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Special Report
On the Wrong Side of History
The NAACP, erstwhile champion of decent schools, now sides with the despoilers.
During its century of existence, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has rightfully and successfully tangled with Jim Crow segregationists, school districts opposed to racial integration, even famed (or notorious) Hollywood director D.W. Griffith and his film, The Birth of a Nation. But these days, the nation’s oldest civil rights group finds itself at odds — and on the wrong side of history — with two groups with whom it should be naturally allied: America’s school reform movement — and a younger generation of African Americans.
The latest example came last week when 2,500 parents of students attending New York City’s public charter schools — most of whom are black and Latino — held a protest against the NAACP’s New York branch just a block away from one of its local offices. Why? They were miffed about its decision to join the American Federation of Teachers’ New York City local in suing New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to stop the city’s longtime practice of allowing the publicly funded, privately operated schools to share space with its traditional counterparts in the city’s massive (and often half-empty) buildings. The suit, which would essentially stop the opening of 17 new charters, could essentially stem the expansion of those schools, which Bloomberg has championed as part of his decade-long overhaul of the city’s public education system — and whose very existence the AFT and the NAACP have long vehemently opposed.
The protest — which included the appearance of such big-name reformers and celebrities as Seth Gilliam — who played the dedicated Baltimore cop Ellis Carter in The Wire — and Geoffrey Canada (who’s successful Harlem Children’s Zone collection of charters were profiled in the Davis Guggenheim documentary, Waiting for ‘Superman’) — proved to be embarrassing to the NAACP. It was even more embarrassing when the president of the New York State branch found herself pleading its case after 20 concerned parents showed up at its posh Avenue of the Americas office.
This is just the latest example of the NAACP being out of touch. Earlier this year, its branch in Mississippi opposed a bill that would allow charter schools to open in school districts throughout the state. Even amid evidence that just 51 percent of traditional public schools in the Magnolia State were fit for kids to attend — and in spite of the fact that just six out of every ten black high school freshmen (and six in ten freshmen of all races) graduate from high school four years later, the chapter’s president, Derrick Johnson, declared that allowing more charters would “create and maintain a permanent situation of second-class citizens.”
The NAACP has been even more vocal in its opposition to other reform measures — including vouchers, which allow poor parents (especially those from black communities) to escape the nation’s dropout factories and academic failure mills. In Pennsylvania, the NAACP is opposing a measure that would allow companies to collect a tax break in exchange for financing private-school tuition for poor children, declaring that the state should bolster school funding instead of providing an “evacuation strategy” for students to flee abysmal schools. By the way, those students would include the mostly black kids in Philadelphia, whose school district has been under state control for a decade; between 2001 and 2009, the percentage of eighth-graders promoted to senior year of high school declined from 74 percent to 60 percent.
The NAACP has even found itself squaring off with President Barack Obama, whose administration has aggressively (if not always successfully) pushed for overhauling the nation’s woeful traditional public schools. Last year, it teamed up with the National Urban League and a smattering of other old-school civil rights groups to issue a manifesto decrying Obama’s efforts — including the Race to the Top initiative, which, among things, successfully pushed states such as California and New York to expand the number of charter schools — demanding that the administration back their array of warmed-over measures instead. Obama and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan repaid them in kind by rhetorically smacking them around for failing to realize the importance of their efforts.
There are some dissident NAACP branches that have embraced school reform. But for the most part, the civil rights group has all but abandoned its mantle as a leading force in the debate over how to reform the nation’s lackluster public school systems. In the process, it is also losing relevance with a younger generation of blacks — many of which are now bearing children and sending them to school — who know all too well that just one out of every two black men every graduate from high school and who understand the consequences of academic failure. Over the past decade, they, along with celebrities such as singers John Legend and Fantasia Barrino, have backed efforts to expand charter schools and other reforms, all but leaving the NAACP behind.
It hasn’t always been this way. For most of the past century, the NAACP has been among the foremost foes of those who defended some of the nation’s worst educational practices. Led by future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, the NAACP began its push to desegregate the nation’s public schools and universities in 1935 when it successfully sued Maryland’s state officials for barring black students from attending its university law schools. It would then take on the practice among traditional school districts, especially in the southern states, of segregating black students from their white peers and relegating them to rickety school buildings and other abysmal conditions. These efforts would culminate in the landmark Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education that would begin the integration of elementary and secondary schools and galvanize the nation’s civil rights movement.
