The Two NAACPs and a Century of Struggle
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There have always been at least two NAACPs. There has been a national leadership, more sensitive to corporate interests and devoted to what can be won in the court or passed through the legislature this year. And there have always been the NAACP's scores of branches across the country, more and less active. It's the branches, some of them, which are the heirs of NAACP founders W.E.B. DuBois, Ida Wells-Barnett, of Medgar Evers and a long line of standup activists, the real people of struggle whose names most of us will never know.
The Two NAACPs and a Century of Struggle
by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon
“Roy Wilkins and Thurgood Marshall worked with the FBI to purge the NAACP of leftists... Fortunately they failed to get them all.”
In the hundred years since Ida Wells Barnett, W.E.B. DuBois and sixty others started the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, there have been many NAACPs.
There was the founding NAACP, brought forth to challenge the infamous Atlanta Compromise, in which Booker T. Washington, in return for corporate white sponsorship and philanthropy, agreed that African Americans would not demand land, education, voting rights, economic justice, equality before the law or much of anything else. It was this early NAACP that carried on the fight against lynching in the courts of public opinion and the law.
Ida Wells Barnett left the NAACP soon after its founding, dissatisfied with its legalistic approach to combating inequality, and W.E.B. DuBois was eased out by the mid 1930s.
The NAACP of the twenties committed itself to a decades-long struggle to overthrow segregation in the courts. By 1935 the organization retained Charles Hamilton Houston as its general counsel, who mapped out the legal strategy and mentored a stellar team of black and white civil rights lawyers including Constance Baker Motley and Thurgood Marshall to carry it out. By the thirties and forties NAACP lawyers were taking hundreds of cases in dozens of states each year challenging segregation in housing, jobs, education and more, along with many of the kinds of capital cases that would have been plain lynchings just a few years earlier. Sometimes they even won. Thurgood Marshall argued 32 cases before the Supreme Court and won 29, including the 1954 Brown V. Board of Education, supposedly outlawing school segregation once and for all.
At the same time, Roy Wilkins and Thurgood Marshall worked with the FBI to purge the NAACP of leftists, many of whom were the bones and flesh of local NAACP chapters. Fortunately they failed to get them all.
Quite apart from the national NAACP, there was also the NAACP of its scores of local branches, often staffed and led by the very activists Wilkins and Marshall tried to eliminate. One of them was Birmingham's Edgar D. Nixon, a one-time local head of Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and instigator of the Birmingham Bus Boycott. Rosa Parks was the local branch secretary. With official and unofficial white economic retaliation and violence frequently orchestrated against the families, businesses and persons of local NAACP members, some Southern branches were forced to operate in near secrecy at times. Southern authorities demanded that the NAACP hand over its membership lists, often fining local chapters and locking up their leaders for failure to comply. Medgar Evers was not the only local NAACP leader to be murdered in the south, though he was probably one of the last.
With the Freedom Movement over and the struggle against Jim Crow past, the NAACP's national leadership lost its way in the eighties and nineties. A series of disastrous national leaders ending with Ben Chavis alienated the NAACP's corporate funders while they lacked the personal integrity and vision to organize anything to take their place. They were duly ousted, and by the dawn of the twenty-first century, corporate America was very much in charge at the national NAACP in the persons of black corporate execs.
Throughout the last eighty years then, there have always been at least two NAACPs. There has always been a national apparatus, its officers, spokespeople and programs visibly dependent on the philanthropy of corporate America, and the good will of at least one out of two corporate parties. But the NAACP's local chapters have always been largely free to imitate the national leadership, or to cultivate local memberships, develop independent local agendas in response to local conditions and opportunities, and the means to fund themselves independently.
So it is that in many of the NAACP's local chapters and branches, the tradition of struggle, the legacy of Ida B. Wells-Barnett and W.E.B. DuBois survives and thrives to this day. These are the people, the NAACP members with something to celebrate. These are truly the people of struggle, and we at BAR are proud to struggle and to celebrate with them.
President Obama to address NAACP July 16 on Criminal Justice
President Obama is scheduled to speak to the NAACP this Thursday, July 16. The president's apologists always remind us that Obama isn't, can't and should not be expected to act as president of black America, that he has to be the president of all America including Wall Street banksters, military contractors and the prison industrial complex. Maybe this is why the First Black President turns every speech to or on black people into a sort of “Sista Souljah moment;” Every Fathers' Day, for example, is an opportunity to crack on black fathers, and every speech on Africa a chance to riff on African “corruption” as the primary cause of the continent's woes. The president's address to the NAACP is supposed to unveil some new initiative on the criminal justice front. He has a chance to break his streak, or to continue it.
The fact is the US is under five percent of the world's population, but accounts for almost a quarter of the planet's prisoners. The US locks up more people for longer stretches and flimsier reasons than anyplace else on earth. African Americans are one eighth the nation's population and just under half its prisoners. Many scholars have pointed out that since 1980, the US prison population has increased fivefold, while crime actually peaked almost ten years earlier. As a high Justice Department official said in a hearing held by Virginia Senator Jim Webb on the issue of mass black incarceration last year, “It wasn't really about crime. It was about how we chose to respond to crime.”
