Race and Class

I like this short blurb from TIME magazine because it draws attention to the fact that racial tensions in America are increasingly gaining meaning as class tensions, and not merely as issues of color. Race still matters, but in this modern age of interracial offspring and the black middle-class, the conflict lies more in cultural and lifestyle differences than in differences of complexion. In the future, it would be prudent for the NAACP to pay attention to the growing rift between the haves and have-nots in the black community. At the same time, they would be wise to use this moment in history to integrate black disadvantages into the more generalized picture of American poverty. I don't deny that poor blacks face somewhat unique circumstances, but to continue to stand apart from Americans in general - that is, to insist that their economic history is fundamentally and permanently different - invites only division, and not useful discourse.

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National Association for the Alleviation of Credit Pandemonium

Nov 19th 2008

At 100, the NAACP still has a mission

Corbis

The struggle of the century

Barack Obama’s campaign for the White House raised many questions, for all Americans, about what it means to be black in America today—just in time for the centenary of the nation’s oldest civil-rights organisation, the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People

The NAACP was formed on February 12th 1909 (itself a centenary, of Lincoln’s birth) by a bi-racial group of reformers. It promised to fight for equal rights and opportunities for black Americans. Primarily using litigation and legislation, it has been fighting the good fight, with varying degrees of success, ever since.

Does the election of the first African-American as president mean the battle has at last been won? NAACP members gathering in New York in July 2009 for its 100th annual convention could be forgiven for wondering how much their organisation still matters. Mr Obama and other young black leaders, such as the Massachusetts governor, Deval Patrick, embody the successful black middle class; and for many 20-something African-Americans the NAACP’s mission apparently means little when they feel overt discrimination is no longer an issue.

Hoping to make the NAACP relevant to that new generation is Benjamin Todd Jealous, a 36-year-old Californian who is the youngest chief executive in the NAACP’s history. Mr Jealous has plenty to do.

When he took over the helm in September 2008, the NAACP had been in turmoil for several years. Never a mass organisation, its membership now languishes at around 300,000, from a high of around 600,000, the association claims, just after the second world war.

Mr Jealous launched his tenure with an ambitious online voter-registration programme aimed at young blacks. As priorities for the coming year the NAACP is also targeting discrimination in the criminal-justice system, improving public schools, increasing black political and economic empowerment and boosting African-American representation, for example as surgeons, in the upper reaches of the health sector.

However, the credit crunch could prompt a shift in that strategy. African-Americans account for a disproportionate share of subprime loans, and tougher lending rules and tighter credit threaten to erode many of the gains made in recent years by black households.

The NAACP is suing 14 mortgage companies for discriminatory practices but it will need to do more, from expanding financial-literacy programmes to helping its constituents recover from financial crisis. In doing so, the NAACP might just find it matters once more.