NAACP convention defends affirmative action

By Frances Wright

This article was reprinted from the July 18, 1998 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

ATLANTA, Ga. - The more than 3,400 delegates to the 89th convention of the NAACP cheered as Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell warned that African Americans were "in a battle of Biblical proportions" as the right wing steps up its attack on affirmative action.

It was the first convention in Atlanta since 1963 when delegates were not allowed to stay in "whites only" hotels.

Acting in concert with its new leadership, the convention reaffirmed the determination of the nation's largest civil rights organization to defend affirmative action.

Top NAACP leaders Julian Bond and Kweisi Mfume blasted attacks on affirmative action and vowed stiffened resistance to them.

"The threat to affirmative action is coming from the courts, not from the people," NAACP chairman Bond told a standing room only crowd at the Georgia World Congress Center July 12.

Pointing to the fact that economic justice was the one "unaddressed and unfulfilled" item remaining on the civil rights agenda, Bond said, "The most effective weapon for advancing entry [by African Americans] into the mainstream of American life has been affirmative action."

Bond said, "Opponents now try to tell us that it doesn't work, or it used to work but doesn't now and isn't needed now; [or] when it does work it only helps people who don't need it. Their real problem is that it does work, and despite limits, where it works, it works well."

Bond said affirmative action isn't about preferential treatment for African Americans but "is about removing preferential treatment whites have received through history and giving equal treatment to people who were denied equality in the past."

Bond ridiculed those who blamed affirmative action for the stubborn persistence of poverty.

"It is a program designed to counter racial discrimination, not poverty. No one beat Rodney King or killed James Byrd because they were poor."

NAACP President and CEO Mfume said the question before African Americans was not that of having come a long, long way but, rather, that of having a long, long way to go.

"And that," he said, "begs the question - not when do we get there, but what path do we take?"

Mfume said those who argue that there is no further need for affirmative action because "this is an America that provides equal opportunity, that does not discriminate [or] that affirmative action stigmatizes the achievements of those it was designed to help ... are either intentionally misleading or condescending or both."

Mfume said that "we speak now about what it really is. Any stigmas and negative stereotypes associated with race ... existed long before affirmative action was ever invented."

Mfume drew applause when he defended the concept of quotas and "set-asides" in government contracts. "This nation was founded on 100 percent set-asides for privileged white males.

African Americans were sold as property and experienced a quota of zero when we went to vote, or to school or to own a business."

"Bigotry continues," Mfume said," but this organization was founded because people wouldn't take it anymore," and listed several instances where NAACP initiatives have produced important victories.

New initiatives include a joint campaign with the National Bar Association to deal with the fact that there are only seven African American law clerks among the nearly 400 appointed by Supreme Court justices.

Signaling its revived militancy, the NAACP sent $50,000 and organizers to Washington state to defeat Initiative 200, which seeks to repeal affirmative action provisions in state law while posing as a "civil rights" measure.

Bond told the delegates, "I promise that you will read about the NAACP because we are fighting for civil rights, not because we are fighting among ourselves."

Bond also warned against any "go-it-alone" approach when he said that "our challenge is to remember that ... colored people come in all colors ... Even if they do not share our history, we need to make common cause with them. We go forward fastest when we go forward together."

Bond said he sees the NAACP as an advocacy organization founded to defend and advance the rights of African Americans. "That's the reason we were founded and the reason we exist."

"We are going to build a world where private prejudice doesn't become public policy."

An energetic contingent of 1,000 representatives of high school and college branches were living testimony to the convention's theme, "Preparing Tomorrow's Leaders Today."

Fred Gaboury contributed to this article.

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