Even today, the NAACP remains dedicated to integration, this time in the form of so-called socioeconomic integration under which districts bus poor students to schools attended by middle-class peers, usually through so-called magnet schools which theoretically also offer some form of school choice. Its most recent push on this front is in Wake County, N.C., where it is battling the school district over plans to end its decades-long integration effort (which only covered a fifth of all students) and go back to the practice of zoning students to neighborhood schools.
The NAACP also remains dedicated to its four-decade effort to improve the nation’s woeful urban schools by filing lawsuits to force states to pour more money into those schools, either by transferring property dollars from wealthier suburban districts or increasing funding to those districts from state dollars. The funding part has largely been successful: NAACP-instigated lawsuits, along with moves by statehouses to relieve homeowners of their property tax burdens, have resulted in the average state funding 48 percent of school expenditures — and as much as 83 percent of all funding for urban districts such as Newark, N.J.
Driving both efforts are outdated notions on how to improve the quality of education: That moving poor black, white and Latino students into schools attended by middle-class peers will result in improving their success in school. And that spending more money on education will lead to better schools in urban communities. But as seen in Wake County, integration in itself does little to address the low quality of teaching and academic curricula that is at the heart of the nation’s education crisis. Nor have funding equity reforms done the trick; Jersey City, N.J, for example, remains one of the nation’s worst school systems despite three decades of additional court-ordered funding by Garden State taxpayers.
By continuing to hold on to these notions, the NAACP has ignored solutions that could actually improve education and lost opportunities to ally with reformers. More importantly, it has alienated black families, particularly those in urban communities often served by failure factories, who have learned from experienced that integration was a false promise and have become savvy about the role played by teachers unions in contributing to the mediocre quality of urban schools. Forty-nine percent of African Americans surveyed in 2009 by the school policy journal Education Next and Harvard University supported charter schools, a seven-point increase over the previous year. They, along with white families, have also launched their own organizations to work closely with school reform activists.
The NAACP has done little to respond to this new generation of black families, partly because of its aging membership, which includes teachers of Baby Boomer age who, like their white colleagues, zealously defend the array of seniority-based privileges they have gained with the help of teachers unions. The fact that the NAACP has longstanding ties to the NEA (and has collected $260,000 from the union over the past two years alone) also factors into the equation. Meanwhile it has done little to recapture its place as a leading player in shaping education policy. Last November, NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous proudly announced at a confab held by the reform-minded American Enterprise Institute that it would release its own school reform agenda this year. But the plan, funded by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has yet to materialize.
Instead, the NAACP has launched an effort to increase school funding by diverting dollars from the nation’s criminal justice system (including a report and an oh-so-snazzy online petition for folks to sign). The fact that the nation spends far less on prison construction alone (a mere $1.5 billion in the 2006-2007 fiscal year) than on building schools ($63 billion, including lavish high school football stadiums) doesn’t factor in its thinking; nor does it consider for a moment that the reason American taxpayers spend $228 billion on courts and prisons badly is because it spends $562 billion on schools abysmally.
Thanks to its thoughtless defense of traditional public education, the NAACP’s proud legacy is collecting as much dust as old W.E.B. Du Bois-edited copies of The Crisis.
About the Author
RiShawn Biddle the editor of Dropout Nation , is co-author of A Byte at the Apple: Rethinking Education Data for the Post-NCLB Era. He can be followed at Twitter.com/dropoutnation.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (61) | Leave a comment
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dee see| 6.3.11 @ 6:44AM
----NGO false front controlled opposition op.
BEWARE!
BTW --re: education subversion.
CHECK OUT Charlotte Isserbyte's site on the
role of the REAGAN administration in the 'sovietization' of
ALLL American education.
Education 'for use' in good, Freemasonic
Social Darwinist, caste fashion. The 'polytechnic
model'.
In short you're brought up and schooled
as the "economy requires". The actuarial
psychopaths decide and that's that. The
creation of a new and 'useful' sudra caste.
And what's "the economy"?
Whatever 'they' say it is--------------------------------
"Will the Yuppies wake up? ---NEVER.
