to the days of our founding fathers, whom the Partiers garishly impersonate in their calls to shrink the federal government to the size of a well-funded school board, but to a more recent, though some would say similarly tumultuous, time in our country’s history.

I am referring to Selma, Alabama, 1965. It was there that a group of peaceful demonstrators, protesting county officials’ refusal to allow blacks to register to vote, were met on the Edmund Pettus Bridge by an army of police officers. Chaos ensued, and many of the demonstrators, including an emerging young political leader named John Lewis, were beaten within inches of their lives. The protests in Selma, and the unfathomable reaction by the police, marshaled public opinion and spurred the passage of the Voting Rights Act.

Today, race relations in America are far less tumultuous. Such was my belief, at least, until this past spring, when the Tea Party called itself to arms with rallies in opposition to President Obama’s healthcare plan—arguably the most significant piece of legislation since the one inspired by the Selma march. It was during one such protest, outside the U.S. Capitol, that a group of Tea Party protestors shouted “nigger” at members of the Congressional Black Caucus, who had pledged their support for the bill. One target of the epithets that day was Lewis, now a distinguished member of the U.S. House of Representatives. “You know, this reminds me of a different time,” Lewis said of the incident, according to the Associated Press.

Of course, there is no sense in blaming an entire organization for the unspeakable bigotry of a select few. It would accomplish little to blame an entire movement for the protests of a band of Tea Partiers against the construction of a mosque north of San Diego because, according to the New York Times, “[Muslims’] goal is to get people in Congress and the Supreme Court to see that Shariah is implemented,” or because of images, reportedly seen at many Tea Party rallies, of watermelons on the White House lawn.

However, taken as a whole, these incidents establish a pattern of hate-mongering that had no place in the politics of the 1960s and that certainly have no place in the politics of today. This is not to suggest that the Tea Party, actually a collection of many local organizations, is entirely racist. But the consistency with which such furor has emerged in its politics is troubling, to say the least, especially after eight years of leadership by a Republican president in which expressions of dissent were almost entirely targeted at the policies of the controlling party, and not the racial composition of its members.

Whether these beliefs are genuine or just the latest form of intellectual dishonesty that tends to rear its ugly head in an election year, the Tea Party has turned ignorance into an art form, and I for one am glad its politics continue to be marginalized. I do, however, encourage the student body to take one valuable lesson from the Tea Party: get involved in government. Today, too many people follow the news out of Hollywood and not enough follow the news out of Washington. But if the Tea Party’s legacy is to revitalize the interest of the young in progressive politics, then maybe some good will come of its existence. For I can only hope that as the generations turn, the noise we hear on the streets is not that of bigotry, but rather continued calls for progress, much like those made a generation ago by an American hero named John Lewis.