The NAACP has stirred up a hornets nest in Charlotte, North Carolina in its efforts to punish the entire city for the actions of the school board in scheduling a snow make-up day on Dr. Martin Luther King’s national holiday. The inflammatory language used by Charlotte-Mecklenburg NAACP president Kojo Nantambu referring to Charlotte as a “racist bastion” has some what divided the Black community in Charlotte and the surrounding areas.
Nantambu
While it can be argued that progress against racism and discrimination is an ongoing battle in Charlotte like much of the nation, it is unfair to characterize the entire city as a “racist bastion”.
Most people in the black community agree that the school board should not have scheduled a snow make up day on the MLK holiday, the only national holiday honoring an African American. Perhaps if the NAACP local chapter had sounded the alarm during the days school was out shortly before MLK day, they could have prevented the school board from making such an unwise and insensitive decision. In a statement released on their website, the NAACP said that this issue was raised at a spring school board meeting in 2010 and the community was against a snow day on MLK day. The NAACP knew of this decision almost a year ago but did not mount a campaign to stop it until the last minute. Now that the deed is done, the NAACP is asking that several events not be held in Charlotte to punish the city.
Mayor Anthony Foxx disagrees with the NAACP and released the following statement:
Foxx
Mayor Foxx’s Statement on Effort to Boycott the City
“I disagree with any effort to boycott the City of Charlotte. Our community has some very tough and unresolved issues regarding public education. Some of them involve the current budget crisis, and some involve longer-standing issues of academic achievement disparities. These challenges are not unique to Charlotte-Mecklenburg.
Our capacity to overcome these challenges is what makes our community unique. However, that can happen only when we are able to move past labels and engage each other in meaningful dialogue. I am confident that if we come together and focus on the issues, progress can and will be made.
I further disagree that Charlotte is a racist community, nor do I think our school board or superintendent are racists, as has been alleged in recent months. I agree it was regrettable the King holiday was used as a snow makeup day. At the same time, given the challenges so many of our young people face, I could not agree that students should not attend classes. It also is important to note that the school board next year will not use the King holiday as a makeup day. This is a promising step in the right direction. All of our students deserve the best possible education. At a time when Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools face the worst funding shortage in memory, it will take all of us, working as a community, to ensure we are able to deliver the best for our students.
By using labels such as racist to characterize our entire city, all of us are implicated, including me, and such a harsh, irrevocable verdict leaves us nowhere to go as a community. A better path is dialogue that can lead to solutions, such as tonight’s long-planned panel discussion on race relations at the LevineMuseum of the New South.
We face serious issues as a community, challenges we are more than capable of meeting but not as a divided city. With tongues too sharp or ears too closed, we can miss opportunities to build bridges and make progress. As a community, now is not the time to turn on each other; it is a time to turn to each other and seek common ground.” – Mayor Anthony Foxx
Many agree with Mayor Foxx’s assessment that a boycott will hurt the entire city at a time when it is still hurting economically. It also stands to reason that the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School Board got the message that a snow make-up day on Martin Luther King’s national holiday is unacceptable to many in the community and this will not occur again next year. The NAACP Charlotte-Mecklenburg Branch could not be reached for comment on the Mayor’s statement.
We are 49 days away from the 42nd NAACP Image Awards. How do I know? Because of the running clock ticking down the days, the hours and minutes till this annual party for rich, famous and politically connected Black people kicks off. The event held its annual press conference yesterday and the entertainment section of USA Today wrote:
Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson, Kimberly Elise and Smokey Robinson were on hand yesterday for The 42nd NAACP Image Awards nomination announcement and press conference at The Paley Center in Beverly Hills. So who got nods? Tyler Perry got a whopping 19 nominations.
Both of Will and Jada Pinkett Smith's kids are up for prizes. Jaden, 12, is up for outstanding actor in a motion picture for The Karate Kid, while Willow, 10, will compete for best new artist as well as outstanding music video for Whip My Hair.
