My twitter feed and inbox was full of cheers over the NAACP Image Awards last night. Most people loved it. @NAACP retweeted comments which they were most proud of during and after the show, most of which equated to this year’s Image Awards being the best one of all time. The only consistent criticism I saw was either in protest of Sandra Bullock’s nomination for her work in “The Blind Side” (both because she is white and the movie is one big racist stereotype) or against the stereotypical freight train that is Tyler Perry Inc. And THAT is exactly why the NAACP is an absolute failure in its current incarnation and how it has utterly failed people of color and America.
From The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People website, some history:
“The NAACP was formed partly in response to the continuing horrific practice of lynching and the 1908 race riot in Springfield, the capital of Illinois and resting place of President Abraham Lincoln. Appalled at the violence that was committed against blacks, a group of white liberals that included Mary White Ovington and Oswald Garrison Villard, both the descendants of abolitionists, William English Walling and Dr. Henry Moscowitz issued a call for a meeting to discuss racial justice. Some 60 people, seven of whom were African American (including W. E. B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Mary Church Terrell), signed the call, which was released on the centennial of Lincoln's birth.”
And the organizations mission statement, also from the NAACP website”
“The mission of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination.”
The NAACP was formed 102 years ago in response to the appalling violence and injustice committed against people of color in America. And in that past 102 years the NAACP has been responsible for a countless number of great accomplishments, including but by no means not limited to:
- The first African Americans to be commissioned officers in World War I
- IN 1920 taught America to be brave in the face of injustice and hate by holding their annual conference in Atlanta, Georgia-Stronghold of the Klan
- First broke segregation at the University of Maryland in 1935
- The Kerr Principle
- Morgan vs. Virginia
- Brown vs. the Board of Education
- The Civil and Voting Rights Acts
If the goal was to assimilate then I am sadly mistaken and you can stop reading now. If the goal was to be accepted into the big house, through the front door, not because it’s our house, but because we have grown to look and act the same as they who now accept us, then the mission was accomplished, you can stop now, there is nothing left to fight over.
I hope to fucking God, not. I spend a majority of my day feeling like ALL I ever do is complain. My three beautiful babies are inheriting a world that is racially less diverse, more segregated and more insensitive than the one they might have been forced to navigate 40 years ago. Racism and hatred in the form of perverse nationalism and populism has become mainstream and acceptable and it is broadcast live on Fox every single day. A United States Senator, just yesterday said that Black people were better off as slaves than they are now and CNN won’t even give that two minutes of airtime, Fox News will applaud him for saying it every 30 minutes for the next week. There will be no constructive outrage. We are officially desensitized.
Last night I watched the only organization in America with the size, history and experience capable of mobilizing Americans against this growing surge in racial hatred as an acceptable political weapon condone it by paying the very people responsible for cultivating that same racism and hatred to host their Image Awards. The millions of African American advertising dollars spent on the NAACP Image Awards broadcast are free to be used to fund Roger Ailes campaign against minorities in America via Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. In prouder days the NAACP would be at the forefront of the war against Fox and their exploitation of minority athletes on Fox Sports as a vehicle to fund racism and hatred on Fox News. Today the NAACP merely makes its own contributes to the fund.
No, this is sickening tragedy, Shakespearian in quality. The NAACP has turned its cheek and claimed great success as measured by how many people watched an award show. An award show which included the nomination of “The Real Housewives of Atlanta” and Michael Jackson’s Funeral Services. Since when do we celebrate stereotypes or perpetuate them ourselves? I don’t get the sense that the NAACP is paying attention to the needs of minorities in America. Maybe they are waiting for President Obama to their job for them ala Tavis Smiley’s search for a Black agenda. Don’t search, lead. Either way, the NAACP is currently worse than irrelevant, they are complicity part of the problem, and should therefore no longer be supported by minorities in America . Those accomplishments I listed above were a really long time ago. Those laurels done died.
On the off chance someone at the NAACP reads this, there is an army of intelligent, angry and frustrated Americans waiting for someone to organize them in the cause against racism and hatred as a weapon in America if you would only show the courage and vision to do the work your founders so vigilantly did before you. In other words, wake the fuck up por favor.
