Dear Ms Brock - Congratulation On Your Appointment To Lead The NAACP - Some Advice

CNN: NAACP chooses successor to Chairman Julian Bond

Dear Ms Brock:

Congratuations on your election as the CEO of the National Association For The Advancement Of Colored People.

Please accept this as some unsolicited "constructive feedback" which you might use to guide your organization back into relevancy as it resumes its alignment with the challenges that many Black people face in the world today - 2010 rather than 1962.

I will be honest with you Ms Brock - I am a vocal critic of your organization.  I have lost the reverence that I once had for your organization as I learned about the important function that it played in the history of the development of Black-Americans.   Just as the sight of my 4th grade teacher smoking in the teachers lounge proved her humanity to me (true story) it has been maturity and my own clarity of world view that has caused me to see the NAACP of 2010 for what it is:  A group of political and ideological operatives who's WORLD VIEW prevents it from playing a more serious and significant role in the Black community which faces a new set of "Sheriff Bull Conners" and "De La Beckwith's" in 2010 and going forward.

I will be honest again with you.  That man who is pictured beside you is part of the problem.  He is a committed LEFTIST even when there is no need to be so.  Just as there are many "rebels for the sake of being so" - the former CEO of the NAACP takes similar stances today - far to the left of the average Black American.   It is my view that he had done more damage to your organization than many of the life members would care to admit.

Ms Brock - do me a favor - take out a sheet of paper and make a "Top 5 List" of forces that threaten Black Americans in 2010.   Make use of the newspaper, grievances from the people who contact your organization and government statistics to cross check your own list.

Of this list how many of these points would be upon the list crafted from 1964?

If indeed your list of today is so different than the 1964 list that I have crafted - WHY is it that your organization tries to "dig up these ghosts", prop them up and pretend that they are the biggest threats to Black America?   It seems to me that your organization fits that old saying " When you are an expert at a hammer - everything looks like a nail".

Ben Jealous

I heard two interviews of your executive director - Ben Jealous.   One on "Democracy Now" the other on "Washington Week With Roland Martin".   In both cases Mr Jealous talked about the crisis with education for Black and Hispanic students in terms of "THEY".    This means that he was still referring to some EXTERNAL force who has failed to recognize the value of the mental development of our young people and thus your organization's struggle has not been completed until this is addressed.

Ms Brock - as I listened to this I struggled to understand why Mr Jealous could not come to grips with the fact that the present ESTABLISHMENT in the majority of the places where there is a large population of Black Americans attending school is an ESTABLISHMENT that was erected with the assistance of the NAACP - implicitly or explicitly.  Your organization can no more call the forces that control these school systems "THEY" any more than I can distance myself from these fingers from my right and left hands which are typing this unsolicited outreach to you and your organization hoping that you will CHANGE WITHIN so that you can be more effective at addressing the problems.

Your organization runs a "struggle" and "protest" meme.  This was the accurate disposition to take when the establishment that was bearing down upon you had interests that were far outside of our own scope of interests as a people.   Ms Brock - at some point the fact that "WE WON" the contests in the "American Political Domain" upon which your organization has focused so much of its efforts (I realize with the "wink and the nod" that you are a "non-partisan organization".    The IRS mandates this from you.  But we both know the deal).  

At some point the abundant realities of the day must cause your organization to retire its "polyester" and "Afropicks" and instead retain its core value of "Advancement for the Colored People" but update it with consideration of the forces that stand against us.

Your "NAACP Legislative Report Card" is a crock.  I assure you that few and far-between is the Negro who goes to sleep at night fearing that any of the operatives identified in the legislation that you have founded your "high stakes test" upon is going to kick in their front door and assault them as such.  Thus it seems to me that your "Legislative Report Card" is merely a "litmus test" crafted by those operatives within your organization that have their noses stuck upon Capital Hill than the "Hill District" in Pittsburgh or other places like it.

It is time for the NAACP and other "Civil Rights Industrial Complex" organizations to spend more time in the "Community Cultural Consciousness and Competence Domain" instead of the "American Political Domain".  This is the domain that has been suffering from the 'benign neglect' that you all condemn others so frequently about.

The caliber and difference between the NAACP and some other organization who can file the appropriate paperwork with the IRS to get started will shown in the next 6 to 8 years of your leadership.