Gordon Out But NAACP Problems Remain

LOS ANGELES -- As always Bruce Gordon was tactful and circumspect in explaining why he was leaving as NAACP president after only 19 months. He would only say that there were differences between himself and others in the NAACP, presumably meaning his differences were with some on the organization’s 64 member national board. His low-key pronouncement was in keeping with the no-nonsense corporate approach to civil rights advocacy that he brought to the organization. That was, and is, the problem.

The standard knock against the nation’s oldest civil rights organization is that it’s too staid, and tradition bound. But that’s not the real problem, and Gordon’s departure underscores this. The NAACP’s embrace of showy, symbolic fights, and despite its momentary détente with President Bush last summer at its convention, its blatant push of any and all Democrats, does little to solve the mountainous problems of drugs, crime, and gangs, soaring joblessness among young blacks, and the astronomical rate of prison incarceration of blacks. Nor do the annual reports cards from Gordon and other NAACP officials issue on racial progress in; financial services, auto retail, telecommunications, the advertising and marketing industries, foundation and corporate giving.

The NAACP’s retreat from visible activism on thorny racial and economic problems can be directly traced to the fight against legal segregation in the 1960s, the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr., the class divisions within black America, and the greening of the black middle-class. By the close of the 1960s the civil rights movement had spent itself. The torrent of demonstrations, sit-ins, marches and civil rights legislation annihilated the legal wall of segregation. With the barriers erased, the black middle-class grew by leaps and bounds.

Many packed up their bags and started their headlong flight from inner cities to greener suburban pastures. They owned more and better businesses, marched into more corporations, and universities, spread out into more of the professions, won more political offices, bought bigger and more expensive homes, cars, clothes, and jewelry, took more luxury vacations, and joined more country clubs than ever before. The NAACP became the political springboard for this fast emergent black middle-class. It fought hard to get more blacks in corporate management, in elite universities, in front of and behind TV cameras, elect more black Democrats, and secure more business loans.

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