John McWhorter says that the NAACP has lost its way. Here is an excerpt:
[The NAACP] should be working on specific cures to specific ills: creating a culture of achievement among black students, addressing the AIDS crisis in black communities and fostering constructive relationships between police forces and residents of minority neighborhoods.
These real problems are being addressed, but not by the NAACP. The National Urban League forges ties between blacks and corporate America. The Rev. Eugene Rivers' Ten-Point Coalition is spreading from Boston to other cities, getting wayward black youth off of the streets and into constructive lives. Operation Hope in Los Angeles helps poor minorities get home loans. Geoffrey Canada has the nation's attention with his Harlem Children's Zone program, blanketing 60 underprivileged blocks with a raft of uplift programs presented to each resident in the district, door by door.
The NAACP was the driving legal force behind the end of segregation. Thurgood Marshall, Spottswood Robinson and their cadre of brilliant litigators from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund led the fight against Jim Crow Laws. The NAACP also worked politically to pave the way for desegregation.
Today, the NAACP is simply picking the wrong fights. More than 75% of blacks favor school vouchers, the NAACP fights voucher programs. Education is the civil rights issue of the 21st Century and the NAACP has nothing useful to say.
Sad.
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