They LOVE being conned. They LOVE
being shmucks---!"
-ALEX JONES
(online with Alan Watt yesterday)
-AMEN
chuck| 6.3.11 @ 7:00AM
Can't you find another website to post your nonsense on? Perhaps kooksrus.com? It's really getting old.
Lullabys, Legends and Lies| 6.3.11 @ 8:30AM
Chuck: dee see makes perfect sense if you put your tinfoil hat on before you read his posts, then it all comes into focus.
The NAACP is living off it's accomplishments of yesterday, never reviewing what they've done, to see if it's working or not today. If they really cared at all, they could "never" be on the side of the Teacher's Union against the kids, but they don't care, and that's why they've sold the kids out to the Union Commies. Here's another stat; 4 in 10 Black Freshmen who won't be graduating from High School in four years, can't read this article today, therefore they don't know they've been sold out by the NAACP and the Teacher's Unions!!
C. S. P. Schofield| 6.3.11 @ 9:47AM
Be a little fair; the NAACP is made up of people who remember when the creation of schools outside of the traditional public school system would be a trap, intended to re-start segregation. They're wrong, but they wouldn't always have been.
It's like the situation with the Hurricane in New Orleans when numerous black voices loudly claimed that the Government had dynamited the levees . A lot of people derided this, but I had just read about the floods of 1925, WHEN THE GOVERNMENT DID EXACTLY THAT; dynamited levees that would flood Black areas to protect White property.
I'm not saying that we should just shut up in the face of this kind of fear, but we SHOULD take it into account when crafting our response.
William| 6.3.11 @ 5:31PM
One would like to think those who run the NAACP could rise above this, and not mindlessly react. It is truly difficult to understand why they side with the teachers. The claim that black kids are being treated as second-class citizens doesn't hold water: In fact they are being given special, favorable treatment, and this didn't bother the NAACP when affirmative school integration actions were being taken.
Their action is so irrational that one might conclude they are motivated to maintain the black "victim" mentality that has become institutionalized among black leaders. These supposed leaders have their livelihoods, power and prestige wrapped up in maintaining the concept of a "victimized" black society, which they, supposedly, protect and champion.
Mutch Moore | 6.4.11 @ 12:40AM
Outstanding correlation. I could not seem to glean all this from dee see's comments. The message itself, after translation, certainly earns my vote of respect here for pointing out the paradox of the NAACP aligning itself with teacher unions. Thank you, LL&L, for unraveling dee see's comment.
Alan Brooks| 6.3.11 @ 8:57AM
The LSD Dee See ingests is Owsley-quality.
Alan Brooks| 6.3.11 @ 9:16AM
LSDee See
irish19| 6.3.11 @ 12:24PM
Owsley blues. Haven't heard that in a long time. You're dating yourself.
Alan Brooks| 6.3.11 @ 11:13PM
Touche' Irish19, you are sharp as a tack, a real mean motor scooter-- congrats to your intestinal fortitude and razor sharp aplomb. You might think of joining the Barracuda, er I mean, Libertarian Party; they can't get elected but they have a good time going through the motions.
Steve A| 6.3.11 @ 9:40AM
dee see, A perfect illustration of what public education can produce.
cowgirl| 6.3.11 @ 10:30AM
You must pick up the book "Liberalism is Mental Illness" by Michael Savage. I believe you will find it enlightening.
Steve A| 6.3.11 @ 11:55AM
Whatever you say. I always listen to cowgirls.
Bob Grant| 6.3.11 @ 4:04PM
Yes. I've also adopted that policy ever since I saw Debra Winger play Sissy in Urban Cowboy.
Cowgirls do know what's best.
And yes. Liberalism IS a mental disorder.
SpiralArchitect| 6.3.11 @ 3:09PM
Don't forget Trickle Up Poverty!
Mutch Moore | 6.4.11 @ 12:32AM
dee see, as an avid New York Times crossword puzzle solver and hobby cryptology sleuth, I cannot seem to manage to decipher what in blazes you're trying to convey here? Is there some mysterious target audience requiring esoteric phrases of nonsense? De-code or disappear, PLEASE.
