NAACP exhorts voters to oust Bush

iVillage Member
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.

cl-Libraone~

 


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iVillage Member
Registered: 05-18-2004
Fri, 07-16-2004 - 11:42am
AA is basically no threat to me, and I'm not all worked up.

AA hurts those it is trying to help more than it will ever hurt the Majority. Unfortunately AA is so ingrained as a good thing in the black community that it is nearly impossible to convince people of its negative effects. Eventually the black community will realize that AA and the NAACP aren't helping them, their just helping themselves they will come around.

If the black community wants to keep AA and all that goes with it fine. Just don't expect equality and an improving situation when you still "need" help to get even.

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-05-2004
Fri, 07-16-2004 - 11:50am
You say, "I agree that the ways of the past were not even, but slanting our society the other way only serves the create a larger problem."

What do you mean by that? What larger problem? (I'm counting to 10 before I let you have it. Before I do I need to uderstand if you mean what I think you mean)

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-05-2004
Fri, 07-16-2004 - 11:56am
Exactly. It is no threat to you, but the absence of it would be a huge threat to my family the people I care about.

I don't understand what you mean with this sentence: "If the black community wants to keep AA and all that goes with it fine. Just don't expect equality and an improving situation when you still "need" help to get even."

Please explain.



iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Fri, 07-16-2004 - 12:10pm
Before I get started, great posting!!

< I think you are getting worked up over an issue that doesn't matter that much to you if you look at the broad scope of things, but matters in a HUGE way to me overall.>

I do not feel so strongly of this issue because I am trying to cause trouble or in the mood to debate, but because I do actually care. As a teacher, a parent to 3 wonderful children, an aunt to three wonderful children (who also happen to be african american), and a foster parent, Affirmative Action matters a great deal to me. It bothers me deeply that while I am trying to teach my children that we are all created equal, they are constantly bombarded with a society that preaches equality and practices anything but that. My African American brother-in-law in a great man, but I must admit that I didn't always feel that way, not because of his skin color, but because he was a thug. He had the crappiest attitude about how unfair life was too him and how "the man" was holding him down, all the while making a living selling drugs. When my sister starting dating him, I begged her to stay away from him. And then she got pregnant. That was the wake-up call that he needed to turn his life around. He is now and excellent husband and father and has worked to make a better life for his family. One thing that he is doing is instilling in his children that success or failure is a choice. We may not always be able to have the things that we always want, but if we work hard we can achieve happiness and personal satisfaction and create a loving environment for our families.




If one child is held back, black or white, and race is a deciding factor than that is racism plain and simple. Any system that favors one race over another, whether it existed in the 18-1900s or in 2004, is racial biased and creates racial prejudices.


< Pre-Affirmative Action we, ALL OF US (a small number of people compared to the majority) were almost ALWAYS held back. >

No, I am not unaware of all of the horrible wrongs of the past, but the longer we rely on reverse discrimination to solve the problem, the longer it will take to heal this great racial divide in our country. One hundred years from now will be create another affirmative action policy to correct the wrongs that this system has create or should be solve the problem now and treat EVERYONE fairly.

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-18-2004
Fri, 07-16-2004 - 12:19pm
Just Read this:

http://messageboards.ivillage.com/n/mb/message.asp?webtag=iv-elinthenews&msg=6864.85

I've already explained what you're asking me to in my previous posts.

Besides, luvbug4me2 gives a perfect example. No need to expand further, she nailed it.

Avatar for atlantagirl74
iVillage Member
Registered: 01-07-2004
Fri, 07-16-2004 - 12:20pm
<"You act as if Affirmative Action were for the MAJORITY not the MINORITY. Affirmative Action is not the huge threat to you that you are imagining.">

Just wanted to step in and point out that this is totally dependent on geography. AA is for the MAJORITY here in Atlanta and in much of the South. It's impossible to get anything done in this city without the NAACP stepping in and crying "racism". A simple thing such as traffic control for habitual cruisers has been twisted into "racial profiling". This city is going to pot because the MAJORITY leaders are doing nothing about it and the MINORITY citizens are not allowed to say anything about it for fear of being called racist.

 

AtlantaGirl74

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Fri, 07-16-2004 - 1:08pm
< The NAACP insures the political, educational, social and economic equality of minority groups and citizens; achieves equality of rights and eliminates race prejudice among the citizens of the United States; removes all barriers of racial discrimination through the democratic processes; seeks to enact and enforce federal, state, and local laws securing civil rights; informs the public of the adverse effects of racial discrimination and seeks its elimination; educates persons as to their constitutional rights and to take all lawful action in furtherance of these principles. >

The above is the mission statement of the NAACP. Notice that it does not say "to correct past wrongs by creating a racial unequal policy" but in fact says to "achieve equality of rights and eliminates race prejudice among the citizens of the United States". If the NAACP is so concerned about creating this racial inequality, it seems to me they should be fighting to change Affirmative Action and equip all people to achieve the American dream in a way that is productive for all its citizens.

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-05-2004
Sat, 07-17-2004 - 3:11pm
Thanks for the compliment.

I really believe in my heart that many people, including President Bush who oppose Affirmative Action are not racists. Because they have a naive view of how *others* think, believing that most people have no pre-conceived notions about another group of people, and they believe that eliminating AA will make things more equal for everyone. In theory I would agree with that premise, but This is simply not reality.

White people have to compete with others for grades, successes, etc. to get ahead. Black people have to do the same, but must also have to compete with what may be or may not be in the decision maker's brain. The decision maker may have two comparable candidates, one white, one black, but has heard that black people are all lazy, or that black people are all stupid. This person may never say to anyone that he has these prejudices, and may not feel that he has a racist bone in his body, but the black person who is repeatedly subjected to being denied opportunities due to unspoken prejudices is the person who suffers under this scenario.

I agree that AA is not the perfect answer, but it is better than no AA, imo.

Life is never going to be fair.

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-05-2004
Sat, 07-17-2004 - 3:23pm
That explains nothing. I want to know what YOU mean by this sentence:

"If the black community wants to keep AA and all that goes with it fine. Just don't expect equality and an improving situation when you still "need" help to get even."



iVillage Member
Registered: 03-18-2000
Sun, 07-18-2004 - 1:17pm

"In a perfect world there would be no need for Affirmative Action, but this world is not perfect. If we eliminate Affirmative Action we should also eliminate "Affirmative Action" for the "connected" children of privilege..........."


ITA

 


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