Vision Circle

The NAACP sucks up the black oxygen, just as the Palestinian crisis used to suck up all the geopolitical oxygen. There are other things out there which are more worthy of our attention, and so adjustments must be made to expectations and coverage.

The NAACP sucks up the black oxygen

I disagree.

They carry no weight in the voucher discussions, in the NCLBA discussions, in the homosexual marriage discussions, ...

To me, they are the low hanging fruit of opposition.

Or, being more cynical, they are the thing needed for validation. Like...

Like...

Like Blacks seem to need whites for our validation.

It's not that we're viewing them as an enemy who needs to be vanquished. Everything is a potential blogging topic, and the NAACP is good for laughs.

NAACP is good for laughs
Entertainment value aside, beating a dead horse has never been productive. I estimate that about 80% press that I read about the NAACP comes from conservatives. If they really want this organization to die just ignore it and it will go away.

The greater failure has been the failure of the NAACP to broaden their base, both with respect to representing the interests of blacks who are better off financially and/or better educated, but also with respect to other minorities.

In the 1960's or 1970's the group saw the direction of the civil rights movement changing as Federal laws were passed granting long denied basic freedoms. The battles ahead were clearly in economic areas, education, etc., A decision was made, not illogically, to include other minorities (read: Mexican Americans) who were not represented. They failed miserably to commit resources in this area and to reach out to other minority communities.

It's entirely possibly the whole concept was wrong to begin with. But the fact they continue to maintain they represent "all" or "other" minorities is a bad joke. At best. Like the Urban League and other grups, they failed to recognize the real needs of the leaders which arose from small and large black groups, focused on their local church. While the clear organization at ther top was based on men like Dr. Martin Luther King, out in the trenches it was the local black churches where efforts centered to fight for fair housing and so many other issues. Dr. King and his counterparts could obviously not be everywhere.

And so it fell to the responsibilities of local, often rural, black community leaders, typically the black ministers, to support local initiatives. Right to vote? Where did supports typically rally? Their local church.

As a Yankee WASP I slept in the basements of more black churches than I care to remember. The hospitality and great food couldn't make up entirely for those hard floors. ;)

Time has long since passed the ability of the NAACP to be effective. That grand organization which was so crucial to blacks prior to the 1960's (Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education being one example) has passed. R.I.P.

The NAACP became irrelevent when the democratic party became irrelevent, because all they are is a black mouth piece to a white political ideological position...

The fact is they disconnect from the majority of blacks because they refuse to stop eating at the hand of their funders whom are predominantly white...

I am catching hell as a young leader up here, for the simple fact that I am non-partisan and call a spade a spade...I catch it from the whites and the blacks...but you know who feels me...

You got it, the young cats...

www.dellgines.blogspot.com

I hope they turn things around but I don't think they will.

I became a life time member my first year in college. I haven't contributed to them for a number of years.

I will contribute to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund this year because of the work they did in the Texas drug case.

"like blacks seem to need whites for our validation"

Or as Shelby Steele might say:

"as whites seem to need blacks for moral validation"

PDN