Darin| 6.3.11 @ 6:46AM
The NAACP once had a proud, honorable mission. Most of the original goals have been achieved. They could once again if they refocused on strenghtening the black family. I highly doubt that will happen as that would put them in the same camp as conservatives. Like teachers unions, the NAACP is a self-licking ice cream cone interested only in self-preservation. As teachers unions care little for children, the NAACP cares little for black people.
SonOfSam| 6.3.11 @ 8:29AM
They lost their soul in the so-called "War on Poverty", which was in reality nothing more than a war against the middle class and the poor by the so-called "elites". The middle class saw their taxes go through the roof to fund these programs, which is the REAL reason both parents have to work these days, not "Americans being greedy for stuff". One parent pays the bills, the other parent pays the taxes.
The poor, on the other hand, saw their neighborhoods bulldozed to make way for shiny new concentration camps, whoops, I meant to say "housing developments". They were tossed a bone in the form of welfare checks, which are no more than a fraction of the money spent on these programs; and even that bone turns out to be pure poison, as it is the root cause of the mommy headed households in the inner cities, since no poor man is going to be able to compete against Uncle Scam and his giant check writing machine. Hmmmmmmm, whole neighborhoods where there's not a dad to be found, and we wonder why the young males there run rampant and form gangs...who'd a thunk?
And in all this, the NAACP stands on its hind legs and begs for scraps from massa's elite "liberal" table. They sold their souls so they could hang out with "the cool kids". Meanwhile, the inner cities are now not just poor, they are far more dangerous
Alan Brooks| 6.3.11 @ 9:18AM
To reiterate:
even if every teachers' union ceased to exist, education would improve only marginally-- if that. Perhaps only the cost would be lowered.
The cause is that deep down parents care only about their own children, so charity is a veneer; ecumenicism nothing more than emollient.
IMO progress is merely based on science as of yet.
Steve A| 6.3.11 @ 9:43AM
Alan, If education were privatized, bad teachers could actually get fired. Schools would compete for voucher $$ & it would flow to those churning out quality students. The left opposes this, naturally. Quality educated students actually are productive, earn a living, pay taxes & become conservatives.
Alan Brooks| 6.3.11 @ 9:56AM
Hypothetically, yes; however private or public sector, Americans do commerce v. well, but cannot work together for the common good- in fact overall it might be that way in every nation and such is nothing to gloat about.
Steve, there is no shortcut to virtue; libertarianism/ minarchism can't alter the situation as if deus ex machina.
Alan Brooks| 6.3.11 @ 10:07AM
"If education were privatized"
Exactly, it is utopian: if education WERE to be privatized;
if prisons, jails WERE to be privatized;
if illicit drugs WERE legal;
if public morals squads WERE abolished you could do whores right away and buy porn on the streets;
if defense costs WERE to be lowered;
if we WERE more patriotic but nationalism WERE to cease...
if if if.
If only a minarchist Jesus were to descend to earth.
Steve A| 6.3.11 @ 10:14AM
Alan, Wow. How deep. Yes, I know. School vouchers is just such a pipe dream considering if it were put to a vote, the American public would OVERWHELMINGLY vote in favor of getting to select their child's school. Yeah, what a stretch.
Steve A| 6.3.11 @ 1:23PM
Hey Alan, I am selling my Obama Collectable Plates. Figured you would be interested. This robust economy & the past couple summers of recovery have put me in a jam & I need to raise some $$. All 12 plates, enough for you & everyone else who still thinks this guy is a genius, for the low low price of .49c.
SpiralArchitect| 6.3.11 @ 3:14PM
Nevada ( where I reside) has pushed forth a new law where tenure is no longer a guarantee of a job and a shield vs. poor performance for teachers.
More Info:
http://www.lasvegassun.com/new.....ills-pass/
Alan Brooks| 6.3.11 @ 11:20PM
Steve,
are you saying libs are the only ones who want to retain the status quo? btw, who at AS said Obama is a genius? he is merely preferable to the Nixons, *, Bushes, Doles, McCains of America; Obama wins by default.
(*Ford doesn't count)
Alan Brooks| 6.3.11 @ 11:47PM
America does commerce, well because of its heritage, the frontier spirit of quickly moving agriculture into the Midwest and beyond; and all that.
But Americans cannot work together for better schools, better courts... they cannot work together for a penal system that is not recidivist, etc, etc... everything connected with the common good America fails at. So privatization is nonstarter.
