This news comes from the Associated Press today: The president, Bruce Gordon, who was hailed as the next great wave of leadership of this venerable civil rights organization, has given up -- and quit.
NAACP President Resigns After 19 Months
By ERIN TEXEIRA
The Associated Press
Sunday, March 4, 2007; 2:57 PM
NEW YORK -- NAACP President Bruce S. Gordon is quitting the civil rights organization, leaving after just 19 months at the helm, he told The Associated Press Sunday.
Gordon cited growing strain with board members over the group's management style and future operations.
"I believe that any organization that's going to be effective will only be effective if the board and the CEO are aligned and I don't think we are aligned," Gordon said. "This compromises the ability of the board to be as effective as it can be."
He spoke by phone from Los Angeles, where he had just attended the taping of the NAACP Image Awards.
Dennis C. Hayes, general counsel of the Baltimore-based National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, is expected to serve as interim president, Gordon said.
Hayes filled the same role after Kweisi Mfume resigned the presidency in 2004 after nine years.
Gordon said that while the NAACP is an advocacy organization, it needs to be more focused on service and finding solutions.
"I'm used to a CEO running an organization, with the board approving strategy and policy," Gordon said. "But the NAACP board is very much involved."
© 2007 The Associated Press
Sunday, March 4, 2007
Bloody Sunday, Part One
If the New York Times' Maureen Dowd had her way, the bloody part of this commemoration of a very important day in US history, would come from Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton duking it out in Selma, Ala.
But Bloody Sunday is much more sacred than that. The name comes from that date in March 1965 when scores of Black people, including a very young John Lewis who is now a senior congressman from Georgia, had the crap beat out of them as they tried to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in a march to the capital, Montgomery, to demand the right to vote. Because so many people, including those in the White House, were horrified at the televised beatings, another march was scheduled, with Martin Luther King Jr. leading the line of advocates along with clergy of various faiths who came in as reinforcements. And President Johnson decided to use his muscle to convince Congress to enact the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
This is an account of what happened that Bloody Sunday, taken from Juan Williams' Eyes on the Prize, a riveting companion book to the PBS series of the same name in the 1980s. Look for the book in your local stores; the documentary is available on DVD.
"'When we arrived at the apex of the Edmund Pettus Bridge," recalls Lewis, 'we saw a sea of blue[-clad] Alabama state troopers.' Gas masks hung from the belts of the troopers, who were slapping billy clubs against their hands....Major John Cloud ordered them to turn back. 'It would be detrimental to your safety to continue this march,' he said....Fifty policemen moved forward, knocking the first ten to twenty demonstrators off their feet. People screamed and struggled to break free as their packs and bags were scattered across the pavement. Tear gas was fired, and then lawmen on horseback charged into the stumbling protesters....'The police were riding along on horseback beating people,' remembers Andrew Young. 'The tear gas was so thick you couldn't get to where the people were who needed help'....Television coverage of the police assault interrupted the networks' regular programming; ABC broke into its broadcast of the film Judgment at Nuremberg. 'When that beating happened at the foot of the bridge, it looked like war,' recalls Mayor Smitherman. 'That went all over the country. And the people, the wrath of the nation came down on us.'"
Hillary is showing up with her ace in the hole for courting Blacks, former President Bill Clinton. Obama is speaking in the church that was headquarters for the Selma campaign, the Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church, and he has John Lewis at his side, along with others like Joseph Lowery who were King's aides and successors.
But rather that political strategizing, this day should be one for remembering what Blacks and some of their White allies went through to gain the right to vote that had been included in the US Constitution since 1870, but never really enforced. In essence, Blacks gained the right to vote in 1965 because of Bloody Sunday.
But Bloody Sunday is much more sacred than that. The name comes from that date in March 1965 when scores of Black people, including a very young John Lewis who is now a senior congressman from Georgia, had the crap beat out of them as they tried to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in a march to the capital, Montgomery, to demand the right to vote. Because so many people, including those in the White House, were horrified at the televised beatings, another march was scheduled, with Martin Luther King Jr. leading the line of advocates along with clergy of various faiths who came in as reinforcements. And President Johnson decided to use his muscle to convince Congress to enact the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
This is an account of what happened that Bloody Sunday, taken from Juan Williams' Eyes on the Prize, a riveting companion book to the PBS series of the same name in the 1980s. Look for the book in your local stores; the documentary is available on DVD.
