NAACP: Racist to blacks

By Jon Dougherty

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is
interested in “advancing” the cause of blacks.

Well, some blacks, anyway. But not all blacks; only those who
toe the NAACP’s political line get NAACP “support” and praise.

Like “women’s rights” groups who, ironically, defended President Bill
Clinton when his trysts with Paula Jones, Gennifer Flowers and Monica
Lewinsky were made public, the NAACP is also picking and choosing —
hypocritically — the “causes” it will take up on behalf of blacks.

For example, black lawmakers who supported a South Carolina measure
removing the Confederate battle flag from atop the capitol building in
Columbia to a “place of honor” elsewhere on statehouse grounds were
labeled “weak-kneed, shifty-eyed, back-bending” legislators by the
NAACP’s leader, Kwesi Mfume.

Could you imagine the outcry from the establishment leftist media if
someone like David Duke had made such remarks? The outcry of “racist!”
would still be reverberating throughout the countryside.

Yet, those comments can be equally equated with racism as it condemns
people because of their ethnic makeup, albeit in a back-door manner.

Early last week

Mfume blasted black lawmakers
for having the audacity to support the compromise legislation passed by the South Carolina legislature. As far as Mfume and the rest of the NAACP leadership is concerned, any display of a Confederate flag is inherently racist, let alone a display that is placed anywhere near “official” buildings on state-owned ground.

For that “injustice,” black legislators were subjected to a blistering attack from Mfume.

“We need to embrace all the candidates who have embraced us. And we want to defeat all those who did not … Democrat or Republican,” he blared last week at the NAACP convention. Even if they’re black.

According to a study conducted in early 1998 by Rachael Simmons-Northcross, a student at Spelman College and the University of Rochester in New York, though plenty of historical evidence exists about white-on-black racism, she said “there is also the existence of interracial color discrimination-blacks discriminating against each other on the basis of color.

“Origins of color discrimination stem from slavery, but even after slavery, distinctions by society and within the African-American community were made relative to color,” the study said.

The study admits that there isn’t much data “out there” discussing black-on-black racism; but it concludes that it exists.

Mfume’s tirade against members of his own ethnic group also proves it.

But what’s different about this kind of racism is that it doesn’t “discriminate” based on ethnicity; it discriminates based primarily on ideology.

In another vein, Mfume and other black liberals blame members of their own race for failing to toe the liberal/socialist line. For some predetermined reason, liberals insist that all blacks believe in a single set of values and ideals and there can be no dissent or difference of opinion.

That’s inherently racist — and it’s as racist as if a white were making the same claims.

Columnist Richard Dixon, who says he is a “former Black conservative,” wrote in Black Oklahoma Today (home state of Rep. J.C. Watts, a conservative black Republican), that “Black Conservatism finds its roots in White Conservatism. Its elements are a total belligerency to present day black leadership, an indifferent attitude to the historic struggle of the African-American experience, an elitist view of the urban poor, and a total disconnection with the black populace in general.”

In reality, that statement does little more than criticize all blacks who don’t aspire to NAACP or other liberal black standards, even if they don’t consider themselves political conservatives. Dixon also implies that black conservatives are little more than mindless “slaves” to white conservatives, but he doesn’t draw a similar line between white and black liberals. Hypocrisy. Blatant hypocrisy. It isn’t about labels; it’s about ideology. Period.

“It is from a white elitist perspective that such black conservatives like Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell, and Shelby Steele derive their notions about the state of Black America in this country,” Dixon continued. “They harbor, embrace, and validate these notions to the detriment of African-Americans and add fuel to a widening racial polarization.”

But these black conservatives would disagree, saying instead that what they believe is a product of their own conclusions and life experiences. In other words, they’ve made up their own minds and do not have to be told what and how to think by the likes of an activist like Mfume and his NAACP.

So, do you see how it works? If a black liberal makes a statement, he or she makes it from a presumed position of “authority” and based on his or her own thoughts and conclusions; such pronouncements are the final thoughts on the subject and they are automatically correct.

If, however, any black disagrees with the liberal socialist ideal, he or she is “belligerent” to the “cause of blacks” and is only doing so on the basis of being an “Uncle Tom” doormat for “the White Man.”

That is an unbelievably arrogant, hubristic and racist point of view.

The irony is sweet, but maddening.

Jon Dougherty

Jon E. Dougherty is a Missouri-based political science major, author, writer and columnist. Follow him on Twitter. Read more of Jon Dougherty's articles here.