Aren't all large nations similar? no workable formula for devolution has been devised in any large, unruly country. You would have to break America into smaller countries to truly devolve. And the reason America has a dishonest govt is because America is dishonest to such a degree; the reason we have a celebrity politics is because of the celebrity consciousness of the populace who read in the National Mirer about Jennifer Aniston earrings and so & so's abortion.
Steve, don't believe everything you read, it is merely a game albeit a serious one. You take it too seriously. Politics is a bad sitcom in realtime. Bread & circuses, Steve; bread & circuses.
Timothy L. Pennell| 6.3.11 @ 7:41AM
How about we look in to their TAX Status? They couldn't be any more Politically Partisan, if they tried.
And, how long has it been, since "Black Leaders" gave a RAT'S *SS, about Black People?
They like MONEY. They like POWER. They like Conventions, in Big Hotels, with Big Expense Accounts. They don't care about JOBS for Black People. Hell no. They NEED them, right where they are. On their knees, with their hands out.
You know, like they've been for the last 60YEARS. I bet they thought that, "when we get a Black President, things will be better".
As I recall, one of the 1st things His Majesty - Barack the 1st - Savior of the American Blacks, did, was to ELLIMINATE the Private School Vouchers, for the Poor Minority Children, of D.C.
The Teacher's Union gives MILLION$ to Democrats, every Election Cycle. What's a buncha poor, dirty, smelly Black Kids, compared to THAT?
Nothing. That's what they are. So, that's what they'll get. If they know what's good for them, they'll SHUT THEIR MOUTHS, and do what they're told.
See? Blacks DO keep Black Slaves, sometimes.
Mike Hunt| 6.3.11 @ 8:02AM
Ginning up racial tensions keeps the NAACP machine rolling as well. For as long as the bosses can keep the unwashed ignorant and dependent,they control them.
You suggest follow the money? Do all those unionised teachers and government employees keep the NAACP funded? Similar to the AARP scam,isn't it?
Alan Brooks| 6.5.11 @ 12:36AM
Without consensus, decentralization is worthless.
When did Americans last more or less agree on what to do with education? the '50s?
If every teechur's yoonyun disapeared tomorrow morning, the race/etnic tensions; the war between the sexes; class conflicts; ideological disagreements; professional turf wars; student jealousies; crime; dope; teen pregnancy; parent-teacher mistrust; student trash culture-- etc, etc, remain. call it cultural entropy, if you will.
You name it.
Intelligent Design| 6.3.11 @ 7:48AM
The NAACP is a racist organization.
JimH| 6.3.11 @ 8:21AM
NAACP membership is not from the inner cities or black rural areas. It consists largely of a black middle class, many of whom, if not most are employed by the govenment or unions. So even if it recognised what was best for blacks and other poor, it is not about to do anything which would threaten it’s members. It is much easier to try to keep claiming victemhood and exploit white guilt.
WRTolkas| 6.3.11 @ 8:38AM
My take on the situation:
A well educated black population will gravitate away from Democrats and their allegiance to race-baiting organizations (NAACP). Therefore, any plan or organization that seeks for the betterment of intercity children cannot be condoned or tolerated by the NAACP or the NEA.
dee see| 6.3.11 @ 8:44AM
"Notice the IQs , though ever a EUGENIST
device, have been dropping 'mysteriously'
for decades ----much like male fertility.
Folks, you're BORN with an IQ. You're
BORN with fertility. IF it's dropping --you're
being meddled with. We're being slowly
destroyed."
-ALAN WATT
DO try to get beyond the set up before you die.
REALLY.
DO______________
Alan Brooks| 6.3.11 @ 11:23PM
Dee See, it is the fluoride! 1946, Dee See, 1946-
how's that for a postwar Communist conspiracy??
SG-1| 6.5.11 @ 8:58PM
As we say in Texas, "I think that boy's hat's too tight".
Either that or he's stuck on the bus, smoked a little too much crack and can't remember where he lives.