"'When we arrived at the apex of the Edmund Pettus Bridge," recalls Lewis, 'we saw a sea of blue[-clad] Alabama state troopers.' Gas masks hung from the belts of the troopers, who were slapping billy clubs against their hands....Major John Cloud ordered them to turn back. 'It would be detrimental to your safety to continue this march,' he said....Fifty policemen moved forward, knocking the first ten to twenty demonstrators off their feet. People screamed and struggled to break free as their packs and bags were scattered across the pavement. Tear gas was fired, and then lawmen on horseback charged into the stumbling protesters....'The police were riding along on horseback beating people,' remembers Andrew Young. 'The tear gas was so thick you couldn't get to where the people were who needed help'....Television coverage of the police assault interrupted the networks' regular programming; ABC broke into its broadcast of the film Judgment at Nuremberg. 'When that beating happened at the foot of the bridge, it looked like war,' recalls Mayor Smitherman. 'That went all over the country. And the people, the wrath of the nation came down on us.'"
Hillary is showing up with her ace in the hole for courting Blacks, former President Bill Clinton. Obama is speaking in the church that was headquarters for the Selma campaign, the Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church, and he has John Lewis at his side, along with others like Joseph Lowery who were King's aides and successors.
But rather that political strategizing, this day should be one for remembering what Blacks and some of their White allies went through to gain the right to vote that had been included in the US Constitution since 1870, but never really enforced. In essence, Blacks gained the right to vote in 1965 because of Bloody Sunday.
Saturday, March 3, 2007
So Does THIS Make Obama "Black Enough"?
As you know, I reject this litmus test that some Blacks have for Obama or any other Black person seeking the US presidency -- that is to say, Were your forebears slaves?
Obama's mother, a White Kansan, and his father, a Black Kenyan -- and a healthy dose of ignorance, of course -- are the bases for raising the "Black enough" question.
So guess what? Obama is still showing how our racial identities are all mixed up and should be irrelevant as a determinant of whether one is worthy of our votes. It turns out that some of his mother's forebears OWNED slaves. So, I ask, does that make him Black enough? It's a connection to slavery!
Professor Ron Walters, a political scientist, said this to the Baltimore Sun, which ran the story as a major front-page "exclusive": "The twist is very interesting. It deepens his connection with the experience of slavery, even if it deepens it on a different side of the equation."
Check this out in The Baltimore Sun:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/politics/bal-obama0301,0,789030.story?coll=bal-home-headlines
Here's another article, from the New York Daily News, that suggests that Obama's family tree might also contain Quincy Jones. Does THAT make him Black enough?
A spokesman for Obama said: "It is a true measure of progress that the descendant of a slave owner would come to marry a student from Kenya and produce a son who would grow up to be a candidate for president of the United States."
Obama's mother, a White Kansan, and his father, a Black Kenyan -- and a healthy dose of ignorance, of course -- are the bases for raising the "Black enough" question.
So guess what? Obama is still showing how our racial identities are all mixed up and should be irrelevant as a determinant of whether one is worthy of our votes. It turns out that some of his mother's forebears OWNED slaves. So, I ask, does that make him Black enough? It's a connection to slavery!
Professor Ron Walters, a political scientist, said this to the Baltimore Sun, which ran the story as a major front-page "exclusive": "The twist is very interesting. It deepens his connection with the experience of slavery, even if it deepens it on a different side of the equation."
Check this out in The Baltimore Sun:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/politics/bal-obama0301,0,789030.story?coll=bal-home-headlines
Here's another article, from the New York Daily News, that suggests that Obama's family tree might also contain Quincy Jones. Does THAT make him Black enough?
A spokesman for Obama said: "It is a true measure of progress that the descendant of a slave owner would come to marry a student from Kenya and produce a son who would grow up to be a candidate for president of the United States."
Giuliani's Repackaging Himself
So Rudy, who says he doesn't always agree with himself, went to the convention of the Conservative Political Action Conference, the folks who don't like gay people, don't support abortion rights and harp upon family values. It seems that Giuliani has absolutely NOTHING in common with them.
But he'll grovel for votes, obscuring his actual pre-9/11 record as a husband and father and as New York City's mayor -- and these desperate CPACers seem willing to hitch their wagon to whoever looks like he can beat Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or any other Democrat. Forget that he's been married three times, including to a cousin and to a woman he cheated on then announced in a press conference that he was leaving her -- before he let her know it in person. Forget that he's estranged from his children. Forget that he supports gay rights and abortion rights and gun control.
