Is the NAACP demanding that it not be taken seriously?

The civil rights group passed a resolution condemning “bigotry within” the limited-government/constitutionalist Tea Party movement, as if there is any large group without idiots – and, in this case, inconsequential ones at that.

Four percent of Democrats – and 3 percent of Republicans – according to a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll, would refuse to vote for a black presidential candidate whose views mirror their own. That comes out to almost 3 million Democratic bigots. How does that compare with the number of presumed bigots within the Tea Party?

Julian Bond, NAACP chairman from 1998 until 2010, routinely called the entire Republican Party racist and fascist – and got away with it. These outrageous attacks – not unlike the waving of Bush/Hitler signs at anti-Bush rallies – provoked no indignation from those now hyperventilating over the Tea Party’s alleged “racist elements.”

My book about the declining significance of racism in America, “What’s Race Got to Do with It?” describes Bond’s vulgar attacks against President George W. Bush: “(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.” OK, this was before 9/11.

But in December 2001, three months after the terrorist attacks, Bond savaged Attorney General John Ashcroft: “He knows something about the Taliban, coming from, as he does, from that wing of American politics.” And in June 2004, at a Take Back America conference, Bond said, “(Republicans) draw their most rabid supporters from the Taliban wing of American politics.” And speaking at historically black Fayetteville State University in North Carolina, Bond said, “The Republican Party would have the American flag and the swastika flying side by side.”

Is it not racist to brand the entire GOP racist because an “insufficient” number of blacks chose to join it?

Despite America’s obvious progress toward the Rev. Martin Luther King’s vision of a colorblind society, Bond chose fighting racism as the NAACP’s No. 1 priority: “We want (the NAACP) to be a social justice organization. … Our mission is to fight racial discrimination and provide social justice. … We deal with the beast itself. … It is popular to say that we are in a post-civil rights period, but we don’t believe that.”

By “the beast,” Bond meant anti-black racism.

He wasn’t referring to issues that today threaten the prosperity, safety and integrity of the “black community” far more than does “the beast”: high urban dropout rates; the opposition to vouchers, which allows the continued near monopoly of underperforming inner-city government schools; the inability of workers to deposit their Social Security contributions into personal savings and investment accounts; teen pregnancy; never-wed fathers and never-wed mothers dependent upon government; the misguided endorsement of race-based college admissions, which lead to a disproportionately high dropout rate; and crime.

The leadership of the NAACP chooses to remain in a time warp. Its use of the race card as a weapon and a shield is cynical and manipulative, designed to keep the organization in the headlines without the need to redefine its priorities and policies.

In the ‘60s, NAACP member Prentice McKinney fought for civil rights in Milwaukee. “Back then,” he said, “the enemy was clear; it was white racists and racist police officers. It was a legalized system of segregation. And so the challenge was between the white establishment and the African-American population.” But after a long and often ugly struggle for racial equality, this is a different and better America. “Today,” McKinney said, “the African-American population is being destroyed by its own youth … an enemy from within. You have a population of older African-Americans … who are now afraid of the children in their own neighborhoods.” Addressing this is hard. It invites an accusation of “blaming the victim.” Far easier to cry, “Racism!”

In 1911, Booker T. Washington said: “There is (a) class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs – partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs. … There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don’t want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public.”

Some things never change. Some people don’t want them to.

COPYRIGHT 2010 LAURENCE A. ELDER
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