Challenges Ahead for New NAACP | More on Double Dipping

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Yesterday was a festive occasion for the Cleveland NAACP as a reported 300 people attended a worship-and-praise service disguised as an installation of the Branch’s new officers and Executive Committee. The event was held at Greater Abyssinia Baptist Church, where the newly installed branch president, Rev. Hilton Smith, and first vice president, Rev. E. T. Caviness, are associate and senior pastors, respectively.

The program was notable for several reasons, including its ecumenical outreach that saw participation from representatives of Methodist, Jewish, and Episcopal organizations, as well as several notables including US Chief Judge Solomon Oliver and former television anchor Eleanor Hayes.

The feel-good event included remarks from Smith outlining an ambitious agenda focused on education and mentoring, economic development, fair housing, mental health issues, and increased membership.

Underscoring just how difficult it will be to achieve these lofty goals was this statement from Smith, as reported in this online account:

"Our youth know nothing about the NAACP. We have to educate them, and re-educate them. We have some young professionals who are Uncle Toms, and we made them that way. They have to be taught the history." — Rev. Hilton Smith, Cleveland NAACP president

Whatever Rev. Smith meant by this remark, and whom he may have had in mind will have to await explanation on a different day. But the remark has already raised many eyebrows.

An accurate telling of the NAACP’s century-old body of work might reflect the organization’s moving in the eyes of many from progressive to radical to a period where, in the 1960s, amidst some the grandest days of civil rights, NAACP leaders were denounced as “Uncle Toms” by more aggressive civil rights organizations.

Smith’s statement does underscore the continuing debate in large parts of the black community over issues racial identity and racial solidarity. A lot of African Americans sense in the hostility of many whites towards President Obama because his election is a reminder that the United States is numerically every day becoming less and less of a white country. By the same token, many black people — including apparently, Rev. Smith — still side with the recently discharged sports commentator, Rob Parker, who we discussed here last week.

Parker was perhaps reading from the same textbook as Rev. Smith, questioning whether the highly-touted Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III was “black enough” because, among things, he has a white fiancée and is even rumored to be a Republican.

This leads me to make a couple of suggestions for the Branch [btw, I am a dues-paying member]. First, let’s refrain from personal characterizations, demonizing, and ad hominem attacks on those with whom we may disagree.  Let’s talk instead about issues, finding common ground among ourselves and with others, and solving problems.

Second, if the local Branch truly wants to reach out to young adults — especially those who acknowledge having at least one if not two feet in the black community [by virtue of birth, marriage, cultural orientation, upbringing, etc.] and who deny that having white neighbors, advanced education, or senior positions in white bastions of power and privilege, makes them by definition any less rooted in the black community — let’s have some properly moderated public discussions that air these very issues.

The open and ecumenical approach symbolized by the selection of the eleven [!] speakers at yesterday’s program needs to be replicated in deed by any NAACP spokespersons who want to argue in favor of equity and fairness.

Black History Month would be a perfect time to start!

More on Double Dipping

We wrote last week about the disdain for his constituents shown by Cleveland Councilman Ken Johnson in his request to be reappointed by his colleagues just days after resigning from his seat so that he could collect both his salary and an enhanced pension, and how equal disdain shown by those colleagues for their institution and their constituents in overwhelmingly approving this legal but myopic maneuver.

We would not be so down on Councilman Johnson if he had followed the approach of Roy Jech in Parma. Jech resigned his council seat on December 31 for the same reason as Johnson: unless he retired in 2012 his future pension benefits would lessen upon subsequent retirement. But Jech, rather than seek reappointment, will wait and ask voters for reelection.

We think that shows a proper respect for those whose support made the pension possible in the first place.

Django, the Drug War, and Black History Month

My blood tends to run a little faster every year when the calendar flips to January. It’s not so much the Cleveland winter — global warming is taking care of that; rather it’s the one time of year when our community kinda sorta celebrates blackness, or at least says it’s ok to talk about it in a positive way. The period lasts about six weeks or so, from the observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day through the end of Black History Month, and then it’s “ok, recess is over, back to normal.”