George S| 6.3.11 @ 9:26AM
The parents of those kids contribute nothing to the NAACP that helps them maintain that midtown Manhattan address. That comes from the Democrat party handsomely rewarding the NAACP leadership for bringing in voters. Didn't slave traders once do something similar...?
martin j smith| 6.3.11 @ 10:14AM
NAACP--=NAACP-CPUSA--That is what we have with that an many other orgs. It has nothing to do with education. just DESTROY THIS COUNTRY FULL SPEED AHEAD. That is it !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
C Smith| 6.3.11 @ 10:40AM
The caption "Teachers Unions Gone Wild" screams for attention. Seems some itinerant journalist recently "crashed" a New Jersey Education Association's "leadership" conference and video chronicled the event. Reminds me of an expose I compiled (circa 1992) regarding America's only government funded religion. The intent: to challenge believers to "have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them" (cf. Ephesians 5:11). The elder board did not approve distribution.
The following is a facsimile:
The National Education Association (NEA) with 2.1 million members is the most powerful force in education. Although it purports to represent the interest of teachers, many of its members are not in agreement with its policies, have limited awareness of its politics, and are naive about its power and past. William Bennett, former Secretary of Education, in The Devaluing of America, describes the NEA's policies and politics:
In recent years, the union's Representative Assembly went on record in favor of teacher strikes; school- based clinics dispensing contraceptives; a nuclear freeze; gay rights; the Equal Right Amendment; D.C. statehood; and Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, and Michael Dukakis for president. It has voted against merit pay for teachers; parental choice; voluntary school prayer; state takeovers of bad schools; home schooling; English as the official language; drug, alcohol, and AIDS testing; nuclear power plants; aid to the Nicaraguan resistance; the nomination of Judge Robert Bork to the Supreme Court; and Ronald Reagan and George Bush for president...Opposes every common-sense reform measure: competency testing for teachers, opening the teaching profession to knowledgeable individuals who have not graduated from 'schools of education,' performance-based pay, holding educators accountable for how much children learn, an end to tenure, a national examination to find out exactly how much our children know, and parental choice of schools....
Thomas Toch, education correspondent for U.S. News and World Report, "In the Name of Excellence" writes:
In 1989 it [the NEA] spent $7.4 million on such things as a computerized system of mass producing letters to Congress from 300,000 NEA members who "pre-authorized" the use of their names; "Congressional Contact Teams" made up of 2 NEA members in each Congressional district who are specially trained as lobbyists and flown back and forth from Washington to promote the NEA's cause from the local level; a computerized file of NEA's entire membership; a satellite link-up between a television studio in the NEA's Washington headquarters and its state affiliates; and a full-time lobbing staff of 15.... The NEA also has been a major backer of Democratic candidates since 1976, when it played a leading role in the Carter campaign. (Carter signaled the size of the NEA's contributions to his election by pushing through Congress the law that established the U.S. Department of Education - a longtime NEA goal).
The NEA's power in Iowa is of special concern. Again quoting Mr. Toch: "The NEA has sought to gain control of teacher licensing by establishing licensing boards with teacher majorities. Only Minnesota and Iowa have granted this board final authority in teacher certification." Particularly disconcerting for those of us in Iowa where an overwhelming majority of teachers are NEA members." With the NEA in charge, the role of the teacher continues to evolve. The NEA's report, Education for the Seventies, states: "Schools will become clinics whose purpose is to provide individualized psycho-social treatment for the students, and teachers must become psychosocial therapists."
The NEA has encountered little resistance because so little is known of its political expediencies, and according to Mr. Toch, that's the plan. "Though the NEA has fought virtually every educational reform, it has poured millions of dollars into a public relations campaign designed to convince the nation that it is committed to the reform of the public schools, and of teaching in particular." The NEA's publication NEA Today spawns a plethora of glossy images of appreciative students and their obliging teachers, but so little content that it prompted author Samuel Blumenfeld to describe it as having been "written at the intellectual level of the National Enquirer."
No expose on the NEA would be complete without investigating its contention with evangelical Christianity. Blumenfeld in his book NEA: Trojan Horse In American Education describes the organizations long association with secular humanism:
...in 1933 John Dewey and 33 other liberal humanists drew up and signed that extraordinary document known as the Humanist Manifesto. It reflected all of the influences of science, evolution, and the new psychology which were reshaping American education... It was thus Dewey who began to fashion a new materialist religion in which humanity was venerated instead of God. This is basically the religion of Secular Humanism, and this is what has become the official religion of the United States, for it is the only religion permitted in its public schools and totally supported by government funds.... The NEA has remained remarkably faithful to the Humanist Manifesto since 1933. For all practical purposes, the public school has become the parochial school for secular humanism. Its doctrines pervade the curriculum from top to bottom.
