Mfume Out, But NAACP’s Troubles Remain
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson, AlterNet
Posted on December 2, 2004, Printed on December 2, 2004
NAACP President Kweisi Mfume said all the right things when he announced his resignation. He praised the work of the organization, its top officials, promised to seek new challenges, and said he’d spend more time with his family. Despite Mfume’s sweetness and light words, he bailed out at a time when trouble is brewing for the nation’s oldest civil rights organization. The membership has stagnated, and the IRS is knocking hard on its door to see if it violated its non-partisan tax-exempt status with Bush bashing speeches by NAACP Chairman Julian Bond, and the NAACP’s over the top tout of Democratic candidates.
The NAACP can’t drum up new members because it has been missing in action in recent years on many of the crisis issues that tear black communities. The NAACP wasted valuable time, energy and resources fighting with South Carolina officials over whether the Confederate flag should be removed from the statehouse. The flag is a repulsive, antique symbol of the South’s grotesque racial past. But it’s just that, a symbol. If South Carolina had stuffed the flag in a museum vault, it would’ve been a hollow victory. It would not have saved one black farm, improved failing public schools, increased funds for historically black colleges, created more jobs, or reduced poverty for South Carolina’s blacks.
My first thought was/is an old one in many ways. Whenever I look at Julian Bond, I still think of him as a Creole, a Multi-or-biracial, an Anglo-Creole, perhaps, but barely brown, in all ways, nevertheless. Obviously, I must respect the fact that he identifies almost entirely (it seems to me) with his African heritage, but my visual “imprint” of him simply is “not-black”. — TheosoD’Rejean, MOXHCA/AMEA, Canada
12/5/2004 12:53:59 AM
From Earl Ofari Hutchinson’s article:At its last couple of conventions, Bond’s rag on Bush, and the NAACP’s dramatic announcement that it would call corporations on the carpet for not doing more to hire and promote blacks grabbed headlines.
Particularly reprehensible was Julian Bond disparaging Bush’s cabinet nominees as coming “from the Taliban wing of American politics.” I wrote about this in The “Black” Intelligentsia and that Taliban Comment.
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Religion without philosophy is sentimental and therefore fanatical; philosophy without religion is mental speculation.
12/6/2004 10:06:46 AM
Given My first thought was/is an old one in many ways. Whenever I look at Julian Bond, I still think of him as a Creole, a Multi-or-biracial, an Anglo-Creole, perhaps, but barely brown, in all ways, nevertheless. Obviously, I must respect the fact that he identifies almost entirely (it seems to me) with his African heritage, but my visual “imprint†of him simply is “not-black”. — TheosoD’Rejean, MOXHCA/AMEA, Canada
Given Mr. Bond’s age and the era in which he grew up, how could he have not identified as “black”? Moreover, what is wrong with his identifying culturally/ethnically as “black”? Obviously, Mr. Bond knows that he is of mixed-heritage but how is identification as “black” any different as someone who is Irish/Italian-American but considers himself more Italian?
Why should anyone question how Mr. Julian Bond chooses to identify himself?
12/13/2004 12:11:15 AM