Okay, Weigh In On The NAACP

[Urbane Guerrilla]

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."

[classicman]

Ok - go ahead and weigh in UG. What is your point? You mention the NAACP and then add a quote from 100 years ago.

[lookout123]

Weigh in? I think any organization designed to advance the cause of one segment of society is a divisive influence regardless of their honorable intentions.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

From Larry Elder, 22 July '10.

Brent Bozell, 20 July

And lastly:

And now this week, with the NAACP accusing the Tea Partiers of harboring racists, and conservatives demanding proof, the George Soros-backed Center for American Progress ran a 45-second video allegedly showing racism at the Tea Parties.

One of the videos shows an obvious liberal plant announcing, "I'm a proud racist!" Apparently this was their best shot, because they had to work this video into the montage twice, amid utterly innocuous posters, for example, saying, "God bless Glenn Beck." So I guess they didn't have anything better.

Here's the part Soros' people didn't show you: In the fuller video shown on the Glenn Beck show, the Tea Partiers surrounded the (liberal plant) racist, jeering at him, telling him he's not one of them and to go home. In a spectacularly evil fraud, all that was edited out.

Just hours later on MSNBC, Chris Matthews was loudly proclaiming that he would believe the Tea Partiers weren't racist when he sees "just one of those Tea Party people pull down one of those racist signs at the next Tea Party rally. I'm going to just wait. Reach over, grab the sign and tear it out of the guy's hands. Then I will believe you."

Well, here it was. The (liberal plant) racist was driven from the Tea Party by the Tea Partiers. But you won't see that. Like USDA official Shirley Sherrod's apparently racist comments excerpted this week from what was, in fact, a commendable speech about racial reconciliation, the alleged Tea Party racism was, literally, "taken out of context."

Ann Coulter -- always fun, always good for reminding us how much of a troglodyte you have to be to stay a "progressive," and seldom impeachable. If you refuse to read Ann Coulter, you should elevate your standards; they are not high enough.

. . . any organization designed to advance the cause of one segment of society is a divisive influence regardless of their honorable intentions.

Another way of remarking that synthetic discrimination, for instance of the Affirmative Action variety, is in the end no more attractive than the homemade variety.

[spudcon]

NAACP was founded by mostly Socialist Prpogressive white guys. The organization has remained true to its original philosophy. Unfortunately, most socialist organizations find it necessary to use subterfuge to get their agenda across. The American Liberal movement is right to be affiliated with the NAACP.

[TheMercenary]

NAACP is a racist organization.

[gvidas]

Arguing whether or not the NAACP, or Bleitbart, or Fox News, or anything else, is 'racist' is not a very useful conversation.

The point is whether or not the conversation about racial inequality is being advanced; whether what a person, or an organization, does furthers understanding or derails discussion.


Or, to take it further, Ta-Nehisi Coats: "'The Conversation on Race'" at The Atlantic:

Expecting an American conversation on race in this country, is like expecting financial advice from someone who prefers to not check their bank balance. It's not that the answers, themselves, are pre-ordained, its that we are more interested in answers than questions, in verdicts than evidence. [...]


Put bluntly, this is a country too ignorant of itself to grapple with race in any serious way. The very nomenclature--"conversation on race"--betrays the unseriousness of the thing by communicating the sense that race can be boxed from the broader American narrative, that you can somehow talk about Thomas Jefferson without Sally Hemmings; that you can discuss Andrew Jackson without discussing his betrayal of the black artillerymen who fought at the Battle of New Orleans; that you can discuss the suffrage without Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells or Frederick Douglass; that you can discuss temperance without understanding the support of the Klan; that you can discuss the path to statehood in Florida without discussing Fort Gadsen; that you can talk Texas without understanding cotton, and so on.

Ta-Nehisi writes a lot of great thoughts. Right now and for the next 4 and a half weeks or so he's hosting a bunch of guest-blogging. But his perspective on race in America is the most nuanced and reasonable that I have ever encountered:

The NAACP's announcement initially struck me in much the same the way. But some hours of considering this have proven to me that my initial skepticism says more about the broad American narrative of race and racism, then it does about the justness of the NAACP's charge.

I think it's worth, first, considering the record of American racism, and then the record of the Tea Party and its allies. Racism tends to attract attention when it's flagrant and filled with invective. But like all bigotry, the most potent component of racism is frame-flipping--positioning the bigot as the actual victim. So the gay do not simply want to marry, they want to convert our children into sin. The Jews do not merely want to be left in peace, they actually are plotting world take-over. And the blacks are not actually victims of American power, but beneficiaries of the war against hard-working whites. This is a respectable, more sensible, bigotry, one that does not seek to name-call, preferring instead change the subject and strawman. Thus segregation wasn't necessary to keep the niggers in line, it was necessary to protect the honor of white women.

Emphasis added. Excerpt from "The NAACP Is Right", Ta-Nehisi Coats @ The Atlantic.

[spudcon]

I can't understand all this going on, since Obama promised a "Post Racial America."

[Spexxvet]

I think it's a shame that a minority has to have an organization just to try to even the playing field.

[Trilby]

They're still not as racist as the SCLC

[Sheldonrs]

To me, it's like unions, PETA and The ACLU. All good ideas at the start but now they've either become more of what they fought against or just more trouble than they are worth.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Wot Shel sed.

[classicman]

Originally Posted by Sheldonrs

To me, they've either become more of what they fought against or just more trouble than they are worth.

and the cost ... Its the money, well 86% of the time anyway.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by gvidas;673145The point is whether or not the [i

conversation about racial inequality[/i] is being advanced; whether what a person, or an organization, does furthers understanding or derails discussion.

Based on what the NAACP did, no.

[quote]I think it's worth, first, considering the record of American racism, and then the record of the Tea Party and its allies. Racism tends to attract attention when it's flagrant and filled with invective. But like all bigotry, the most potent component of racism is frame-flipping--positioning the bigot as the actual victim. So the gay do not simply want to marry, they want to convert our children into sin. The Jews do not merely want to be left in peace, they actually are plotting world take-over. And the blacks are not actually victims of American power, but beneficiaries of the war against hard-working whites. This is a respectable, more sensible, bigotry, one that does not seek to name-call, preferring instead change the subject and strawman. Thus segregation wasn't necessary to keep the niggers in line, it was necessary to protect the honor of white women.[quote] So what the NAACP did was flip the message of the Tea Party activists and call them racists in an effort to stifle their message.