I noticed that, but what does it mean? Does it mean that that they acknowledge the differences in ACHIEVEMENT and that they intend to do something about it? Or, does it mean that they want more money or specific programs at black schools? Or, are they upset that other people get more or do better? I don’t know.
Complaining about disparaites is not the same as working to improve educational achievement.
This assumes that capital punishment significantly lowers the crime rate, which has not been–AFAIK–shown.
I think it would be beneficial for you to look at why the NAACP opposes the death penalty in the first place.
I’m not sure if simply paying dues to an organization qualifies a person to have an expert opinion on anything, especially when that person comes across as condescending and isn’t even a member of the community they profess to know so much about.
Why don’t you go follow the link I provided, december? As a former member of the NAACP, surely you know how to find out what they’ve been doing for the past few years.
and calling for the end of disparities isn’t the same thing as ‘complaining about it’ either.
As I said and you continue to effectively demonstrate, the issue isn’t that the NAACP isn’t addressing the issues, the issue is that they aren’t addressing them in the way that december feels is best.
:rolleyes: You’re basing your assessment of their substantive policy goals on the headlines of press releases? You complain that the NAACP isn’t addressing education, and then when it’s pointed out that they are addressing education, you demur, saying that the nineteen-word headline doesn’t give you enough detail. Well, duh.
Sometimes–and this is a kooky notion, I’ll admit–it seems like you’re just lookin’ for stuff to get innocently outraged about.
Just so that we don’t perpetuate the myth that NAACP is the be all, end all of black activism (particularly since the OP implicitly blames all black people for being nitpicky), here’s a list of note-worthy African American organizations that address issues that december may or may not feel are important:
National Organization, Concerned Black Men, Inc.
National Black MBA Association (http://www.nbmbaa.org/)
100 Black Men of America, Inc. (http://www.100blackmen.org/)
Associated Black Charities (http://www.abc-md.org/)
Black Biomedical Research Movement (http://www.bbrm.org/ )
Association for the Advancement of Blacks in Health Sciences (http://www.aabhs.org/)
Black Radical Congress (http://www.blackradicalcongress.org/ )
Congressional Black Caucus Foundation (CBCF)
Black Coalition on AIDS
Yes, wring and I suppose we shouldn’t have a discussion about whether or not the NAACP’s strategy is good, should we? We should just assume that the NAACP is pursuing the most efficient and effective strategy possible, and any other strategy that is suggested is total crap.
And, don’t forget about the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) (which happens to have been founded on the campus of my alma mater – the University of Chicago) I think their favored approaches are likely to be effective:
I might add that when my daughter was an undergraduate at Swarthmore College, she participated in a program to tutore inner city children in Chester, PA. This is the kind of thing we could use more of, in my opinion.
Well, good for your daughter.
However, just because we want to concentrate on education doesn’t mean we can’t say, “Hey, you know-making racist and hateful bigoted remarks is a really shitty thing to do, and we’re not going to tolerate it.”
In what world is this true? Not in the world that had civil rights demonstrations.
People tell other people what the hell they should be doing all the time. A police man isn’t a member of my family but he sure as hell is not going to let me beat them all to hell.
This is pure december bashing in this thread. You dangle red herrings in front of him and then step on him when he falls for it. That’s bullshit. We aren’t politicians but we vote on what we think they should do. Period. We aren’t all lawyers but we can decide what lawyers should behave like in a courtroom. Period. This is the very essence of having a consciousness which admits ethical speculation.[ul][li]Should any particular group spread its resources to cover all possible bases or should it focus on key issues?[/li][li]What are key issues anyway?[/li][li]What if this group was the NAACP?[/ul][/li]What’s wrong with this again?
He starts with ‘why do they focus on minor issues?’
I point out that to them, it’s apparently not a minor issue. And counter with 'why are you so focused on minor issues regarding synagog’s being vandalized in Europe - and he has no response.
that’s not a conversation.
He then goes on to explain what exactly he thinks blacks should be focused on and complains that they’re not. monstro comes up with evidence to suggest that he’s wrong, that they are in fact focusing on issues that are important to them, and including some of those he has mentioned, and december follows up with ‘well, not in the way that I want them to’ (essentially).
to which I say ‘too fricking bad’. I do NOT get to say to the republicans “you shouldn’t care about abortion rights, I’d really rather that you focus your attention on women’s rights, and in this manner” and be taken seriously - 'cause the group itself is allowed to decide what is important to it’s membership and the manner, degree and methodology.
is it merely ‘december bashing’?