The US decided to lock up five times as many people for the same amount of crime as it did before 1980. We now have 2.3 million people in prison. Of forty million African Americans, more or less, at least 1.1 million are in prisons and jails. Prison has come to be the main way that government lays its hand upon black families.
Decarceration, Not Incarceration
BAR asked the people at Critical Resistance, an organization devoted to turning public policy away from the failed prison industrial complex and toward a system of restorative justice for a peek at what a real policy of reforming criminal justice might look like.
“The prison industrial complex,” CR's Helia Rasti told us, “is not about public safety. Real public safety comes from investing in healthy communities, rather than policing and prisons.” Nyabinga Dzimdahwe of the African Peoples Socialist Party in Florida agreed. “The criminal justice system is not about justice at all. It's a tool of domination, pure and simple.”
We imagine that President Obama will make a nod toward a little more funding to re-integrate ex-offenders into communities, but that's not nearly enough. Real American leadership, and real black leadership would make mass black incarceration a political issue, but most so-called black leaders are afraid even to mouth the words.
- It's high time to make decarceration, not incarceration the aim of policy.
- It's time to outlaw felony disenfranchisement, which prevents those convicted of felonies in many states from voting.
- It's time to repeal and sunset all the mandatory minimum and two and three strikes laws in every state and local jurisdiction.
- It's time to end all life sentences for juveniles and to end the incarceration of children in adult institutions.
- It's time to require racial and ethnic impact statements for all sentencing legislation which will predict the percentages of those sentenced, and roll them back where discriminatory impacts are found.
That's what real leadership would look like. We're sure lots of NAACP members, and their local branches and chapters agree with us. We're not at all sure about the NAACP's national leaders. We suspect that many of them have lost the capacity to imagine themselves in opposition to anything that government does, now that the face of the president is black. But like we said, there have always been at least two NAACPs.
Based in Atlanta, B ruce A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report and can be reached at bruce.dixon(at)blackagendareport.com.
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Ben Jelous
NAACP head Ben Jelous, endorsed Michelle Alexanders book, the New Jim Crow, about mass incarceration.
At the same time, Roy Wilkins
At the same time, Roy Wilkins and Thurgood Marshall worked with the FBI to purge the NAACP of leftists, many of whom were the bones and flesh of local NAACP chapters. Fortunately they failed to get them all.
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THE NEGRO PROJECT
THE NAACP MADE 100YR.AND I ASK THE QUESTION WHO IS THE FOUNDER AND WHAT WAS HER PURPOSE, MISS OVINGTON HAD AND ANGENDA WITH HELP OF SPINARN THE NAACP HAS BEEN UNDER JEWISH CONTROL FOR MOST IT'S 100YR.THE FOUNDER OF PLAN PARENT HOOD MARGARET SANGER USED MEMBERS OF THE NAACP FOR HER NEGRO PROJECT. THE ? IS THE NAACP A FRONT FOR EUGENICS.FOR MORE GO TO www.drybonesconnection.com
South African Jew, Tony Karon...and Uri Avnery
April 21st, 2008
Of Matzoh Balls and Mythology
Guest columnist: Uri Avnery. On the day of the first seder, the legendary Israeli peace campaigner Avnery mailed out a fascinating piece deconstructing some of the “Exodus” mythology, and examining its nationalist purposes. I’m glad he’s agreed to me republishing his work. Pesach is a time of asking questions, of course, and I’ve always wondered about the implausibility of some aspects of Jewish history as it had been passed down to me: Just look around you at the seder table, and ask yourself, do these people look like they could be descendants of the residents of Biblical Judea? (emphasise mine) And remember, we’re told that this is a pretty closed bloodline; it’s a heritage supposedly passed on genetically through Jewish mating. Well, just look around the table and ask yourself, did the Judeans actually look anything like this?.....
Obviously not, at least not at the Seders I’ve been to. So, plainly, we’ve been sold a pile of goods somewhere along the line. (emphasis mine) Clearly, there’s been conversion on a mass scale. And I’d picked up scraps of information suggesting that the Jews did, in fact, vigorously proselytize and convert members in the centuries before the Roman Empire helped create Catholicism.
I’d recently noted the provocative work of the Israeli historian Shlomo Sand, whose new book When and How the Jewish People Was Invented makes the case that Ashkenazi Jews are mostly descendants of the Turkic Khazars of Central Europe, who converted en masse to Judaism around the 10th Century, while the Sephardim are rooted in Berber tribes in North Africa who did likewise. The most likely descendants of the original Judeans, he argues, are in fact the Palestinians — that’s because the “exile” and forcible dispersion by the Romans never happened, he argues; it was a myth. Most of the Judean Jews remained on the land, and later converted to Christianity and Islam.
It’s mischievous stuff, of course, and I don’t know what to make of it — I’m not entirely sure if I can buy his idea that this whole narrative of exile and wandering was created by 19th century German-Jewish nationalists — I’d be curious to know to what extent the same narrative was present among the Sephardim, who were largely immune to Zionism until it became their own <i>nakbah</i> in 1948. I don’t know the answers, of course, but I think Sand is asking some questions that need to be asked. Clearly, there are gaping holes in the version of Jewish history popularized during the Zionist moment.
So I’m glad Uri Avnery had a more developed take than I do.