I’m not referring to “our community” as either just black folks or white folks. It’s almost as if an unspoken pact exists between in-laws. Most everybody around here tiptoes around race. We know the subject is explosive; we know it’s problematic. We know it’s the Eight Ton Gorilla in the family room. Which is why we stay in the kitchen and visit the family room only on special occasions, and even then according to carefully scripted rules of engagement. So during MLK day we talk about the content of our character but not about our national propensity for warmongering and sustained violence at home. And during BHM African Americans can salute our ancestors and how they overcame the Middle Passage, Slavery, and Jim Crow, without any discussion or analysis of why we are not doing anything about 21^st Century New Jim Crow in education, criminal justice, or the economy.

This year feels a little different to me. Thank you Django! It seems everywhere I turn people are talking about the movie, and therefore talking about ticklish aspects of our history. If there were an Oscar category for most provocative film, Django would be a hands-down winner.

Of course a lot of our discourse on race is echoed in views long ago forged into cast-iron. Many times when we think we want to talk about race we can’t get past skin. So an ESPN commentator questions the racial bona fides of Washington ‘Skins quarterback Robert L Griffin III — is he a ‘down’ brother or a ‘cornball brother’? — because RGIII: a) has a white fiancée and b) disdains simplistic comparison to other mobile quarterbacks who happen to be black, aspiring to one day achieve the status of the best QBs ever. (The commentator, Rob Parker, was first suspended and then let go. This was an appropriate result, not because Parker crossed some forbidden line but because his analytical frame is too flat for him to be a social commentator in any medium.)

Jeffrey Blanck, Reno NAACP president

In a similar vein is the reaction of many across the country to the headline that the Reno NAACP elected the first white president in its 66-year history. Many blacks greeted this news with groans from a familiar grab bag of perpetual victimization and helplessness: ‘white folks gotta run everything’, ‘couldn’t they find a black man’, ‘black people always think white is right’, etc. They were oblivious to the story of the NAACP’s interracial founding, its guiding principles, or the decades of civil rights advocacy that justified the fellow being entrusted with the honor of serving as branch president.

These examples of call to mind the succinct and wise counsel my friend Julian Earls likes to share with young, aspiring black folk: “Every black person is not your friend, and every white person is not your enemy.”

Agentic African Americans

Still, this season seems different to me because I see local African Americans who are not making automatic skin responses but choosing instead to be agentic in the struggle to address core community issues. Microsoft Word doesn’t seem to like “agentic”, giving it the red underline; it is a fine word, and I use it here to describe people who do not accept victimhood but are “active agents in their own deliverance”.

That quote is from another friend Trevelle Harp. Trevelle is a community organizer who heads the Northeast Ohio Alliance for Hope [NOAH]. In two weeks his group will present the Cleveland-area premiere of “The House I Live In”, which last year won top documentary honors at the acclaimed Sundance Film Festival. The powerful film questions why the United States has spent over One Trillion Dollars on drug arrests since the beginning of the Nixon Administration, only to become the world’s leading jailer of its own people, while drugs remain cheaper, purer and more available than ever.

To quote Eugene Jarecki, the film’s director, a prime result of the “drug war” is that “We have more black men incarcerated today, in one form or another, than were enslaved at the end of slavery 10 years before the Civil War ended.”

The special screening will be Saturday, January 26, at the East Cleveland Library, 14101 Euclid Ave. Admission is free and doors open at 1 PM. The film will start at 1:30 PM. A moderated discussion will follow the screening.

NOAH under Harp has concentrated its efforts on the East Cleveland community. Its organizing approach involves training and developing local leadership, identifying common issues, finding collaborative and strategic ways to address those issues while systematically strengthening the institutions in our regions. They are on a perpetual search for agentic partners.

South Euclid councilwoman Ruth Gray is advancing a second example of agentic approach. Concerned about her community’s failure to offer sufficient resources to its youth, she has convened a forum next week to address this issue. I will talk about this effort more on Monday but I encourage you to put the event, “Youth in Peril”, on your calendar. It will be held Wednesday, January 16 from 7-9 PM at the South Euclid Community Center, 1370 Victory Drive, in South Euclid OH 44121.