And people wonder why so many of US are cynical about -- and turned off by -- politics?
For Rudy and the CPACers, the theme seems to be: "Anything Goes, As Long as It Doesn't Involve a Democrat."
But he'll grovel for votes, obscuring his actual pre-9/11 record as a husband and father and as New York City's mayor -- and these desperate CPACers seem willing to hitch their wagon to whoever looks like he can beat Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or any other Democrat. Forget that he's been married three times, including to a cousin and to a woman he cheated on then announced in a press conference that he was leaving her -- before he let her know it in person. Forget that he's estranged from his children. Forget that he supports gay rights and abortion rights and gun control.
And people wonder why so many of US are cynical about -- and turned off by -- politics?
For Rudy and the CPACers, the theme seems to be: "Anything Goes, As Long as It Doesn't Involve a Democrat."
Don’t Stop With Firing the Secretary of the Army!
I’m dismayed daily when I hear reports that one or two or more of US troops have been killed and some far larger number have been wounded. If we focus on this at all, we focus on the deaths, we may drop a tear when we see funeral processions in our communities or see in newspapers those mesmerizing color photos of families and friends grieving at church services or burial sites.
But what about all those tens of thousands of wounded? Out of sight; out of mind.
Until a Washington Post series of articles that has lifted the curtain – and ending up, so far, with the firing of the Secretary of the Army, Francis J. Harvey. (See: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2007/02/21/LI2007022100671.html)
“I am disappointed that some in the Army have not adequately appreciated the seriousness of the situation,” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, said yesterday. He was described by the New York Times as “grim-faced” as he said that. Well should he be.
The wounded who are outpatients at the crème de la crème of military medical care, the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, are dumped into a moldy, rodent-infested building across the street from the main medical building – the one that the politicians and celebrities make sure to be photographed visiting – and are forced to jump through hoops – without arms and legs in some cases – to get adequate medical care. Washington Post reporters documented "mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses" as well as crumbling ceilings and floors. Even a Republican Congressman, Tom Davis of Virginia told the Post: "You could put all the wounded soldiers in the Ritz-Carlton, and it wouldn't fix the personnel management and recordkeeping problems that keep them languishing in outpatient limbo out there for months."
Too little too late, President Bush has said: “This is unacceptable to me. It is unacceptable to our country. And it’s not going to continue.”
Some say the military medical establishment has been overwhelmed because it did not expect so many troops to survive such serious injuries as are being seen in Iraq and Afghanistan. Just more proof of incompetence by the entire Bush regime in carrying out this so-called war on terrorism that is so very much helter-skelter.
But what about all those tens of thousands of wounded? Out of sight; out of mind.
Until a Washington Post series of articles that has lifted the curtain – and ending up, so far, with the firing of the Secretary of the Army, Francis J. Harvey. (See: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2007/02/21/LI2007022100671.html)
“I am disappointed that some in the Army have not adequately appreciated the seriousness of the situation,” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, said yesterday. He was described by the New York Times as “grim-faced” as he said that. Well should he be.
The wounded who are outpatients at the crème de la crème of military medical care, the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, are dumped into a moldy, rodent-infested building across the street from the main medical building – the one that the politicians and celebrities make sure to be photographed visiting – and are forced to jump through hoops – without arms and legs in some cases – to get adequate medical care. Washington Post reporters documented "mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses" as well as crumbling ceilings and floors. Even a Republican Congressman, Tom Davis of Virginia told the Post: "You could put all the wounded soldiers in the Ritz-Carlton, and it wouldn't fix the personnel management and recordkeeping problems that keep them languishing in outpatient limbo out there for months."
Too little too late, President Bush has said: “This is unacceptable to me. It is unacceptable to our country. And it’s not going to continue.”
Some say the military medical establishment has been overwhelmed because it did not expect so many troops to survive such serious injuries as are being seen in Iraq and Afghanistan. Just more proof of incompetence by the entire Bush regime in carrying out this so-called war on terrorism that is so very much helter-skelter.
No Sympathy for Teens Who Tortured and Baked a Puppy
Two brothers who admitted torturing and killing a small puppy by baking it to death inside a gas oven will serve 10 years in prison.
Some people believe that is 10 years too much, that they should have been given some slap on the wrist. Short of a public tarring and feathering, I cannot imagine a sentence more appropriatee.