The Lion and the Gazelle
By Uri Avnery
Go read the whole thing, fascinating, PROVACTIVE, as the truth typically is.
http://tonykaron.com/2008/04/21/of-matzoh-balls-and-mythology/
Myth vs. Reality: Check out Greenwald at Salon on Cronkite
Greenwald has a nice piece at Salon about Vietham and Walter Cronkite and references the uniqueness of David Halberstam and Cronkite's take on Vietnam in contrast to today's media stars. Title is: "Celebrating Cronkite while ignoring what he did." There's a great quote he cites from Halberstam concerning the current state of affairs:
"Somewhere in there, gradually, but systematically, there has been an abdication of responsibility within the profession, most particularly in the networks. . . . So, if we look at the media today, we ought to be aware not just of what we are getting, but what we are not getting; the difference between what is authentic and what is inauthentic in contemporary American life and in the world, with a warning that in this celebrity culture, the forces of the inauthentic are becoming more powerful all the time."
Greenwald goes on to make this deft oberservation:
"All of that was ignored when he (Halberstam) died, with establishment media figures exploiting his death to suggest that his greatness reflected well on what they do, as though what he did was the same thing as what they do (much the same way that Martin Luther King's vehement criticisms of the United States generally and its imperialism and aggression specifically have been entirely whitewashed from his hagiography)."
(During the last 2 years or so of the Obama campaign we witnessed first-hand the media white-washing of King's Legacy the perverse transformation of reality to myth). How do we confront reality when "mythology" has primacy?
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/07/18/cronkite/index.html
The passing of Glenn Greenwald
So, OK, nice little game of hide and seek along with a little self promotion goin' along w/your perpetratin' a fraud.
Are you finished playing the Black , Jewish Anatole Broyard yet?
Be careful not to choke on that Gin soaked Olive this evening.
I don't think that's Glen Greenwald typing a comment
It is odd to see so many nonsequitors...
Ah! The Joys of Paranoia
You're probably right. But after reading some of his writing, The similarities in style struck me as possibly no coincident; but that could have just have been my Psychosis getting the best of me again. Yet, there are some very clever folks out there lookin' to pull a fast one where they can.
Now that I have your attention: what's with the olive/gin thing?
I like Glenn Greenwald's work. What's with the Jewish
reference? (I'm a Jew, old woman.) He hardly needs to use a fake
name and nonsequitors to get attention. Some people
like changing the subject in a comment,which diverts
the whole thread. He, Greenwald, has his "territory" of media
critique and observations/criticisms of gov't, areas he
likes to cover. So here we are, discussing the comment
that got us here, and diverted from the good article.
The Olive/Gin was a reference
The Olive/Gin was a reference to Enlightened Cynic's comment that "it would be nice to insult me face to face over a stiff cocktail." An inside joke ,if you will.
As far Mr. Greenwald is concerned; I was allowing my imagination to run with the fantastic notion that E. C. was him and in that case he would have been passing as African American and Jewish; the way that Anatole Broyard(Do you know who he is?) passed for being a white literary critic. It was not meant seriously. I was playing with an idea that's all. And the main reason that allowed my mind to take that turn of imagination is, that I know of writers whom have anonamously impersonated an identity of someone from another ethinity or religion than their own (for example) as a way of getting a story and or fictional ideas flowing by enaging in a dialogue with others.
But, as I said, it was in jest.
Thanks. I've discovered, in my short time online, that humor
is often missed by the reader, in comments. I suppose, if I'd remember-
ed the whole thread of comments, I'd have picked it up
better. I know the name Anatole Broyard, but not much.
I promise to do my hw and go google his name, since
you were kind enough to spend the time explaining
my questions. PS I googled, read. Guess whose name
popped up: Prof. Henry L. Gates in a blog post about
Broyard. Having lived in NOLA, 1965-1967, I can
guess why Broyard wanted to pass and could. I know
Jews who have kept quiet about being Jews. (Not me)
What a country we live in! Make that world we live in.
A few days ago, I met someone from France who was
part Vietnamese (last name was Vietnamese).
to enlightened Cynic Just a thought
The below statement by you is very interesting to me.
He also irritates the shit out of me trying to give me Bible lessons, as if my parents didn't raise me in the church, or I got baptisized, and regardless of helping establish a new church. He has to know I am degreed. If I told him one of my degrees was a BA in world religion, I guarantee you if wouldn't change a thing. It just doesn't matter because in his world (and millions like him) I can't know more than him because I'm Black .
It reads as if you are intentionally resisting any possible,deeper connection to your colleague simply because he is white. Why should he have to know that you are degreed?...simply because you are articulate? You assume he has no interest in learning of your education. But, what if you told him that you held a degree in world religion, do you think his eyes would light up and be curious or do you think he would never talk to you again? I'm assuming the former would prevail, but then if it did, you would have to be forthcomming and share yourself with this person whom you've talked yourself into disliking.
That would be revolutionary man, we don't need the Governmental mind games bamboozeling us into or out of how we need to behave in our society amongst one another as men and women; we need them to give us the access to show em' that our humanity is still intact and ready for mother load of opportunity. Deprivation can drive any one or any popualtion of one's to lose their sense of self . Just for experimental purposes, Give that old white guy a chance to be more human than maybe he's been allowed to be with another; Extend yourself with what you're confindent with and if he bulks, turns red and quits his job, then you were right about him. But, if he sits down and says; Oh Yeah! Well then something fundamentally enlightening will take place in the process to be sure.
