NAACP Puts Politics Above Civil Rights, by Deneen Borelli

 

Deneen Borelli

NAACP Puts Politics Above Civil Rights

by Deneen Borelli (bio)

If it wasn’t clear before, the NAACP’s resolution to paint the Tea Party movement as racist leaves no doubt that the once venerable group has irreparably destroyed its reputation and sullied its past prestige.

How is it that the same NAACP that beat back state-sponsored segregation in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case is now casting aspersions on activists seeking smaller, more responsible government and the freedom that inherently comes with it?

Politics.

Over the years, as the NAACP helped increase equality in our nation, its success decreased its necessity. And that’s a good thing for everyone but the NAACP leadership. Facing an albeit pleasant irrelevancy, recent NAACP executives have thrown their lot in with the progressive movement’s push for a big government nanny state.

And those who disagree? Well, they must be racist.

The NAACP, recognized as the nation’s oldest civil rights group, is now rebranding itself as an advocate for human rights.

That’s how it can now equate the unalterable trait of skin color to things such as sexual orientation and immigration status.

Recent annual conventions were infamous for the firebrand partisan diatribes of former chairman Julian Bond. Bond regularly castigated the Bush Administration and Republican Party as being from the “Taliban wing of American politics” and for allegedly believing that “equal rights is the American flag and Confederate swastika flying side-by-side.”

This year, the NAACP passed a resolution opposing the Tea Party movement for “trying to push our country back to the pre-civil rights era.”

As proof of its need to demonize opponents of out-of-control deficit spending, the planned takeover of the best private health care in world history and crippling energy taxes on all Americans — to name just a few things Tea Partiers believe in — the NAACP is relying on a thin gruel of anomaly, innuendo and hearsay.

To be fair, offensive signs have been seen at Tea Party rallies — but they are brought by the lone individual. 

This year’s Tax Day Tea Party in Washington, D.C. did not feature a huge Obama as the Joker poster on-stage, nor did any speaker advocate personal harm to the president. 

The allegation that a Tea Party protestor spat on a Congressional Black Caucus member on the weekend of the health care vote has been revealed on a videotape to have been something else entirely — inadvertent loose spittle aimed at no one. 

Internet entrepreneur Andrew Breitbart’s $100,000 reward for audio/video evidence that Tea Party protesters yelled the “n-word” or other racist slurs at the CBC event has gone unclaimed for months. No one has been arrested due to their participation in a Tea Party event.

Compare this to protestors outside of World Trade Organization or International Monetary Fund conferences. These protestors share a liberal political agenda with the NAACP. During their protests they commit numerous violent acts, and yet, there is no NAACP resolution critical of them.

Compare this to the New Black Panther Party. Members of this group were seen outside a Philadelphia polling place on Election Day 2008 behaving in ways that reportedly intimidated many voters. 

The New Black Panther caught on video wielding a baton outside the polling place was earlier caught on video by National Geographic documentarians, urging black people to kill white people to gain their freedom — and targeting white babies, in particular. But the NAACP is not criticizing these offenses to civil rights, voting rights and human rights.

Then there is Kenneth Gladney, a black man beaten by two SEIU members last August as he supported Tea Party activists at a Missouri town hall meeting. At a press conference this past May in support of the men charged with beating Gladney, Gladney was derisively called a “Negro,” and “Uncle Tom” and criticized for “not working for our people.” Did the NAACP criticize this? It was a local NAACP press conference!

Americans elected Barack Obama our nation’s first black president with a commitment from him that he would forge a post-racial America. As his popularity plummets due to a public distaste over his progressive powergrab, it is his team that has reached for the race card.

Direct collusion or not, the NAACP is a major player in this partisan political game.



The National Center for Public Policy Research is a communications and research foundation supportive of a strong national defense and dedicated to providing free market solutions to today’s public policy problems. We believe that the principles of a free market, individual liberty and personal responsibility provide the greatest hope for meeting the challenges facing America in the 21st century.