Uselessness, and the NAACP
By Vincent Fiore (02/06/06)
Civil Rights icon, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., was known to have said: “Life's most persistent and urgent question is: What are you doing for others?”
Certainly, Dr. King, and his recently-deceased widow, Coretta Scott King, never had to worry if such a direct, yet monstrously poignant query were ever asked of them. All one had to do was read the words of King’s “Letters from Birmingham Jail” to know what he was doing.
But Dr. King has been dead for nearly four decades now. A few months prior to Coretta Scott King’s passing, civil rights matriarch Rosa Parks finally gave up her seat on the bus to go home to God. Sandwiched in-between these two icons passing was the death of civil rights leader James Forman, who led “Freedom Riders” into some of the Deep South’s most dangerous areas.
Here in 2006, some will tell you that the fight for civil rights rages on. Like Frederick Douglass, whose last words before he died were said to be “Organize! Organize!”, today’s civil rights giants set new standards and produce watershed moments.
The only problems with the above statement are those new standards and watershed moments. Today’s modern-day civil rights leaders hold little in the way of gravitas and respectability when sized-up against yesteryear’s giants of the movement. Would that be because the movement of advancing civil rights today lacks the urgency, or necessity, that it once did? Or have today’s civil rights leaders decided that the acquisition of personal power outweighs the supposed needs of black people?
In short, the modern-day civil rights movement lacks for greatness.
Instead, black society is treated to something that resembles not so much a movement, but more like a remake of Sergio Leone’s 1967 classic, “The Good, the bad, and the Ugly.”
*The Good. Unfortunately, there is a genuine dearth of talent in regard to effective and sagacious leadership among modern-day black leaders. So who are today’s leading lights? There are certainly no Martin Luther Kings out there, nor even a Rosa Parks to stir passion and pride.
*The Bad. There are plenty of candidates here. The two most prominent black leaders--as they and the media choose to call themselves--are Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Both men have run for president, with Sharpton running only just last year.
How bad are they? Well, both Sharpton and Jackson decided to play that old race card in regard to the response of the federal government to the death and destruction of Hurricane Katrina.
Specifically, both Sharpton and Jackson thought it was somehow wise, or insightful, to accuse President Bush of racism in his--what they felt was his--slow response to Katrina’s victims in New Orleans. Neither insightful nor wise, both leaders proved to be distressingly unimaginative and racially repetitious. As a good friend of mine is fond of saying, “been there, done that.”
*The Ugly. This could be an embarrassment of riches here, with groups like the Congressional Black Caucus and the Nation of Islam led by Louis Farrakhan high on the list of the ugly Civil Rights crusaders. But for my money, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or NAACP--at one time the most respected black organization in the country--gives more than lip service to the term “ugly” lately.
Take NAACP Chairman Julian Bond, whose recent speech in Fayetteville State University in North Carolina essentially calls the GOP a party of Nazis. Bond states: “The Republican Party would have the American flag and the swastika flying side by side.” Bond also went on to do a little black-on-black bashing, calling current Bush Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her predecessor, Colin Powell, “tokens.” (www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=48635)
Keep in mind that this is an organization that has led black Americans through the back alleys and dead-end streets of racial intolerance for nearly 100 years. Alumni include such people as Rosa Parks, Thurgood Marshall, and assassinated NAACP field director Medgar Evers.
You wonder just how an organization that was so integral in landmark cases such as Buchanan vs. Warley, in which “the Supreme Court has to concede that states can not restrict and officially segregate African Americans into residential districts,” or in possibly the most recognized Civil rights case of all, Brown vs. the Board of Education, in which segregation was fought over in the public schools, could become so irrelevant, and demagogic.
So in 2006, the NAACP continues to blaze trails into the wilderness of civil rights with…Julian Bond? The same Julian Bond who also said in July, 2001: “Bush has selected nominees from the Taliban wing of American politics, appeased the wretched appetites of the extreme right wing, and chosen Cabinet officials whose devotion to the Confederacy is nearly canine in its uncritical affection.” (www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/columnists/wickham/2001-07-12-wickham.htm)
Here is an organization that has principally outlived its usefulness. Even before Julian Bond’s political potty-mouth became a hallmark of the NAACP, the organization was up to its neck in partisanship, a no-no for a none-profit group, and openly hostile to any and all Republican candidates for office.
When one goes to the NAACP’s home page on the web, he comes across the organization’s “Mission Statement,” which reads, in part: “to ensure the political, educational, social and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination.” (www.naacp.org/about/about_mission.html)
Those goals have been met sometime ago, as no one can legally discriminate against another in an educational, social, or economic setting. The part I am having trouble with is the eliminating of “racial hatred and racial discrimination.”
One cannot legislate away that sort of thing, unfortunately, but one can certainly perpetuate it, and it is here that the NAACP has seemingly rewritten its mission statement.
As long as folk like Julian Bond have a prominent role in what is essentially a fund-raising and advocacy arm of the Democratic Party, people like me who are on the outside looking at what the NAACP does will know it for what it is: an institution whose once-noble battles are far and away behind it, and whose uselessness is as obvious as the disgraceful mutterings that emanate from its chairman.
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