The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) should be all about promoting the best interests and respecting the success of, well, colored people. Yet in a sudden turn, one of the movement's highlighted leaders has lashed out unfairly, and in a racist fashion against US Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina.
But first, some background about the NAACP. The organization originated with liberal intellectual D.E.B. DuBois, whose views on human nature and the role of government in improving the lives of others was, to say the least, progressive, but not enlightened or true. In fact, DuBois became so frustrated with the lost caused of civil rights, as he understood it, that he burned his passport and moved to the "free state" of Ghana, an African police state where some Africans held power, only to persecute the impoverished everyone else.
To this day, the NAACP advocates liberal causes and measures in the name of assisting the status of the African-Americans. How any group which sides with the Democratic Party on many issues can claim to best advance the interests of colored people, is just beyond most well-thinking people. Democratic leaders have made war on African-Americans, from President Lyndon Baines Johnson's move to expand welfare: "We'll have those n-ggers voting for us for the next two hundred years!"; to President Barack Obama's dangerous and disrespectful policies, which have made war on the social conservatism in many black communities, including his sudden flip-flopping on gay marriage, his opposition to school choice and vouchers, to advanced abortion access (witness the degradation of abortionist Kermit Gosnell in Philadelphia).
And now, William Barber II, a North Carolina preacher and rising star (?) in the NAACP, has attacked another African-American, South Carolina's
junior senator Tim Scott, for his conservative views. Speaking at a South Carolina NAACP function, Barber cut to the quick:
A ventriloquist can always find a good dummy. . .the extreme right wing down here (in South Carolina) finds a black guy to be senator and claims he’s the first black senator since Reconstruction and then he goes to Washington, D.C., and articulates the agenda of the Tea Party.
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Such race-baiting is absolutely shameful, especially when coming from a pastor. A church leader has every right to preach to his congregation, or any group, his political views as they line up with the Bible. And even if they do not, he has every right to blather whatever blatherskite he chooses. Barber even defends abortion and attacks voter ID laws, in his "Moral Monday" demonstrations against Republican Governor Pat McCrory and his conservative caucus in Raliegh North Carolina. Likely using racism as a reason for these protests, Barber does not identify anywhere in Scripture where the killing of the unborn at any time is acceptable, nor the moral or immoral basis for requiring citizens to prove their identity to vote.
Barber's slander against another African-American, Tim Scott, is suffused with unjust, immoral racial overtones (along the lines of Vice President Joe Biden's "put y'all back in chains" rhetoric in 2012. That we are hearing such rhetoric against African-American legislators, and even from other African-Americans, is just unfortunate.
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Barber should apologize for his outrageous remarks. Instead of tearing down a fellow African-American, the North Carolina pastor should at least congratulate US Senator Scott's achievements, regardless of how the pastor may feel about his politics.
Please contact the South Carolina NAACP. Demand that they retract and apologize for Barber's disrespectful remarks against US Senator Tim Scott, and tell the organization to advance the interests of all colored people, regardless of political affiliation.
South Carolina NAACP
Dr. Lonnie Randolph, Jr. – President
Ms. Marian C. Miller – 1st Vice President
Ms. Comilla Sampson – Secretary
Mr. James Floyd Davis, Jr. – Treasurer/CFO
Mr. Dwight C. James, Sr. – Executive Director
803-754-4584.
National NAACP:
http://www.naacp.org/page/s/contact
National Headquarters
4805 Mt. Hope Drive
Baltimore MD 21215
Local: (410) 580-5777
Toll Free: (877) NAACP-98
Hollywood Bureau
Los Angeles, CA
Phone: (323) 938-5268
Fax: (323) 938-8153
www.naacpimageawards.net
Email: hollywoodbureau@naacpnet.org
Washington Bureau
1156 15th Street, NW Suite 915
Washington, DC 20005
Phone: (202) 463-2940
Fax: (202) 463-2953
Email: washingtonbureau@naacpnet.org