Janet Jackson, Halle Berry, Kerry Washington, Queen Latifah and Zoe Saldana are up for best actress. Denzel Washington, Anthony Mackie, Common, Morgan Freeman and the young Smith are competing in the best actor category. Other notable nominees include Rihanna, Kanye West, Sofia Vergara, Nicki Minaj and Justin Timberlake.
The NAACP says that the awards show “is the nation's premier multi-cultural awards show celebrating the outstanding achievements and performances of people of color in the arts (television, recording, literature, motion picture and writing & directing), as well as those individuals or groups who promote social justice through their creative endeavors.”
Let us get one thing straight, this so-called image awards show is more about people of color in the entertainment industry and less about individuals and groups who promote social justice. It must be a legal necessity to include language about social justice to justify whatever funds the NAACP spends to throw a Hollywood party and lavish gifts and praise upon the already rich and famous. Why they choose to include the word “Image” in the title of the event is questionable unless they are strictly referring to the image of Black people playing characters in film, television and music videos. It certainly has nothing to do with the content of many of these people’s character or whether or not the images they present to the Black community is a negative or positive one.
Let us just look at some of the “characters” who have been nominated in the Recording category.
Nicki Minaj was nominated for Outstanding New Artist. Ms. Minaj is a rapper who is in an ongoing feud with fellow nasty girl rapper Lil Kim. Like Lil Kim, Nicki Minaj exploits sex and has no problem showing off her body and using it to get ahead in the music industry. Ms. Minaj was slapped on the butt on national television by dirty old white man Regis Philbin with no protest from her when it happened or after the fact. Ms. Minaj reportedly has a sex tape out on the internet as well. I could go on about Nicki Minaj but this is not about her, it is about why a so-called respectable civil rights organization would be giving an “Image” award to a woman I hope no teenage girl tries to emulate.
Then there is white rapper and bad boy degenerate Eminem who has promoted violence and substance abuse in music but last year most notably rapped about peeing on singer and actress Maria Carey who is now married to actor Nick Cannon. I guess if peeing on people did not exclude R Kelley from getting a nod from the NAACP when he was facing child pornography charges in 2004, then what can you say about Eminem’s NAACP Image Award nomination which he shares with Rhianna, another music industry sex kitten who had naked pictures released on the internet.
Don’t get me wrong, there are some worthy nominations such as Michelle Alexander for her book “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” but then the literary category is tainted by comedian Steve Harvey’s Black man bashing book “Act Like a Lady, Think like a Man”
Members of the NAACP vote on the nominees and it is an invitation only event. Other events scheduled include:
Saturday, February 12, 2011 Nominees' Luncheon Invitation Only
Monday, February 28, 2011 @ 6:30 PM 7th Annual NAACP Hollywood Bureau Symposium
Tuesday, March 1, 2011 @ 6:30 PM Feature Film Night Reception & Screening Creative Artist Agency (CAA)
Wednesday, March 2, 2011 @ 8:30 AM Celebrity Golf Challenge Invitation Only
Wednesday, March 2, 2011 Ladies Tea & Fashion Show Invitation Only
Thursday, March 3, 2011 Nominees' Pre-show Gala Reception Invitation Only
I suspect the only way you get an invitation to these events is if you are rich, famous, politically connected and a member of the Black Bourgeois. With all the rhetoric, we hear about presenting positive images to our Black youth and inspiring them to become doctors, lawyers, pilots, engineers, it can be rightfully said that the NAACP and this award show is part of the problem when a large number of Black youth aspire to only be rappers, athletes and Hollywood stars.
Perhaps someone needs to create an awards show that celebrates the youth of color who has the highest GPA in the nation or the pre-teen who gets into college early. How about grassroots activists like Nancy Lockhart who fought tirelessly on behalf of the Scott sisters to free them from a Mississippi hellhole on a wrongful conviction only to have Benjamin Jealous and the NAACP swoop in at the last minute to take most of the credit and praise.
