opinion
does the NAACP Remain Relevant?
“Challenging People to Shape
a better future now”
b ernie f OSTer
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C
an you imagine Black Life
in America if there was no
NAACP? It seems that
over time the group served a vital
purpose for African Americans;
but these days and across cultures,
the NAACP is about as significant
as “Members Only” jackets.
At the NAACP’s 101st conven-
tion, the head of the Kansas City
branch got the organization’s
members to pass a meaningless
resolution urging people to
“oppose the tea party.” Sadly, the
resolution was deceitful and over-
ly political. With the “Tea Party
declaration” and other such tom-
foolery abound, isn’t it time to
address “the NAACP problem”?
Black Americans have good rea-
sons to be upset with the NAACP.
But, in our considerations we
should not be too critical of
NAACP missteps. Let’s first admit
that Blacks are often more com-
fortable criticizing the NAACP
than affirming the work they do.
First, what role does the
NAACP play in your life? With
the declaration against the Tea
Party, cries bellowed across
America that the NAACP was
“out of touch.” Not only was the
“out of touch” narrative among
White Conservatives, it resounded
among masses of Blacks also. Not
only is the NAACP in danger of
losing its relevancy, attention is on
the NAACP’s President and CEO
Ben Jealous, and as to whether he
has lost his way. Since taking the
helm, in his efforts to highlight the
NAACP, Jealous has just plain
drawn the wrong kind of attention.
In addition to the “exposing
b uSineSS
e XCHange
William Reed
racism in the Tea Party” gambit,
Jealous & Company showed awful
decision-making awarding Colin
Powell its highest Image Award;
the annual image awards. Jealous
said: “This year’s NAACP Image
Awards show was a great success.
However, the advertising circulars
that were supposed to appear in
both the mainstream press and
Black community newspapers
only appeared in the mainstream
(White) press.”
The advertising debacle sparked
a firestorm of criticism from the
Black Press. Ironically, Jealous is
a former employee of the Black
Press - former association execu-
tive director and editor of The
Several strategic blunders have made
people question the organization’s
leadership
but it is an issue of an economic
injustice to Black Newspapers that
has caused the most concern over
Jackson Advocate. Jealous, like so
many Blacks today, either forgot,
or distains, where he came from.
... it’s being suggested that Whites are
the ‘true victims’ of contemporary
racism. This could not be any further
from the truth
Jealous and his racial pride and
consciousness. Advertising rev-
enue maintains Black Newspapers
and Jealous admits that “a grave
mistake was made” when advertis-
ing inserts were placed only in
White newspapers on the eve of
New York Beacon’s Publisher
Walter Smith wrote in an editorial,
“We credit leaders of the NAACP
with good sound judgment and
common sense at least. What were
they thinking when this decision
was made?”
We all make mistakes, so even if
Jealous and his NAACP cohorts
were wrong on the resolution,
Powell Award and acts that look
like “Whites’ ice is colder”; we
must also be careful to not be
equally wrong in our rebukes of
them. We each need to assess as to
which side of the ledger do we fall
regarding whether the National
Association for the Advancement
of Colored People and United
Negro College Fund: 1) promote
racism or 2) take care of their
own? Many of us are at a juncture
as to whether we are race-con-
scious or “colorblind.” We are in
moment where the national dia-
logue around race hinges around
the fear of Whites being taken
advantage of by people of color.
Whether the discussion is
Affirmative Action or immigra-
tion, it’s being suggested that
Whites are the “true victims” of
contemporary racism. This could
not be any further from the truth.
Black people remain dispropor-
tionately poor, locked out of qual-
ity neighborhoods and schools,
and suffer from individual, struc-
tural, and institutional racism.
While the election of Obama
marked a watershed moment in
coalition political participation, it
neither erased nor filled-in the
fault line of racial inequality.