Just a thought.
To Cool Breeze
I appreciate the advice and apologize for being so nasty last week. My passion is often over the top.
My point was not to toot my horn at all or insist that he be impressed. I actually have graduate degrees I didn't disclose on the app. afterall don't want to overwhelm when I'm applying to play "rent a cop." I damn sure didn't tell them I went to law school. And one of the things I learned from my legal background is never to write or talk down to others. ( By talk down, I'm ommitting my repeated insults of others ). Good writing and talking occurs on a 6th grade level. I called him a "benign" racist because he's actually a good man from what I can tell. I don't believe he naturally, viscerally believe Blacks are worthless or complete idiots. I was attempting to explain what some called "White Privilege" and what I'd call presumptive superiority. In short, so many whites have been conditioned this way by society. (Think about what Biden said about Obama being "clean cut" and "articulate.) In his defense, he probably "lectures" to everyone. I just think it's difficult for the average white person to believe the average black is as smart or gifted or knowledgeable in whatever respect. And many don't "mean it" , there is no hardcore or intentional animus they are just conditioned to think it, so it comes naturally. (Understanding it causes it to be an "irritant" versus me "hating" the man). Obama harping on education as a bootstrap mechanism (and it is, but only to a degree) adds to the conditioning of many whites.
If we talk to our aunts, uncles and older siblings, or cousins who've worked in a blue collar, factory setting, I'll believe you will hear tons of anectdotes that back up my assertion about unequal promotions there.
I don't think he'd be shunned by my degree in religion. I actually do engage him but only superficially, the Christian Conservative world view is rather Manichean and dogmatic so the conversation falters because it's not sublime and nuanced. And religion is nothing, if not sublime and nuanced, IMO.
There are a lot of decent white people, who, if they are comfortable with you, will manifest the attitude of presumptive superiority (my term), hence, again, I call it "benign" or institutionalized racism. They'll let their hair down and something will "slip." Think of what I'm asserting in the context of sterotyping.
psychological war fare
No sweat, apology accepted. I generally don't take such rants personally and that was actually mild compared to what I've received from a cousin of mine as a result of my criticizing and not voting for Obama. In times like these it is understandable that tops blow and tempers flare, but what's important, when the smoke clears, is that we are able to distinguish the meat from the fat surrounding it and get down to business in the ways afforded us wherever we be. I am also relieved by your personal revelations that my suspicions of there being another, more or equally complex layer residing beneath the one being presented were tuned into the duality that I gleaned in our previous exchange. I was baffled.
I agree with you about the inequality in the work place whether it is Blue or White collar and affirmative action which I have never supported , in my opinion, is the antitheses of equal opportunity. (Another one of those Governmental paternalism's that work to reinforce what you term "Presumptive Superiority" in the white population while simultaneously bestowing its converse, "Presumptive Inferiority" upon its Black population, whom Obama instructs to wipe itself clean of. Maybe when Obama with his cabinet or the senate, or the AIC, or the DNC next he can advise its predominantly white attendees that there needs to be a change in their mindset; that their delusions of grandeur concerning their "Presumed Superiority" has similar debilitating limitations and is also self defeating. But, since that ain't going to happen; we got to find some way of getting the Black and White masses as well as the Hispanics ( whom Obama is trotting a bee line towards to secure their vote in four years) that he may well be what the fat cats drug in, but it's last weeks meat loaf and we donwannanomo'.
And I know its a rigorous up hill to climb; I get the hand wave and the smirked dismissals by young and old alike, because I can't relate to the current brand of youthful optimism. Yet, they need to learn that what's taken as optimism in the youth is only Naivete, and that authentic, mature optimism is borne out of having ones dream takin' out of hand and thrown in the gutter; from being shoved to the ground or having your ass kicked and getting back up to start over with the same idea but with another plan. As Jack Johnson expressed, he was a brunette in a Blond town, but he did not stop steppin'. And I would apply that trope to another one of my personal heroes, Bayard Rustin; he refused to let the white or the Black establishment dictate what kind of man he was going to be. He taught us so much and it is my opinion , a shame that we still today, refuse to accept his accomplishments in the fullness of what they were and how they shaped our political history. The myths we create and use to define our struggles are and can be as equally stultifying as those that are and have been created as the basis for that struggle. We have to be honest with who we are in all of our diversity and complex manifestations in this country. And that can transpire on individually, benign terrain or it can encompass our collective persona. We cannot afford to allow the half stepping of past leadership such as that often undertaken by the NAACP, The Urban League, SCLC, or the Black Panther Party for example to divide us up into its self imposed concepts of what constitutes proper leadership of the politic based upon narrow mindedness. They all, in their unique ways, equal paternalistic Governance. So, in some twisted fashion, Obama and his crew are aware of that being a language that African Americans may very well respond to. This is as some have always perceived it, psychological war fare.
Enjoy your Sunday.
Please flesh out your concepts in more detail
"The myths we create and use to define our struggles are and can be as equally stultifying as those that are and have been created as the basis for that struggle."
