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Should a new post-Civil Rights Movement leadership identity be fashioned for the NAACP? That is the big question raised by last week’s cover story in BlackCommentator.com : “The Role of the Black Elite in Outreaching to the Black Lower Class, And How It Relates to the National Leadership Level of the NAACP” By BC Editorial Board member Dr. Martin Kilson, PhD. This week we present an answer in the form of a commentary by Dr. Ron Walters that originally appeared in the Chicago Defender. BC invites input about what you think the vision of the NAACP is or should be. Click here to join the discussion.
 
Let me hasten to add that I don’t cheer the NAACP’s Board of Directors necessarily for throwing out Bruce Gordon, but for doing something they would have – and have – been criticized for in the past: focusing on their legacy and sticking to it. 
  
In the past, the board has been badly criticized as not being clear on its mission, as indicated by this writer and others, and another example was the selection of Gordon. 

Insofar as the resignation of Bruce Gordon was a sign that he was misaligned with the board, by his own explanation in numerous recent appearances in the press, his leaving under those circumstances reflects the fact that the organization has some idea of what it is, where it is and where it wants to go. 

What it is means that the board privileges its historic identity and, therefore, honors the struggle to achieve full civil rights by a forceful agenda and set of strategies. This calls into question any attempt to change the organization’s mission into a service role.     
  
Without question, as Gordon has indicated, there is a huge role for leadership in turning inward and marshalling the strengths of the Black community to do what is necessary to achieve our goal of self-determination.
  
However, the NAACP cannot do both civil rights and social service, effectively. And why should it? There is a fine Black social service organization in existence known as the National Urban League, which was created just one year after the NAACP. They were clear then of the difference between the functions of the organizations. We have gotten somewhat confused today.
  
The organization knows where they are in history. We are faced with a war costing hundreds of billions of dollars and a president spending trillions of dollars on tax cuts for the rich, permitting conservative politicians to turn around and ask “where is the money coming from” when demands are made for government to fund social programs.  
  
We are faced with urgent social priorities, such as the recovery from Hurricane Katrina, growing poverty, record home loan foreclosures and failing educational systems. What organizations will call into question before the American people the misplaced priorities that disadvantage Black, White and all other races of people who need government most?
   
I would argue that it is both legislative officials and civil rights organizations that need to keep the country’s feet to the fire and, yes, even call out the president when he is wrong, and not place that act of accountability lower than appealing for him to show up at annual conventions.
  
What the NAACP has done suggests that it knows where it has to go. I have received a lot of calls from journalists asking plaintively whether or not the time for the NAACP has passed and whether Gordon was right to demand that it change focus for Blacks.
  
That is a major objective in the right wing agenda. I have answered that there exists a diversity in the leadership of the Black community, rich with not only churches, but civic associations and single-issue policy organizations, working every day on social service related issues from HIV/AIDS to health care gaps and criminal justice issues.
  
Perhaps one way for this agenda to be strengthened is for the NAACP and other civil right organizations as well to partner more effectively with them, creating a needed source of strength through better coordination of resources and mobilization of pressure on policy makers. But they should not take over this agenda and forsake civil rights work.  Why?
  
You don’t’ find many civil rights organizations in the White community, although there are some dedicated to civil liberties, keeping the Bill of Rights viable as a contribution to democracy for all citizens.  
  
But civil rights organizations grew out of the absence of rights for certain people and the knowledge that they were necessary for a community that had been enslaved or excluded through immigration or devalued because of gender or religious orientation to gain access to full citizenship. So, these organizations are dedicated to that fight to remove the impediments of racism, sexism and other barriers that inhibit access to rights and the resources of society.  
  
What we are seeing is that, in some ways, the fight to establish civil rights law was easier than its implementation, since all of them have been distorted to a major degree.  Thus, the mission to infuse meaning into these laws is essentially one that presupposes a constant confrontation with systemic oppression and it should be the work of such organizations … even if it continues to make all of us uncomfortable.  
  
For, as Martin Luther King Jr. once said, it is this discomfort that produces the seeds of change.

BC invites input about what you think the vision of the NAACP is or should be. Click here to join the discussion.   

Dr. Ron Walters is the Distinguished Leadership Scholar, director of the African American Leadership Institute and professor of government at the University of Maryland at College Park. His latest book is “Freedom Is Not Enough” (Rowman and Littlefield Publishers). Click here to contact Dr. Walters.