MIM Notes 230                   March 15, 2001

NAACP takes rhetoric up a notch

Usually ingratiating itself with the powers-that-be, the NAACP 
(National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) has 
had some surprising rhetoric of late. It's not a response to the 
stirrings of the international proletariat, but a group purporting 
to represent the oppressed has its own dynamics when drawn into 
political life.

The labor aristocracy has been in a more combative mood since the 
change of leaders at the AFL-CIO. The Democratic Party has also 
had increasingly intense intra-class struggle with the 
Republicans, culminating in the Florida disenfranchisement of pro-
Gore voters. These facts have drawn the NAACP into political life 
more than it would usually like.

When the cracker House Majority Leader Dick Armey complained about 
reverse racism and McCarthyism because of accusations of racism 
against the Republicans, NAACP board chair Julian Bond stepped up 
to the plate and hit a home run: "'This is a typical complaint of 
those who oppose justice and fairness and who accuse those of us 
who insist on fairness of this tactic.'" He also said the U.$. 
Government now has "'selected nominees from the Taliban wing of 
American politics, appeased the wretched appetites of the extreme 
right wing, and chose Cabinet officials whose devotion to the 
Confederacy is nearly canine in its uncritical affection.'"

The headlines were full of stories about an FBI agent who may have 
conducted espionage on behalf of Russia--Robert Hanssen. Yet while 
people talk about Aldrich Ames of the CIA and Hanssen of the FBI, 
the president of the United $tates is someone who during the 
campaign would not disavow the Confederate Flag flying over state 
capitols. Senator McCain subsequent to his presidential campaign 
in 2000 apologized for kissing cracker butt on the question, but 
Bush continues to say there is nothing wrong with Confederate 
flags flying over state capitols. His wife made a point of saying 
it again after the inauguration of George W. Bush. These people 
are so backward-looking, they are traitors to the United $tates of 
Abraham Lincoln, while being loyal patriots of the white oppressor 
nation.

It is the year 2001 and we are still talking about Black voting 
rights, Black lynchings via the death penalty and now a special 
kind of cracker progress--new records in imprisonment rates. 
W.E.B. Du Bois figured it out by 1934 when he left the NAACP that 
he was the key founder of. Others have yet to figure it out almost 
70 years later: reformist integrationism is a dead-end, because 
the white man is not ready and he is not ready because he is 
historically a parasite, benefitting economically from national 
oppression. Address parasitism and then we can have 
internationalist integration some distant day in the future. 

Note:

Boston Globe, 23 Feb 2001, p. a12.