This is a simple but profound statement. I've been mulling over this concept of "myth" lately and concluded that, despite the advent of the "Information Age," myth is more powerful than reality. Which relates back to what I've written about Institutional Racism. The "myth" of America, what is depicted in mass culture and mass media outweighs the reality. It's difficult to reconcile the currents of history when the waves of mythology come crashing down. I have enjoyable, spirited discussions with a White acquaintance about myriad political subjects; you can't convince him that, as a consequence of breaking Japan's code, there was no necessity of dropping the A-bomb. And a healthy dose of his rationalization comes from the anecectdotal "evidence" of WWII vets, hence, the power of "myth making."
You have some interesting observations on race, assimilation, integration, affirmative action and so on. Are you in favor of class/income based remedies in lieu of race-based affirmative action, or what substitute if any, do you propose? I'm interested (as no doubt are others) in hearing you articulate some things you've written, other than striving for individiual excellence, how African Americans can overcome discrimination, especially since it appears you eschew what some call "nation building" or what can be destilled down to economic self-help IMO?
How do you create opportunites and economies in ghettos, or do you care? If job opportunities are increasingly contingent on social networking, how does a Black man from Newark who graduates from Rutgers, who has no car, doesn't drink or golf, doesn't own a personal computer, and has little resources going to "network." I'm bothered by this institutionalization of a concept like social networking. It strikes me as another building block or pillar of institutionalized racism. Society appears to accept it as a given, something accessible to everyone despite social, racial, monetary or gender barriers to actualizing "it" at it's fullest?
It's no secret why banking, investment banking or anything that has to do with $$ remains a White domain, if not a White AND male domain. In my field of municipal planning, how many Blacks or Hispanics are Directors of Economic Development who don't live in locales less than 25% African American?
Does the white power strucuture-- in it's political and business manifestations-- "trust" a Black man to make shit happen, to bring together the talent, ideas and capital to fuel economic development? Do they believe this man or woman can blend in with the "movers and shakers?" Do they have confidence in his ability to "navigate" to make the proper political compromises, which are often distinctly different from the commonweal?
Your critique of paternalism I understand in part, not in whole. I had a friend who often remarked "he'd wish Black folk woke up one day and discovered welfare was gone." A little extreme,- but I got his point about paternalism. What has the NAACP or Panthers failed to do in your opinion? It would be interesting to hear since you disparage two distinct outlooks?
You have some interesting ideas and concepts, it would probably be pleasant to "insult" you face to face over a stiff cocktail.
p.s. Unrelated topic. Are we going to discover that the banks "health" is due to investment banking, more of the same, and gouging us with fees versus lending, and that the "investing" has been the banksters buying HEAVILY DISCOUNTED TOXIC ASSETS at taxpayers expense?
Stay tuned folks, it's going to get interesting and Obama's approval numbers are likely to continue their slide. Only six months ago we were told the banks were collapsing, now they are paying millions in bonuses, and all the while the White's with pitchforks in the GOP are screaming socialism. Again, and Again, myth trumps reality.
I hope this helps..
"The myths we create and use to define our struggles are and can be as equally stultifying as those that are and have been created as the basis for that struggle."
Your interpreting the above statement that i wrote as Simple, but profound. I would argue that it is simple and profound or maybe, like nature, it is profound because it is simple. And I mean simple in the way that nature inspires awe because of the complex adaptations to environmental particulars that any given species has situated into universal, simple direct actions that it undertakes to insure its survival. And how that pertains to the myths concerning a peoples political struggles and the NAACP(for example) is related to one very important myth, concerning the modern Civil Rights movement and that being the one of having presented Rosa Parks to us as a simple seamstress who on one special day simply decided that she’s had enough and refused to give her seat to a white man; and in so doing, sparked the movement. And for anyone who knows that history, knows that she may very well have been tired, but she was not a mere humble seamstress on her way home from work. She was an astutely placed and specifically chosen/volunteer agitator, who besides being a seamstress, was the unofficial secretary to E.D.Nixon, a pullman Porter who headed one of the South's most active chapters of the NAACP. What this myth and others like it do, such as the one of Dr. King being not only responsible for the march on Washington, but responsible for the passing of the Civil Rights bills, is hide the relevance of cold, hard political facts and strategies undertaken by those lesser known figures and replace it with moral absolutism's that blind the masses to them, hence developing and reinforcing its dependence on those manipulating power to assume the role of parent/guardian. The public has a right and a need to know what all of its available options are in combating discrimination and oppression. Not just those that any prominent organization representing it deems appropriate in order to satisfy its Washington based underwriters. Let the people decide who’s ideas make the most political sense. And I didn’t mean to make a direct comparison between the NAACP and The Black Panther Party, only an indirect one in as far it reflects different Paternalist tendencies in our would be leaders. And I’m not sure if the comment from your friend regarding well fare recipients is meant as wish for the need of such dependencies to vanish or an indictment against them for having become dependent on it like their impoverished White counterparts.