No. In this thread alone, he’s not been able to support his original OP (remember that?), except by noting one small group focusing on one incident. He’s not been able to demonstrate that the attitude is pervasive, organized or anything more than small isolated incidents, nor has he been able to demonstrate effectively that the incident itself was indeed “minor” (except in his eyes). One might as well point out some tea party of white people in DeWitt MI (a small town) who did something and attempt to portray it as ‘white people shouldn’t focus on this they should focus on that’
It’s called debate. He presented an OP, and failed to back it up.
the police example of course, is a case of governmental rights vs. civilian etc. I’m suggesting here that members of an identifyable group generally get to decide for themselves what’s important to them and how to best accomplish their goals. If you’re a member of that group and the group doesn’t focus on what you think is important, you can lobby other members for a change in direction or leave the group.
If, however, the ‘group’ involved is not a co-hesive identifiable and organized group (as, in the case of the OP, ‘blacks’), then all discussion about what ‘they’ should do as a group is moot, since there is no organized group. One can talk about what the Italian Americans should or should not do, but it should be noted that while there may in fact be (and IIRC there is) an “Italian American Defense Legue” or some such, they do not speak for all Italian Americans.
I find it disingenuous and tedious in the extreme that when it suits his purpose (here) he calls upon a non homogenious group to ‘do this and that’, and when it suits his purpose (in threads about why we shouldn’t call people of Asian backgrounds “Orientals” he argues from the opposite position “gee, show me where they all voted to be called Asian”.
How can you possibly compare an incident in which someone inadvertantly caused offense to vandalism?!? Vandalism is a crime. It’s illegal. It violates people’s rights. No one has a right not to be insulted. Even if this guy walked through the campus shouting “Fuck you niggers! Go back to Africa or die!”, that still wouldn’t be comparable to vandalism.
BTW, did anyone else find this jarring?
Where has december been bashed?
He has made statements–as he usually does–without providing any cites. This kind of behavior generally invites pile-ons.
And the last time I checked, december was a grown adult. If he falls for red herrings (which would be funny, since he has a pocketful of his own), that’s his own fault.
Both the OP and the title address “Blacks”, not any particular organization. Perhaps if the thread title was “Should the NAACP focus on minor insults inside of major problems?”, this would be a better debate. But december has chosen to attritube a particular behavior to an entire group of people. Again, this type of behavior invites attack and dismissal.
We aren’t talking about any particular group. We’re talking specifically about “Blacks”.
My problem with december’s thread is that he hasn’t provided any evidence that the NAACP is suffering from monomania. I have provided evidence that their attention is focused on many issues, e.g., education, the Confederate Flag, the Pickering hearing, and the death penalty, none of which is really all that minor. All december can say is that it’s not enough or that it doesn’t align with what HE thinks should be done. Well, one organization can never do enough. He’s asking for the impossible (that is, if he sincerely cares in the first place).
You’re reshaping the OP to make december look better, but it’s not working.
Do you have anything of substance to add, or are you just trying to bump this thread?
I participated in a tutorial program when I was an undergrad too. But how this relates to the OP, I have no clue.
Few here really care about what the NAACP is doing, so let’s not pretend that this is what we’ve been talking about the whole time, ok?
wring can the same attitude be applied to Bush and his decision on Kyoto? Or Ashcroft and his various decisions/policies? Does nobody get to say that Bush was wrong, since it his his administration’s role to make those decisions, and pursue those strategies? Bush is obviously pursuing strategies that he, and his staff, think are important, so we should just accept it. You well know that we all have the right to say he is an ass, or he is brilliant, or comment in any way we want on his strategies. So too with these organizations, december is perfectly within his rights to state that education is important, and posit that the NAACP isn’t focusing on it. And everyone else is perfectly within their rights to argue that education isn’t really all that, or that the NAACP does focus on it quite well, thankyouverymuch. You have done neither, you have only stated that december’s opinions are irrelevant.
monstro if nobody cares what the NAACP is doing, I think that illustrates the effectiveness of their strategy quite clearly.
Back to my original post…
I took the liberty of reading through the list of press releases, and divvied them up into major categories. This is my opinion of what category the release fits into from the title, and a number of the releases fit in no category, or multiple (I split those up):
Police brutality / death penalty / crime - 10 releases
South Carolina / Mississippi flag and boycott - 9 releases
Racism / discriminatory events - 8 releases
Education - 7 releases
Voting - 6.5 releases
Jobs - 4.5 releases
Education is in the lower half, and jobs is dead last, these issues should be #1 and #2 on their agenda. Perhaps these press releases are not indicative of their behind the scenes efforts, I would certainly hope so. Their press releases, however, are the main indicator that we who are outside the organization have of what they are doing.
Without an improvement in education and job opportunities, things will never get better than they are today. You can fight racism and police brutality, and confederate flags for as long as you want, the effect will be minimal. We are at a stage where racism itself (by that I mean the actual dislike of minorities just over race) is less of a factor in economic opportunity than education and qualification.
