Democratic New York Rep. Charlie Rangel stood by earlier comments that Republican opposition to President Obama is in part based upon his race, and added in an interview with C-SPAN's Q&A that slaveholding states became Tea Party states.
"I have been requested not to talk about that too much," Rangel said in the interview, when asked about his previous remark. "I think the reason for it is that it is just too darn obvious as to what it is all about."
"I think if you take a look and see which counties and which Congressional districts, which areas of the United States had the most prejudice, it would be the slaveholding states," he continued. "It would be the Confederate states. It would be the states that fought the Union. Those that hated Lincoln."
Rangel went on, saying Confederates became Dixiecrats and are today members of the Tea Party.
"If you look at it today, they have changed parties," he said. "They used to be Dixiecrats, then they became Tea Party. The love and affection of embracing the Confederate flag. And then you place a birth that a lot of attention was given to him. The fact that people can say we have got to take our country back and lawyers know it is not what the written word it is how did you say that to determine what they really meant. So people said, please don't bring up that race thing anymore."
Rangel added he has been asked not to talk about race and the president by "people who want to avoid the controversy instead of dealing with the substance."
The Democratic congressman concluded by saying "most people know" that "if the president was not black and was white, this type of animosity would not be directed at the President of the United States of America."
Rangel has made similar comments in the past.