I am a visual artist, jazz musician and poet and for the past few years have been dividing my self between here and Europe and history and philosophy are personal interest and hobbies. I am not, unlike yourself, degreed. I am self taught in all of my endeavors and disciplines. And concerning your question of opportunities in the Ghetto. Well, having been borne and raised in a Black one on the mid Atlantic sea board( and I didn’t get out and up, I simply excursioned myself out on exploration; I don’t own anything but my Instruments and materials to create with along with working as a carpenter and welder to pick up the slack , of which there is plenty of these days) It is my experience that opportunity and Ghetto make poor bed partners, at least for those who live in them, and the only inclusive and expansive opportunities to be had are those that reside outside of it. And not withstanding the fact that imbuing the Ghetto’s with the right economic opportunities would eliminate the need for them to exist; the only opportunities available in the Ghetto’s have been those afforded college/ex-college students ,artist and social workers with their naive pretentious and Government funded Band Aid programs that after they’ve packed up and gone, leave much incomplete as well as many feelings of exploitation and abandonment. And while growing up, I experienced a number of such remedial intentions; I never did recognize any of those would be do-gooders as any of the folks that were able to move their families up and out of it.
My proposals are no different than the ones already out there belonging to those who want an end to military spending, an end to the countries abandonment of its work force, an end to the useless and backwards two party political machinations that (relating to my earlier points hid from the public, even the left politics being offered from one of the Democrat’s own, Dennis Kuszcinych?); an end to the privatization of our public, tax payer funded institutions including the neighborhood Schools and the Libraries, and end to the CIA Drug Cartel, implementation of single payer health care, equal housing and educational opportunities. After twenty years of affirmative action, I would ask that some one please show me the data that refutes it as being anything but an utter failure and dupe job. Not to mention its disastrous effects on integration in communities, schools or the work place. Those whites that appose it as discrimination and not only against themselves, they are correct, it is. Is that what we want…. more wrongs that pretend to be rights. No, the people need to fight for it, politically, in demanding a leveling of the playing field of equitable economic attainability for it to engage in its freedoms. And that can only happen if the mass polity bombards the Government into committing to stop investing in Wars and the Annexing of satellite nations/or states and begin to invest it at home. The resources are there, as we have recently seen from what the Banking Industry shows as profit and awards it crooks with. Affirmative action is not a political victory, it is a political placebo. And Obama is the personification and proof that the ruling majority need something stronger than rain check diplomacy with which to placate the people with while it conducts business as usual.
Nikki Giovanni once commented that she didn’t think that Black people really wanted to be free because they were not demanding and fighting for it enough. I don’t agree with that totally. For, one has to ask, what exactly is and or has become our concept of freedom and equality after the legal battles for them were fought and won? Well, as Henry Lewis Gates Jr. reflected on over a decade ago: what ever it means to us, we will find ourselves ever increasingly demanding it from the Black middle and upper classes as much as from their white counterparts. To answer your last query as whether the white Banker, Financier, big cheese or whatever we want to call him can trust a Black man to attend to and deliver the political compromises that he expects and needs to get the job done. Well, my answer is yes and our new president is that man.
And as far as pleasant insults are concerned; have you ever read that story by Zora Neal Hurston entitled “Uncle Monday” ?
If not, I recommend it, for your Cyber Spacial Presents bears an uncanny resemblance to the central character in it.
Bottom's up!
Yes Daddy, OK Daddy.....
President Obama: “Government programs alone won’t get our children to the Promised Land. We need a new mindset, a new set of attitudes, because one of the most durable and destructive legacies of discrimination is the way we've internalized a sense of limitation, how so many in our community have come to expect so little from the world and from themselves.”
This is, in my opinion, an exemplary case of the divide and conquer psych-out strategy if there ever was one. And it also reveals the prescience of Mr. Dixon's piece as it concerns itself with the nature of a house divided on how that house aught to be built or in the case of recent events fall down. And I'm not referring to the divisions of one ethnicity and another, that continues to fuel the country's "victim vs perpetrator dichotomy.But, the disruptive back stabbing and biting that has been an historical part of the struggle for freedom within various camps of the NAACP for example that constitute one form of the dividing up of African Americans. And from a purely political standpoint, given the fact that it is power that all politicians aspire to for good or bad or right or wrong agendas; it is an unavoidable and inherent characteristic and will remain so.
However, with that as it is. The very notion that the (African American) President of the United States would point his anointed dictum in the direction of a peoples collectively incurred (over centuries) psychological challenges imposed upon it by its own Government and relieving it of the bulk of that responsibility; reveals that not only does Obama not share any true cultural allegiance (and I not suggesting moral provisions here) to that collective, it also gives a strong accounting of his paternalistic philosophies that inform his politics which can lead to the worst kind of despotism.
It is also, not only a slap, but the vigorous arm shaking that comes after it when the parent or that one assuming the role of parent ask if you understand what's expected you, the child.
What I'm getting at is, what Obama is attempting , with his reminding us that we have come to expect so little of our selves and don't know what's good for us, is once again, like W. Wilson and J.F.K. before him, robbing those of us (of which I am not ) who's vote for him signaled a seemingly mature decision on its collective behalf , of the fortitude and self determination (however wickedly deceived) and self appreciation that comes with believing that it does after all have a voice that is finally heard. He is placing defeat back into the hand that believed it held a victory. And what really, does this elitist man of privilege know about debilitating psychological limitations, real or imagined? It is a sly deconstruction of the myth that gave him a victory in order to maintain the greater one. Reminding us that the carrot is not supposed to be obtained.
