Recently Jesse Jackson harassed yet another mark, the Atlanta Braves. Apparently the baseball franchise happened to field a team with no blacks on it. Confronted with this horror, Jackson hauled out the old tired racial rhetoric.
Few really pay attention to Jackson anymore. Black sportscasters on ESPN slammed Jackson's position as ludicrous, asking the logical question of why the Braves would not seek to put the most competitive team possible on the field. On Pardon the Interruption, the point was raised that black children's interest in baseball has waned considerably over the years. Historically black colleges cannot even fill their rosters with black players. Jackson understands attention more than logic.
The civil rights movement for blacks has entered an era where it has nearly grown obsolete. The generation now exiting high school and entering college is less racially conscious than any in our history. Generally speaking they simply ignore color, meaning that the dream once articulated by Martin Luther King Jr. has nearly come into being.
Success means peril for any influential person of any race that gained influence by using racism and it has produced some ugly developments. Bill Cosby gets blasted for suggesting that young people get an education that can lead them into productive ways of living. Condoleeza Rice and Michael Steele have suffered from racial attacks and stereotypes launched from people in the NAACP among others because they dare to support President Bush and the Republican Party. Some Baltimoreans actually threw Oreo cookies at Steele, yet condemned Trent Lott for a kind word about Strom Thurmond. I wonder what they would think of Frederick Douglas's statement that "The Republican Party is the ship. All else is the sea."
The way for groups such as the NAACP to remain relevant is to first follow Bill Cosby's ideas. Encourage education, especially in the inner city. Hold up people like Rice as models instead of demons. Rice grew up in Alabama in the 50s and 60s and that speaks for itself. Second, the NAACP and others ought to pressure Congress and others to address slavery where it exists now, not where it has not existed for over a century and a half. Black Christians continue to suffer in places like Darfur. The Moslems controlling the north of the country of Sudan enslave and massacre them routinely and America has not involved itself directly. Black leaders in America can work with President Bush to find a way for our nation to help.
That is how the NAACP, a movement with a storied and successful tradition, can stay relevant in an increasingly color blind America. Confederate flags and the Atlanta Braves are picayune compared to the potential that can be tapped through encouragement of education. They are also very minor relative to real suffering and terror experienced in Darfur and elsewhere.
