NAACP exhorts voters to oust Bush

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Registered: 03-18-2000
NAACP exhorts voters to oust Bush
109
Mon, 07-12-2004 - 4:06pm
Group condemns education, economic policies.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/07/12/naacp.convention.ap/index.html


NAACP chairman Julian Bond urged members of the nation's oldest civil rights organization to increase voter turnout to oust President Bush, and condemned the administration's policies on education, the economy and the war in Iraq.


"They preach racial neutrality and practice racial division," Bond said Sunday night in the 95th annual convention's keynote address. "They've tried to patch the leaky economy and every other domestic problem with duct tape and plastic sheets. They write a new constitution of Iraq and they ignore the Constitution here at home."


Volunteers with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People have been working on voter drives in black communities across the country, registering more than 100,000 so far in 11 key states, including Georgia, Florida, Tennessee and New Mexico, Bond said.


Bond, a leader in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the 1960s civil rights movement and a Georgia legislator for 20 years, became chairman of the NAACP in 1998.


Leaders of the Baltimore-based group are upset that President Bush has no plans to attend the convention. Bush spoke at the 2000 NAACP convention when he was a candidate but has declined invitations to speak in each year of his presidency, making him the first president since the 1930s to skip it, officials said.


Democratic challenger John Kerry has accepted an invitation to speak Thursday on the final day of the convention, the group said.


Bond said that 50 years after Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision on school desegregation, and 40 years after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, schools remain segregated based on income, and racism still exists in many forms.


Minority children still face inequality in school spending and are being disproportionately hurt by the accountability aims of Bush's No Child Left Behind Act, he said.


"On our present course, we are formalizing two school systems: one filled with middle-class children, most of them white, and the other filled with low-income minorities," Bond said.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 05-18-2004
Tue, 07-13-2004 - 12:31pm
"This statement indicates that you think Affirmative Action isn't working."

It isn't and doesn't.

"slowly A-A are moving into mainstream America"

Too slowly. Most blacks who are succeeding are doing it not because of AA but due to their own hard work, determination, family support, etc. Success doesn't know color but it does know hard work.

"You really can't blame people trapped in poverty if they're never given the same opportunity"

This is partially true. You can't blame kids who feel trapped. The reason they are "trapped" isn't because of a failure of opportunity as much as it is a failure to free their trapped mindset. Poor blacks do have a tougher fight, no question, but the opportunities are there.

The black community needs to fix problems that no AA or politician could ever fix. Children are ridiculed by their peers for wanting to get an education and rejecting the lifestyles that are seen as "cool". Parents are poor role models, buying luxury cars and SUVs and living in a crime ridden neighborhood. Buying clothes, jewelry, and music, instead of books. Partying instead of raising their children. Playing horribly destructive music in the car while their children are there.

It will take a "smack in the face" somewhat akin to what Bill Cosby said to the NAACP. At some point people are going to realize that it isn't the white man keeping them down it is their own failure to pull themselves up.

I was walking to the car from a baseball game the other night and saw a woman who obviously had a drug problem walking down the street. What broke my heart was the fact that she was dragging this 3-4 year old behind her and yelling about not keeping up. Now here my son is on my shoulders with his foam finger and snow cone and this little kid is being dragged down the street to who knows where. I wanted to snatch the kid up and take him home. He will likely grow up and fail to amount to anything. AA doesn't fix that, and what is worse is the NAACP is more worried about a politician in DC then getting in the neighborhoods and helping. They (NAACP) are no better than any other political organization. They are in it for the money and power. I wonder what the kid could have become given the family and community support he needs and deserves. There are fine people in every organization, the NAACP included but the leadership doesn’t really care about addressing the problems.

Oh and GWB shouldn’t waste his time going to see the NAACP, it would be like Kerry coming to see me. Nothing would change.


Jim

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2003
Tue, 07-13-2004 - 12:41pm
<< Reward people for their efforts and hard work not just because they happened to be born with dark skin or a women.>>

My concern is that some people, because of their race may not have the opportunity. You know as well as I that the deck is stacked against some people. Perhaps you don't remember when race kept people out of schools and jobs. AA is a crude attempt to change people's prejudices to live up to the American ideal of equal opportunity. Social change is sometimes painful. Perhaps you wuld prefer to go back when blacks weren't considered worthy of the vote.