Indeed I am. I am talking about a particular strategy used by many Black organizations today. This strategy was not used in the 1930’s, 40’s, 50’s, or 60’s, when there were so many major grievances to fight.
This strategy was not used by other minority groups who overcame prejudice against them. The analogues look like jokes:
[list=1][li]Fraternity holds toga party. Italian-American group demands that they be fined $25,000 for the insult. []Student theatre presents “Nunsense.” Newman house demands the formation of a Catholic Greek council. []Fraternity member maskerades as Albert Einstein. Hillel House demands that the fraternity by suspended. [list] Have I made my point? A number of African-American organizations are using this approach. This approach was not used by earlier civil rights organizations nor by other oppressed groups.[/li]
I’m happy to debate the pros and cons. I think there are pros and cons. But, I’m frustrated at the claim that this isn’t taking place.
Sorry for the typos. Here’s a clean re-post:
Indeed I am. I am talking about a particular strategy used by many Black organizations today. This strategy was not used in the 1930’s, 40’s, 50’s, or 60’s, when there were so many major grievances to fight.
This strategy was not used by other minority groups who overcame prejudice against them. The analogues look like jokes:
[ol][li]Fraternity holds toga party. Italian-American group demands that they be fined $25,000 for the insult. []Student theatre presents “Nunsense.” Newman House demands the formation of a Catholic Greek council. []Fraternity member maskerades as Albert Einstein. Hillel House demands that the fraternity be suspended. [/ol] Have I made my point? A number of African-American organizations are using this approach. This approach was not used by earlier civil rights organizations nor by other oppressed groups.[/li]
I’m happy to debate the pros and cons. I think there are pros and cons. But, I’m frustrated at the claim that this isn’t taking place.
Personally, I could give a flying fig about the policies of a whole host of organizations. Many people in this country are so apathetic about their own local governents that they don’t even know who the county executive or sheriff is. This doesn’t mean those organizations aren’t working or that they aren’t effective. It just means that most people are apathetic losers.
So education has two fewer headlines than the Confederate flag thing. Intelligence would tell us that this must mean most of the money, time, and effort of the NAACP–and black people in general–is being put into the latter issue. It has nothing to do with the demands of the press (which will take a juicy boycott over education initiatives any ole day). Right. Gotcha.
Care to respond to the list of the other organizations that I posted? Or does NAACP = all black people (which, again, is the focus of this thread)?
Show that all black people–or even most of them–put racism, police brutality, and the Confederate flag above education and crime and maybe your post won’t be so empty.
Please, december. I’m BEGGING you to please provide some cites.
Can you NAME a few of these African-American organizations?
And can you specifically NAME some civil rights organizations that have never focused on “minor” causes?
Providing cites will keep me and others from “bashing” you.
december: I am talking about a particular strategy used by many Black organizations today.
So far, you have provided actual evidence of exactly one Black organization using the “strategy” you’re talking about: namely, the Black Student Association at the university where the “Tiger Woods impersonation incident” took place.
*This strategy was not used in the 1930’s, 40’s, 50’s, or 60’s, when there were so many major grievances to fight. *
Naturally, when blacks and whites couldn’t even attend the same schools or use the same drinking fountains, civil rights advocates were willing to overlook more minor slurs in order to address the grosser injustices. Now that the bigger obstacles of outright oppression have been largely addressed, there is time and attention to spare for the less egregious—but still pervasive and harmful—influences of racism.
Some of the complaints will inevitably be misguided or trivial, but I hardly think you’re justified in calling it a separate “strategy”. The fundamental goal is still the same: namely, to object to racism. If the racism many people are objecting to now tends to be (usually) less destructive and corrosive than that in the days of lynch mobs and Bull Connor and “Segregation Forever” slogans, all I can say is, Hallelujah.
This strategy was not used by other minority groups who overcame prejudice against them.
Nonsense. Plenty of Jews (as you noted in your very own comment about the ADL) holler “antisemitism” whenever somebody has an opinion about religion or Israel that they don’t like. Plenty of other minorities are similarly touchy.
Heck, we’ve had plenty of evidence of that right on these boards. Don’t you remember…
the “B.C. Easter cartoon frenzy” about a year ago when debate raged for days about whether or not Johnny Hart’s Easter cartoon using an image of a Shabbat menorah might be antisemitic?
the many threads about whether it’s oversensitive of Native American organizations to object to team mascots that caricature Indians?
the thread from just a few weeks ago about an Asian-American group that protested to Abercrombie & Fitch about a T-shirt they were selling that contained a caricature of Chinese laundrymen?
How on earth can you look back on these and several similar kerfuffles and seriously assert that blacks are the only minority group who ever fuss about relatively minor racial slurs?