Wisdom. One definition:
Wisdom comes when you are old enough to have made quite a few mistakes and have learned from those mistakes so that you don't make them again. You know that if you see situation A, last time you reacted by doing B, but you learned that C was better. So next time, situation A comes along and you go for C, instead of B.
Given that the youth aren't joining the NAACP, and the membership is getting older, isn't the NAACP reacting from their learned experiences, hence "wisdom", when the come out against vouchers?
For those who care to look into the history of vouchers, vouchers first came about in reaction to school desegregation rulings. For example, in Virginia, private academies were created and public funding when to white parents to send their children to private schools.
So, when critics, rightly, say that they seem to be stuck in the past, it may be because, collectively, they are reacting to situations that they learned from yester-year.
That's what I find interesting about the "Black liberal" vs. "Black conservative" sham that the Black community -- me included -- has allowed ourselves to be sucked into.
By targeting the "under 40" crowd of Blacks, the focus is being paid to those without the institutional memory to help form a basis for making some decisions. To put it more bluntly, and probably grammatically correctly, the "under 40" crowd is being targeted because of their "ignorance".
That is not an attack this is just an observation.
I was just thinking that the age of NAACP leaders and their institutional memory, is more likely the reason why they don't support vouchers, vs. the "support of teachers unions" sham.
Oh, and I strongly disagree with the idea that only Black neoconservatives are buying into it.
Posted by: DarkStar at April 21, 2005 08:11 PMTheir age, their teaching backgrounds, vouchers not being shown to really work, all play a role.
On the second point it isn't about agreeing vs. disagreeing fopr me. It's about what the data says. The only ones routinely mapping black life onto ideology are the black conservatives.
Posted by: Lester Spence at April 21, 2005 10:15 PMBrown:
I just read this post again. The first time, I focused on your comments re: the NAACP. This time, I hit on the notion that the tension between Black liberals and conservatives is a sham into which the community has been suckered - hoodwinked, bamboozled, led astray, yadda yadda yadda.
You're right - but this is just one of many dichotomies in which Black folk choose sides to our collective detriment. We have not placed our experience/priorities/solutions at the center of the discourse and given that, the outcome is a foregone conclusion. The "game" between played by prominent blacks Dems and Reps is hardly worth watching.
Posted by: Temple3 at June 25, 2005 08:31 PMBy the way, I would argue that wisdom is learning from and living from mistakes you have not made. Experience, not wisdom, teaches us to learn that touching a hot stove is a bad idea. If you've given up booze after kidney and liver surgery, you're not wise...if you drink in moderation and exercise self-control - learning from the obvious folly of others, you are wise.
Posted by: Temple3 at June 25, 2005 08:35 PM
The only people buying into the sham are black neoconservatives. No one else is thinking much about it.
...
What do vouchers have to do with the dwindling support of the NAACP? Given that the NAACP has always been a middle to upper class group, it makes more sense to say that the naacp has outlived its usefulness for a significant part of their target market. Their target market probably don't live in central cities anyway--they wouldn't need vouchers even if they supported them.
Posted by: Lester Spence at April 20, 2005 11:37 PM