Edited 7/13/2004 1:21 pm ET ET by hayashig

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-18-2000
Tue, 07-13-2004 - 12:50pm

"Instead teach all children to be assertive, confident, and take control of their own future."


What if these children have parents & grandparents that don't have these qualities & therefore

 


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iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2003
Tue, 07-13-2004 - 12:54pm
<>

That's right. Because of ingrained prejudice there is no equality, so people need an incentive to set aside their prejudice. If all things were equal, we wouldn't need affirmative action. An American goal (value) was equal opportunity, what happened?

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2003
Tue, 07-13-2004 - 1:14pm
<>

My recollection of history does speak to this. Granted many blacks have success because of their hard work, but attitudes had to change before they could be given a chance to work hard.

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I agree with this, but I don't see it as an either or situation. I think we should work together.

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This is also very true, the relation between the subservient and the oppressor is a strange co-dependence. Some people don't even realize this.

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He is the president an as such he has a responsibility to ALL Americans. Unfortunately, GWB see things only in political terms.

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-18-2004
Tue, 07-13-2004 - 1:17pm
"the relation between the subservient and the oppressor is a strange co-dependence"

This mindset progates the need for AA and teaches the "subservient" that they are just that.

"He is the president an as such he has a responsibility to ALL Americans. "

He does have a responsibility to all Americans, but isn't required to be responsible to the NAACP or attend anyone's event.

Jim

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2003
Tue, 07-13-2004 - 1:25pm
<>

I was born here but I agree it is better today than it was. Just like the battle for worker's rights, it seems that civil rights are drifting backward.

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2003
Tue, 07-13-2004 - 1:43pm
<>

This leap is quite large! I do not consider subservant, per se, as a bad thing any more than oppresser is a bad thing. Even CEOs are subservant to boards and stock holders. It is the quality of the relationship that is important. Prejudice is the mindset that gave rise to AA because minds needed to be changed inorder to achieve equal opportunity. I see progress, perhaps you feel the need for AA doesn't exist anymore.

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-18-2004
Tue, 07-13-2004 - 2:01pm
subservient and oppressor are certainly bad things if the only thing being considered is race. That is what AA address, not finances, not geography, just race. The statement didn't imply blacks are subservient to their white oppressors, it stated it.

It was a leap at all...it was clearly written out.

And yes I don't believe AA is effective or necessary any longer. In fact it is determinetal for its goals.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Tue, 07-13-2004 - 2:15pm
I don't see giving hand-outs according to race or gender and leaving another group out simply because of skin color is any different than not allowing a person to drink out of a fountain or ride on the front seat of the bus because of their skin color. If we choose to keep separating people according to race, there is no reason to be angry that we are raising a generation of children who will continue to carry on these racists believes. You cannot correct past wrongs by creating present wrongs. True, there may be many minorities that benefit from a system where they don't have to earn anything and can get by on the merits that ancestors that they know nothing about were slaves, but there will also be children who see this inequality and lose respect for those that they know didn't earn their keep. Maybe if the NAACP would spend some of their millions actually working in the these neighborhoods and trying to motivate their youth to excel rather than teaching them to whine and making excuses for their failures and troubles, we might solve the problem. Don't just give them money for college, work with them from birth up trying to motivate them to succeed and teach them that their failure or success is in their hands and can not be attributed to someone else.

In my classes, 9 times out if 10 African American students that are having problems chose to blame their failure on the fact that they are black, not because they choose not to work or because their parents have absolutely no concern with their schoolwork. I have offered after school tutoring and have even offered to work with parents so that they may work with their children on their homework. It amazes me the extent to which the racial issue is a crutch. Don't get me wrong, white students have their share of their excuses, but I can honestly say that I have never heard a white student say that their failure is because they are white. I daresay that all of the those that have worked so hard for racial equality and civil rights would be utterly ashamed of the way generations of youth are using this as an excuse to not lift themselves up and create a better life for themselves. Affirmative action is no longer a tool for creating equality, it is a crutch that enables generations to prolong the racism that their ancestors where trying to overcome.

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