And You Can Quote Me on That...

Darryl Fears, a journalist for the Washington Post, interviewed me about the image of the NAACP and other Civil Rights organizations in the eyes of my generation and younger ones. I responded to an open thread on Stereohyped about the topic; the thread linked back to Fear's story. He asked if the other commenters and I would contact him, and the rest is Cruel Secretary ab fabness.


Here's Fear's original story:

The drop in stature may have been inevitable, said Roger Wilkins, an assistant attorney general under President Lyndon B. Johnson who advised the groups. "Black people didn't have opportunities in the '30s and '40s and '50s," he said. "They couldn't be mayors, so they became presidents of black colleges or leaders of civil rights organizations. But at the end of the '60s, all kinds of pathways opened up, and civil rights organizations had to compete for leadership."

With advances in education, employment and buying power, some have argued, civil rights organizations have become passe. But group leaders bristle at the notion.

Here's me, opining and being fresh:

...I agree with the Post article about the traditional Civil Rights organizations losing their prestige. I just disgree w/ the major reason cited: IMO, these organizations seem to be on the wrong side of the right issues nowadays. If SCLC, CORE, and the NAACP worked with ColorofChange and secured the release, their prestige would have been burnished. If the NAACP would have supported the victims of the Dunbar Village situation (atrocity, really) in the first place instead of their violators, the group would have received some praise. (The last I heard, the NAACP, West Palm Beach chapter, who jumped in to defend the violators, didn’t retract their support or apologize to the victims
or has done anything else on the victim’s behalf). The most sustained critiques
and actions against rap’s misogyny (in the music and the videos) haven’t come
from any of these organizations. That’s why, moreso than not keeping up with
technology or being a victim of their own success or their pool of middle-class
donors leaving–is why these organizations are fading away.

Here's the follow-up story (and me, ending the story):

Andrea Plaid, a blogger whose screen name is the Cruel Secretary, has written that the NAACP stood by as activist C. Delores Tucker, beginning in the 1990s, fought Black Entertainment Television and rappers over the way music videos and lyrics portray black women.

"They caught the train when it was halfway down the tracks," Plaid said. "The NAACP should have said that 'for the advancement of colored people, this is not right.' The question my generation has is 'Why aren't you reacting? You're the NAACP. Why aren't you out front?' "