Black Americans need to give
more positive attention and rever-
ence to the NAACP. Do you know
(or care) who runs your local
NAACP? For more of us to grow,
we all should acknowledge and
support the work the NAACP
does.
drug war: A Money Tree for Special interests
P
er BBC News, “[p]rotests in
more than 20 Mexican cities
against drug-related vio-
lence have been interrupted by
news of the discovery of 59 bod-
ies.” Since President Felipe
Calderon called on the military to
combat drug cartels in 2006, an
estimated 35,000 Mexicans have
been killed, “a sign” — according
to the Mexican and U.S. govern-
ments — “of success in the fight
against drugs.” Though Mexicans
live in constant panic, daily kid-
nappings, mass graves and
shootouts in the streets are, in
Drug War Newspeak, the best
indicators of progress.
However one personally regards
personal use of illegal drugs like
cocaine or marijuana, the prosecu-
tion of the Drug War perhaps ide-
ally illustrates statism’s ruling
class intrigues. The structural
predicates for its continued exis-
tence are interwoven with some of
the most powerful fixtures of the
corporate economy, all milking it
to line their pockets on the misery
of ordinary people.
Just as violent crime mush-
roomed under alcohol prohibition,
with Al Capone and his ilk proving
an ideal counterpart for the organ-
ized crime of the state, so too has
drug prohibition begotten interna-
tional bloodbath. Even if we
regard the rationales advanced by
the Empire as genuine reasons for
its Drug War, the results are strik-
ingly disconnected from that pur-
Page 4 The Portland Skanner april 13, 2011
C4SS
David D’Amato
ported reasoning. Ever increasing
police spending, foreign interven-
tion and domestic authoritarianism
have been coupled not with any
marked decrease in crime or the
prevalence of drugs themselves,
but in a murderous struggle,
unremitting
and
constantly
to
see
some
measurable
“progress” toward the state’s
goals.
And the truth is that the state’s
goals are being met through the
Drug War, which — like the War
on Terror — is devoid of any clear,
defining lines or enemy. Those
goals, though, don’t match the
intentions we’re meant to glean
from “Just Say No” ads and the
D.A.R.E. cops roaming the halls
of the state’s K-12 education pens.
From private prisons to security,
prohibitionists depend on drug dealers
swelling to new proportions.
For the state, serving the ends of
the political class, what it is that
the war is against is far less impor-
tant than the fact that there is a
In the same way that traditional
warfare means bankable profits
for defense-related contractors in
the fabled “military-industrial
complex,” the Drug War is a reli-
he Drug War is a reliable source of
income for the ruling class
war, something out there that
enjoins the consumption of huge
piles of resources. Given both the
levels of spending on the Drug
War and its putative justifications,
we could expect, even assuming
the utmost waste and inefficiency,
able source of income for the rul-
ing class.
Everyone has skin in the game,
from Wall Street banks and huge
prison companies like Corrections
Corp. of America and Geo Group
to drug companies like Pfizer, and
the green they care about isn’t
marijuana. From top to bottom the
Drug War is shaped perfectly for
big government and for corporate
interests, enabling the clandestine
“security” apparatuses of the
Empire to scout new outposts for
neoliberal colonialism.
As Dan Russell argues in Drug
War, “[T]he structural effect of the
artificial value [of illegal drugs]
has been to create, over the
decades, an unbreakable symbio-
sis between drug-dealing and
covert military intelligence. Each
is the greatest strategic ally of the
other.” The network of important
interests surrounding the Drug
War is, for market anarchists, an
expected
and
characteristic
instance of the kinds of relation-
ships the state creates.
Institutionalized
coercion
around drugs — rather than the
drugs in themselves — creates the
extreme violence and crime we see
in place like Mexico today. Only
by subjecting these commodities
to the mutual rewards of free
exchange, away from the reach of
the state, will the real criminals of
the Drug War be overcome.
C4SS news analyst David
D’amato is a market anarchist
lawyer currently completing an
ll.M. in commercial law at
Suffolk university law School.