Dewey, for his contributions to education, was elected honorary president of the NEA in 1932. He was also issued the American Federation of Teachers' first membership card. With the 1973 signing of Humanistic Manifesto II, humanism became even more culturally entrenched:
As in 1933, humanist still believe that traditional theism, especially faith in the prayer-hearing God, assumed to love and care for persons, to hear and understand their prayers, and to be able to do something about them, is an unproved and outmoded faith. Salvationism, based on mere affirmation, still appears as harmful, diverting people with false hopes of heaven hereafter. Reasonable minds look to other means for survival.... No Deity will save us; we must save ourselves.
Signers of Humanist Manifesto II include Alan F. Guttmacher, president of Planned Parenthood; Betty Friedan, founder of N.O.W; behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner, a horde of Unitarian ministers, and Lester Mondale, former president of the Fellowship of Religious Humanists. Such is the NEA's consanguine "fellowship.
"The NEA's domination of education affects all teachers. It dictates the rules of professional advancement. It pressures teachers to be politically partisan. Its infusion of humanist curriculum places conscionable teachers in a moral dilemma. And its influence over accreditation and other policies is disconcerting for teachers public and private. In summation, the NEA's monopoly on education places teachers, and our children, at risk!
"And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea" (Mark 9:42, cf. Mathew 8:16 & Luke 17:2).
http://popularapostasy.blogspo.....-wild.html
Mutch Moore | 6.6.11 @ 12:04AM
C. Smith: Great post. Thanks for taking the time. Though long, you covered some salient and not well known corollaries.
richard ryan| 6.3.11 @ 10:55AM
My questions: are the needs of the "black community" unique? Why is racial identity so important and prevalent in politics?
My assertion: identity politics perpetuates racism, and has been used by liberals for generations to obtain power. There is no need to classify anyone based on ethnicity, just as 1. citizen, or 2. non-citizen. This is really basic stuff folks. One may argue that blacks' history of slavery in America gives them a unique standing in society as an oppressed people. So at what point does that stop? Is it perpetual, even after 600,000 Americans died in the WBTS and we have LAWS that prevent different treatment based on race, and we endured all the strife of the the 50s-70s? Obama was celebrated as the first "black" president. So what was his connection to the history of slavery in America? Perhaps his white, (or black ancestors in Africa) were on the WRONG side of the slave trade. Who knows? And what is the relevance in 2008? It's all about skin pigmentation. This stuff is ridiculous.
SpiralArchitect| 6.3.11 @ 3:33PM
This may sound a little rough but the POTUS has been nothing short of 'nigger rich' the way he has burned through money in his tenure to date as POTUS.
The terms roots are not in question here ( Anyone can blow money and be referred to the same way) it is the most concise way to relate the POTUS's fiscal recklessness.
Mutch Moore | 6.4.11 @ 1:00AM
Richard Ryan, what a great and under examined point you make. The number one offender perpetuating race identity is our own Federal bureaucracy. As an army veteran, I could not recount to forms presented to me - from first induction, to final
discharge - that had a box to check for race. As a civilian, most all Federal forms, such as for tuition assistance, Federal civil service forms, like registration for tests, etc., ask what race a person is. Wow, your comments address the quintessential elements of this race hypocrisy foisted upon us by both the libs and the Federal gov. Great post Richard Ryan!!!
cicero| 6.3.11 @ 11:12AM
I recommendd that everyone read "Black Rednecks and White Liberals" by Thomas Sowell (publ 2005) It moves the debate to an entirely different playing field. It is a book of essays on various topics, with the first essay giving title to the book. It is only about 60 pages or so long, but worth the read.
Long live Dr. Sowell!
Al Adab| 6.3.11 @ 1:26PM
Thomas Sowelll should be President. At the very least a President should have him on his advisory staff for economics and societal matters. His contributions are too valuable to overlook. We should include his friend Walter Williams as well. Both are valuable thinkers for our time.
Mutch Moore | 6.4.11 @ 1:02AM
I gotta get this Dr. Sowell book. Thanks.
