Tag Archives: NAACP

Commentary

Walter Williams: where is the outrage over black-on-black crimes?

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Walter Williams
Walter Williams

A recent editorial by George Mason University professor of economics Walter Williams.

Excerpt:

Each year, roughly 7,000 blacks are murdered. Ninety-four percent of the time, the murderer is another black person.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, between 1976 and 2011, there were 279,384 black murder victims. Using the 94-percent figure means that 262,621 were murdered by other blacks.

Though blacks are 13 percent of the nation’s population, they account for more than 50 percent of homicide victims. Nationally, the black homicide victimization rate is six times that of whites, and in some cities, it’s 22 times that of whites.

Coupled with being most of the nation’s homicide victims, blacks are most of the victims of violent personal crimes, such as assault and robbery.

The magnitude of this tragic mayhem can be viewed in another light. According to a Tuskegee Institute study, between 1882 and 1968, 3,446 blacks were lynched at the hands of whites. Black fatalities during the Korean War (3,075), Vietnam War (7,243) and all wars since 1980 (8,197) come to 18,515, a number that pales in comparison with black loss of life at home.

It’s a tragic commentary to be able to say that young black males have a greater chance of reaching maturity on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan than on the streets of Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, Oakland, Newark and other cities.

You might remember that the NAACP just recently came out for gay marriage. Do they have their priorities straight?

News

N.A.A.C.P. follows Barack Obama and endorses gay marriage

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From the liberal New York Times. (H/T Bad Blue)

Excerpt:

The board of the N.A.A.C.P. voted to endorse same-sex marriage on Saturday, putting the weight of the country’s most prominent civil rights group behind a cause that has long divided some quarters of the black community.

The largely symbolic move, made at the group’s quarterly board meeting in Miami, puts the N.A.A.C.P. in line with President Obama, who endorsed gay marriage a little over a week ago. Given the timing, it is likely to be viewed as both a statement of principle as well as support for the president’s position in the middle of a closely contested presidential campaign.

All but two of the organization’s 64 board members, who include many religious leaders, backed a resolution supporting same-sex marriage, according to people told of the decision.

Borrowing a term used by gay right’s advocates, the resolution stated: “We support marriage equality consistent with equal protection under the law provided under the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution.”

[…]The group’s endorsement could potentially bolster support for President Obama with a key constituency: black Democratic voters who remain skeptical of same-sex marriage.

Black and white Americans are divided on same-sex marriage in similar numbers, according to the results of four aggregated polls conducted by The New York Times and CBS News over the past year.

Yet there is greater opposition among black Democrats than white Democrats. Sixty-one percent of white Democrats supported legalizing marriage for gay couples, compared with 36 percent of black Democrats, while 35 percent of black Democrats opposed any legal recognition, compared with 18 percent of white Democrats.

When I interviewed some of my black co-workers before the 2008 election, they all thought that Obama was more pro-life than McCain, more pro-marriage than McCain, tougher on crime than McCain, more of a hawk on national security than McCain and more fiscally conservative than McCain. This is in spite of the fact that Obama’s record up until that time was staunchly in favor of abortion, gay marriage, leniency for criminals, unilateral disarmament and weakening counter-terrorism, higher taxes, more anti-business regulations and more spending. My black co-workers were able to tell me the rosters of our local sports teams and recite entire conversations from popular movies, but their beliefs about the Presidential candidates were entirely counter-factual.

About 95% of black voters support Democrats. I think it will be interesting to see how whether Obama’s policies and voting record play a role in their voting this time.

By the way, if anyone is tempted to accuse me of racism for telling the truth, I’m darker-skinned than Obama.

News

Does the NAACP care more about children’s educations or union jobs?

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Consider this article from the Wall Street Journal.

Excerpt:

Here’s something you don’t see everyday. Thousands of American blacks held a rally in Harlem last week to protest . . . the NAACP.

The New York state chapter of the civil rights organization and the United Federation of Teachers, the local teachers union, have filed a lawsuit to stop the city from closing 22 of Gotham’s worst schools. The lawsuit also aims to block the city from giving charter schools space to operate in buildings occupied by traditional public schools.

Protesters at the rally, which included parents and charter school operators like Geoffrey Canada of the Harlem Children’s Zone, urged the NAACP to withdraw from the suit. But Hazel Dukes, president of the state NAACP chapter, is unpersuaded. Using the kind of language more readily associated with past opponents of black civil rights, Ms. Dukes said that critics of the lawsuit “can march and have rallies all day long. . . . We will not respond.”

What schoolhouses is Ms. Dukes standing in the doorway to protect? Well, at the Academy for Collaborative Education, one of the Harlem schools that the city wants to close, only 3% of students were performing at grade level in English last year, and only 9% in math. At Columbus High School in the Bronx, another school slated for closure, the four-year graduation rate in 2009 was 40%, versus a citywide average of 63%, and less than 10% of special education students graduated on time.

The teachers union wants to keep these abysmal schools open to preserve jobs for their members. This is bad enough. But the union and NAACP also want to limit better educational options for low-income families who can’t afford private schools and can’t afford to move to an affluent neighborhood with decent public schools. The union knows that in a place like New York City, where space is at a premium, blocking charters from operating in public buildings will hamper charter growth.

If the lawsuit succeeds, the awful schools will remain open to damage another generation of children. If you want to know why the NAACP has become irrelevant to the lives of African-Americans, this typical display of moral indifference to the plight of minority children is Exhibit A.

The NAACP is aligned with the Democrat party, and the Democrat party is beholden to teacher unions. They don’t care about children. Not only are the Democrats spending the next generation into debt, but they are also bankrupting medicare and social security, subsidizing the destruction of their families with single mother welfare, and now destroying their hopes of getting and education. It’s unconscionable. They hate children.

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