He could have saved a lot of time, by simply repeating what Kennedy demanded of us. "Ask not what your country can do for you, but how far you can bend over for your country that has nothing but a continuation of constructive limitations for itself along with an unlimited supply of divisive, deconstructive rhetoric when it comes to what its people expect from it.
And that as disillusioning as it may be, is instructive and serves to enlighten us further, because enlightenment is a process not a destination; maybe, hopefully, if and when the masses unravel this riddle, it will spur us to see where our strengths of diversity can bind rather than work to divide us with us or us with whom we perceive as them.
Not every NAACP conference attendee buys this nonsense
Is there anyone on the planet, regardless of their color, status and circumstances who doesn't understand, appreciate or attempt to actualize the benefits of education, vocational training, or self improvement in whatever form or forum that takes place? Billions of people on this planet don't make "excuses" for their plight. On the contrary they bust their ass attempting to improve their lot and pull themselves up by their boots whether or not they can afford the straps.
This morning on NPR I was pleased to hear comments from a middle-aged Black male NAACP member and I would sum up his critique of Obama's sermoninizing on education as follows: African Americans have been listening to and preached to concerning the benefits of education for over 30 years. And now, 30 years later we hear the same crap. And what Obama DELIBERATELY ignores is that there are tens of thousand of African Americans, 40 and over, who HAVE OBTAINED their education, who have put their noses to the grind stone, who have attempted to fit into and excel in their organizations, and YET remain the last hired, last promoted and first fired. In other words, this gentlemen argued that for over 30 years we've played by the rules but little has changed, and now what?
For every white fireman who complains about reverse discrimination there are 50 African Americans who were passed over for management or promotional opportunities in favor of less competent, more ill-tempered, crony-driven Whites. By example, go to any plant or facility in American and you'll find hundreds if not thousands of Black men or women, 45, 50 and over who literally and figuratively trained their "supervisor" to "supervise" them. They were not promoted because in the world of White American it is improbable if not impossible that any Black person could be smarter than them. I would go a step further and argue that being docile, compliant, cronies, and spineless trumps competency in America (regardless of color). I deal with this shit in my P-T security job. The 68 year old white guy who retired from a foundary can't help but educate, train and enlighten me every weekend. It matters not they all we do is babysit an empty building in the middle of cornfields and write down the PSI for the sprinkler system and the temp in a refrigerated room every hour. He also irritates the shit out of me trying to give me Bible lessons, as if my parents didn't raise me in the church, or I got baptisized, and regardless of helping establish a new church. He has to know I am degreed. If I told him one of my degrees was a BA in world religion, I guarantee you if wouldn't change a thing. It just doesn't matter because in his world (and millions like him) I can't know more than him because I'm Black . He's also like millions of White Americans who believe the US can do no wrong. His racism is "benign" but completely toxic. And Obama's education meme feeds into his benign racism.
I knew Obama wouldn't discuss ACHIEVABLE as well as FAIR/EQUITABLE legislative goals like crack vs. powerder cocaine sentencing disparities, he could have said something about how he would use the Bankster bailout to make sure the Black wealth accumlated during the last decade was going to be recovered, and most importantly, he said little of nothing about what he will do per the economy and legislation to ease the pain of those NAACP members who scrapped together their resources to even make it to the convention,-- by and large, educated and accomplished individuals. He didn't even "scold" us with something practical like prisoner re-entry solutions/initiatives. The White House promised a "restrained" speech and Booker T delivered on cue. (Maybe the teleprompter should have fell on his head?).
Happily or sadly (depending upon your strategic outlook). Shits about to hit the fan. Obama is going to have to address the concerns of the caller on NPR as he is forced to address the same concerns amongst educated whites who see unemployment rates showing no signs of abating and little in the way of an economic recovery for the working, middle class. And as I predicted here at BAR months ago, by signing on lock, stock to the Bankster Bailout Obama has tied himself into a corner.
Another Tired Lecture
Why is it that this bozo feels he can always condescend to people of color if they are Black? Nobody needs his foolish words that someone else wrote for him to spew.
I heard that idiotic remark regarding his reference to cultural deadenders like basketball and rap folk and am not surprised that he thinks that is all Black folk and Black youth can relate to. Who are the people he knows that they have no more desires than what he said? My nephew just turned 3 and he already aspires to more than what the bozo 's smarmy remarks indicate.
Where does he get the idea that he is worthy of anything except a war crimes trial?
He has nothing to say to me and I would like him to stop pretending that he believes in anything other than mayhem and murder and death and adulation for himself.
He disgusts me.
I am trying to find out about the anti-war protestors outside the place when BO was spewing his crap but so far have only been able to find a columnist of color trashing the protestors and acting as if the charlatan is king.
¡Qué lastima!
N.A.A.C.P. Hosting Army Recruiters
I see the Army recruiters are helping the N.A.A.C.P. celebrate its 100th anniversary by signing up bodies for America's Military Industrial Complex at the convention in New York City.
http://www.democrats.com/node/19827
Obama Speech To NAACP
If Booker T Washington and Thomas Beatie had a child, they'd name it Barack Obama. At best, he's a pressure release valve for the status quo. At worst, he's just another corporate concubine mascarading as a public servant.