What about the father and mother of Mitrice Richardson who with strength and dignity are currently battling a possible cover up by the Los Angeles Sheriffs Department about their daughter Mitrice Richardson’s case, who went missing from a Malibu/Lost Hills Sheriffs station only to be found dead nearly a year later.
We must also not forgot to recognize Dr. John Johnson who is still taking on the U.S. Army over questionable circumstances of his daughters death, Pvt. LaVena Johnson who was found shot dead with other other injuries in Iraq on July 19, 2005.
There are people like R Lee Gordon of the National Black Teen Empowerment Expo who is affiliated with several wonderful youth organizations and individuals collaborating to inspire and empower Black youth.
Then there is the Grassroots activist group Peas in their Pods who set up and the run the online Riyla Alert system to help find missing Black children. The list could go on, as there is no lack of courageous people of color whom are actually doing great things other than making movies, videos and records.
Perhaps one day when the Black Talk Media Project has the level of funding that the NAACP gets from corporations to do things like stab the Black community in the back on Net Neutrality, it will host such a worthy event.
Last but not least of my criticisms is the sad fact that the media company News Corp is televising the event on FOX. FOX, the network that consistently antagonizes the Black community and the nation’s First Black Family. FOX is currently being scrutinized for being the source of much of the hateful vitriolic racist language that has played a role in a number of violent acts and murders committed by brainwashed right wing lemmings. FOX commentators have consistently called the NAACP itself a racist organization and often engaged in other such race baiting.
It is evident that the NAACP is out of touch with the average Black man, woman and child in America but that was already known by the masses and yet because the masses are so mislead by the media they consume, I’m sure many of them will tune in and fantasize about being Black, rich and famous in America.
According to Wikipedia, a charlatan is “(also called swindler or mountebank) is a person practicing quackery or some similar confidence trick in order to obtain money, fame or other advantages via some form of pretense or deception.”
While the entire NAACP and its many autonomous chapters should not be condemned, the national leadership embodied by its leader and main mouthpiece Benjamin Jealous must be called out for his misrepresentation of the truth regarding the case of the Scott Sisters. The two sisters, Jamie and Gladys Scott have languished in a Mississippi prison plantation for nearly 17 years after being convicted of an armed robbery for which they had no part in, and sentenced to double life terms for eleven dollars. Governor Haley Barbour recently suspended their sentences but fell short of acknowledging the injustice done to the sisters and placed dubious conditions on their impending release.
Benjamin Jealous was exposed in early December of 2010 of using the Sisters in soliciting funds for the NAACP which contributed nothing to their legal defense or the efforts undertaken by Evelyn Rascoe, their mother, and Nancy Lockhart to publicize the case and recruit grassroots Internet activist to take up the sisters cause.
Today, Benjamin Jealous had the audacity to attach the NAACP name to the Scott Sisters again. In an article written by Jealous and published on the Huffington Post, he states,
“During the past two weeks, in response to successful grassroots campaigns, two governors have released black Americans who had been railroaded by our nation's criminal justice system. Together, these cases speak to the urgent need for the work the NAACP and our allies are doing to encourage more Governors to use their clemency authority as our nation's founding fathers intended by freeing more deserving people more frequently.”
While the substance of the article has many truths about America’s injustice system, he failed to acknowledge the sister's mother or Nancy Lockhart and simply uses the phrase grassroots campaigns. Excuse me but those campaigns had leaders and foot soldiers none of which were associated with Benjamin Jealous and while he states there is an urgent need for the work the NAACP is doing, again insinuating they played some major role in the efforts, unfortunately the NAACP did not see the urgency to take up the Scott Sisters case when they contacted for help many, many years ago.
Benjamin Jealous and the NAACP will be the topic of discussion for this January 1, 2011 broadcast at 10:00PM EST right here on Black Talk Radio News & Views, Bringing You The News You Can Use!
