“You do not own, and you are not the arbiters of, African-American authenticity,” writes Education Secretary Rod Paige in response to the NAACP’s latest attacks on black conservatives. From the Associated Press:
Paige took aim at two NAACP leaders, chairman Julian Bond and president Kweisi Mfume, for what he called “hateful and untruthful rhetoric about Republicans and President Bush.” At the convention, NAACP officials have described some black organizations as mouthpieces of white conservatives and have said Bush’s education law disproportionately hurts minorities….
“The civil-rights movement has historically been multicultural, and many of its founders, including those who established the NAACP, were in fact white,” Paige said. “I long for the day when our nation’s education policy will not be grist for the partisan mill — when we can work together, black and white, rich and poor, for the sake of our children.”
I like it. I wish more high-profile conservatives would say something publicly against the NAACP and people like Mfume and Bond.
Paige is known for being outspoken. In February of this year, he referred to the National Education Association as a terrorist organization using scare tactics to sway opinion against President Bush’s No Child Left Behind law. I was deeply disappointed when he apologized, but he got this in:
[T]he NEA’s high-priced Washington lobbyists have made no secret that they will fight against bringing real, rock-solid improvements in the way we educate all our children regardless of skin color, accent or where they live.
This country will never be colorblind, unfortunately. Our brains use shortcuts to process information. Negative stereotypes are inevitable, but I believe we all have enough intelligence to at least make the effort to judge others based on character and not skin color.
I don’t want to go through life being known as a “black conservative”, but if I have to, I’m glad “black conservatives” such as Rod Paige are willing to tell the world that the NAACP and their kind do not represent all black Americans.
Update (7/18/04): Rod Paige’s OpinionJournal article.
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On the mental shortcut idea, is the NAACP doing what it can in local communities to promote objective selection criteria? I bet alot of lingering racial inequality is tied to the mental shortcuts that are so easily defeated by using objective tests in hiring and admissions.
When I graduate and am in a position to hire people, I will be using objective criteria before I do an interview, and then again when I interview potential employees. I cannot help but have unconscious preference for my own physical attributes if I do otherwise.
I will be doing this without ever having been contacted by the NAACP. I learned to do so in my survey industrial psychology class. Where will others get this message?
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