I saw Obama's speech to the NAACP, and unfortunately, Obama continued on, as brother Dixon put: it turning the event into another "Sista souljah Moment". while issueing no guidiance as to what policies his administration would promote to combat our prison industial complex. Also, there was no mentioning of the the extreme wealth disparity between black and white families, nor any solutions to that disaprity in which the net worth of the average black family is only 10% of the average white family.
DID OBAMA MENTION
the 50% black male unemployment in the same city he gave his speech?
Obama's comments to NAACP re being 'good parents'
Instead of lecturing African-Americans about being 'good parents', Obama ought to lecture white americans.
He should tell white parents to learn how to raise their children so they do not grow up to be bigots like Jeff Sessions, blow-hards like Limbaugh, murderers like gbush et all, etc.
Ellenr, you're right but
you know that will never happen.
Obama is the "CEO" of the "Corporate Branch"
I just heard NPR say that White House aides said we should expect his speech to be "restrained." I take that to mean a bunch of homilies and bromides about the history of the NAACP and a scolding or 2.
I also heard that this week a federal district court judge refused to implement the draconian crack cocaine sentencing guidelines citing signals from the Obama Justice Department that the disparities (100:1) between crack and powder cocaine sentences is "under review." I would be surprised if Obama makes any statements regarding restructuring the sentencing guidelines, he's afraid the Fox, Limbaugh AND NY Times Op ed pages will crucify him as being "soft on crime." A favorite and constant them of right wingers dating back to Nixon if not "law and order" on the plantation.
There may be several reasons for the NAACP's demise and irrelevancy. I'll offer a few: (1) the corporatizing that Bruce describes, (2) a sitting Board whose's size alone is completely unweildly and conducive to fractured and personality-driven decision-making (we've all sat on similar boards a time or two??), (3) poor national and local leadership in general notwithstanding wonderful examples that exist. The older leadership is typically close-minded, doesn't nurture or mentor younger leadership, and a lot of the younger leaders are poorly trained or just plain misguided, or do it for personal ambition. Just this week alone, our local NAACP president intervened into a situation involving the police and a young black man seeking hospital treatment. This 24 year old parolee is suspected of receiving the gunshot fleeing the scene from a police returning fire. 24 hours later it's on the front page of the paper that dude had been shot twice in 3 months. Not exactly the situation that merits the political capital spent.
I see many other instances of poor examples of "protest" politics across the nation by local NAACPs. (And I also believe a lot of good works go unreported). Last, and most significally IMO, the NAACP has failed to articulate an economic development agenda and strategy, even something as basic and what to do with vacant and dilapidated housing and strip malls cutting across huge swaths of predominantly black census tracts, but in many instances PRIME REAL ESTATE OPPORTUNITIES. I visited their website and clicked on "Programs," their economic agenda consisted of essentially informed purchasing decisions, consumerism, nothing about leveraging capital or starting a business, or even contract compliance. To put it not so nicely, it was about "begging." "We'll buy from you if you hire a few of us." As sensible as it is weak. And "begging" from corporate donors and depending upon the "hearts and minds" of major corporations to "do right by us" has neutered the effectiveness and relevancy of the NAACP.
Not so long ago the NAACP verged on bankruptcy. If Blacks won't or can't finance their freedoms than what do you expect??
If the "corporate" branch of the NAACP could leverage capital for and on behalf of the economic development activities of the local branches we might have a good starting point. Unfortunately, I don't see it in the tea leaves. The convention will likely turn into an Obama lovefest, he will use them, they will use him oblivious to the fact that his Presidency (and his silence and cooption) provides fodder for deconstruting all of their hard-won gains.
Btw, NPR has, surprise, surprise, Juan Williams of course, explaing the role of the NAACP.
I AGREE !!!
AND I AGREE ONCE MORE !!!!
Thank you for the history. Update:Nellie Bailey demo video
Before I knew him, Tom Dent, journalist and playwright
worked for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, around
196l, going from city, town and rural areas visiting with
activists. (I met him in 1965 when my spouse was
hired to be Dent's partner as community organizer
in the antipoverty program in NOLA; we remained
friends, with a gap, renewed in the 1990s.)
Tom Dent went back to all the places he'd been
when he worked for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund
visiting the same people, those still alive. He wrote
"Southern Journey" of the experience, published just
before his too-early death in the late 1990s.
(The NYTimes obit left out his 2 years of community
organizing work in NOLA and I have not been able to
interest any group in making the correction to their
material about Thomas C. Dent online.)
(How the NYTimes "writes" history is another topic.)
There is some interesting history of housing in
"The Arc of Justice", (how the North got segregated),
in a story about self-defense, as a black physician's newly
purchased home in a white area was attacked, in Detroit.
. I
mention it because it has material on the NAACP in
the roll of the defense, local and national.
Update: video of Nellie Bailey speaking at protest
(Harlem Antiwar Coaltion)
outside NAACP convention on www.wbaix.org &others
It is running now, but if not onscreen, got to the
ON-DEMAND section, also check scroll under
screen for news/updates.