Al Adab| 6.3.11 @ 11:29AM
When an instrument of policy fulfils it's mission, it evolves into an institution serving only to perpetuate and empower itself. Sadly this is the case of the NAACP. Once a proud vital voice it is now only a warehouse for demagogues and panderers. It seeks only to continue it's influence and power regardless of what untenable positions it must take to do so.
Sadly, this is also the case of many government agencies. Once created to acccomplish a task, they are now only self-serving institutuions sucking up tax dollars to no purpose. Time to review their very being.
Brian61| 6.3.11 @ 12:19PM
This type of behavior in an organization is typical and predictable. What was started a a young, vibrant group of people dedicated to changing things for the better, has morphed into an aging, moribund bureacracy of dunces dedicated to preserving the status quo. No different than what happened to GM.
shipley130| 6.3.11 @ 12:28PM
NAACP wouldn't want their supporters getting too smart.
wolflen| 6.3.11 @ 2:23PM
for many the dropout mills are just that...they are not schools because they don't teach..for many they have become a place to have free meals and meet friends..classes seem optional... its just wait till your old enough to dropout..and then join a gang or wait to go to prison...things that some find a step up from where they are..
a connection between dropout rates and prison overcrowding...hmmm..
the naacp time has come and gone...its just a place for people to talk about yesterday...and watch today burn
Hanza| 6.3.11 @ 10:46PM
The nations oldest civil rights organization is the National Rifle Association, not the NAACP.
chemise abercrombie | 6.3.11 @ 11:22PM
nice job!
martin j smith| 6.4.11 @ 8:27AM
This might have been said but I will do so anyway to make sure it is. The NAACP is just one of many organizations that have turned their mission to being basically a Political one to bring Socialism to America. I would say the same of the ADL.
Bill Sundling| 6.4.11 @ 10:18AM
The NAACP is the porch monkey of the Democratic Party.
LarryInIowa| 6.4.11 @ 1:34PM
As part of the left they must stick with the herd. Labor unions, gay activists, the NAACP, abortion activists, etc. They all stick together. If the NAACP didn't stick with the teacher's union they might not have a place at the leftist's conference table. Given a choice between supporting what's good for black kids and what's good for the teacher's union they will stick with the teachers union.
Richard Baker| 6.4.11 @ 3:47PM
I like how Rush refers to them as the NAALCP, the L meaning liberal. What next, they come out in favor of slavery or Jim Crow? What a joke they've become.
Tommy | 6.4.11 @ 4:32PM
nice posting
Marc Jeric| 6.5.11 @ 12:44AM
NAACP has become just another far-left, racist institution, in bed with the deadly government employees unions.
GENE HAUBER| 6.5.11 @ 6:49PM
THE MAIN AND ONLY PROBLEM WITH THIS ISSUE IS THAT OUR COWARDLY REPUBS WILL NEVER , EVER THROW THIS RESISTANCE OF THE BLACK POWER BROKERS UP INTO THEIR FACES FOR THE WORLD TO SEE THAT THEY ARE THE PROBLEM. IT CONTINUES TO WEIGH ON WHITES INSTEAD OF WHERE IT TRULY BELONGS.........ON THE NAACP, AL SHARPTON AND JESSE JACKSON'S SHOULDERS. THEY ARE ONLY INTERESTED IN THE RACE ISSUE AND NOT IN THE FUTURE OF BLACK CHILDREN..........THEY ARE SHAMELESS BASTARDS.
Faith Elle| 6.9.11 @ 1:25AM
I am disappointed by the overwhelming negative comments made toward the NAACP. Point blank people have become so jaded by Charter Schools that they could care less about how resources are taken from public schools to support Charter Schools. Flat out, if an organization has the educational resources to create a charter, they should be able to find their own financial support to create a building to house the school itself. Go NAACP!
Equally Concerned| 6.10.11 @ 11:35AM
The NAACP is on the RIGHT side of history with this suit!
Civil rights remains their main goal and they are making a relevant argument in 2011!
I saw Kim Keena, their attorney, on MSNBC the other day. Her comments were plain and simple. This isn't right and a change must come.
http://www.naacp.org/blog/entr.....s-lawsuit/
The idea of Charter Schools is great, but they should make sure they can sustain their idea of a school with their OWN resources.