Justin and Joshua Moulder, who essentially threw themselves on the mercy of the court with guilty pleas to nine felony counts, found little sympathy from Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thelma Wyatt Cummings Moore at a three-hour sentencing hearing last month.
She described the acts the boys pleaded guilty to — taking the puppy and smearing paint on it, trying to set it on fire, hog tying its feet with duct tape and binding its snout before stuffing it into a searing hot gas oven — as "malicious, unbridled cruelty."
"The way we treat animals, the way we treat the least of these is a reflection of society," Moore said.
"We will not tolerate this conduct as human beings."
Moore sentenced the brothers, ages 19 and 17 and with lengthy juvenile records, to the maximum on several counts, merging the times in jail for a final sentence of 10 years in prison, plus 10 years of probation. The felony animal cruelty charge carried a maximum of 5 years in prison. However, the time in jail increased because of charges for burglary, criminal damage to property and child cruelty.
The sentence matched the recommendation of prosecutors. Defense lawyers asked for six months in prison plus four and a half years on probation. The brothers could have been given as many as 90 years in jail.
A few years ago, I would not have paid much attention to this story. I thought of myself as not into pets and not into children, either. But I’m the homework lady and the cookie lady and the Christmas tree lady to kids in my ambit these days. AND, I am the mama cat to Frank Sinatra and Sammie Dee, who I adopted six and five years ago, respectively. They were throw-aways. Now they are two of the most pampered pussies you can imagine this side of what Al Sharpton or Donald Trump can afford.
We share this Earth with all manner of creatures. Some of us like to think of humans as shepherds over God’s flock. These Moulder brothers, and perhaps other members of their family, violated the unspoken covenant we have with our fellow creatures – human and otherwise.
Let’s hope they figure that out while behind bars. In the meantime, the rest of US can do something about abused and neglected animals by contributing to the ASPCA (www.myaspca.org; 888-776-01111).
Some people believe that is 10 years too much, that they should have been given some slap on the wrist. Short of a public tarring and feathering, I cannot imagine a sentence more appropriatee.
Justin and Joshua Moulder, who essentially threw themselves on the mercy of the court with guilty pleas to nine felony counts, found little sympathy from Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thelma Wyatt Cummings Moore at a three-hour sentencing hearing last month.
She described the acts the boys pleaded guilty to — taking the puppy and smearing paint on it, trying to set it on fire, hog tying its feet with duct tape and binding its snout before stuffing it into a searing hot gas oven — as "malicious, unbridled cruelty."
"The way we treat animals, the way we treat the least of these is a reflection of society," Moore said.
"We will not tolerate this conduct as human beings."
Moore sentenced the brothers, ages 19 and 17 and with lengthy juvenile records, to the maximum on several counts, merging the times in jail for a final sentence of 10 years in prison, plus 10 years of probation. The felony animal cruelty charge carried a maximum of 5 years in prison. However, the time in jail increased because of charges for burglary, criminal damage to property and child cruelty.
The sentence matched the recommendation of prosecutors. Defense lawyers asked for six months in prison plus four and a half years on probation. The brothers could have been given as many as 90 years in jail.
A few years ago, I would not have paid much attention to this story. I thought of myself as not into pets and not into children, either. But I’m the homework lady and the cookie lady and the Christmas tree lady to kids in my ambit these days. AND, I am the mama cat to Frank Sinatra and Sammie Dee, who I adopted six and five years ago, respectively. They were throw-aways. Now they are two of the most pampered pussies you can imagine this side of what Al Sharpton or Donald Trump can afford.
We share this Earth with all manner of creatures. Some of us like to think of humans as shepherds over God’s flock. These Moulder brothers, and perhaps other members of their family, violated the unspoken covenant we have with our fellow creatures – human and otherwise.
Let’s hope they figure that out while behind bars. In the meantime, the rest of US can do something about abused and neglected animals by contributing to the ASPCA (www.myaspca.org; 888-776-01111).
Clarence Thomas Speaks Out
In many ways, I'm not so different from US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas on the subject of affirmative action. I still believe that President Clinton's "mend it, don't end it" approach is, unfortunately, necessary. But I understand Thomas's abhorrence of a policy that begins with the premise that Blacks are, no matter their actual backgrounds, damaged goods in need of handouts to get a leg up.
We do not often hear from Justice Thomas beyond his utterances through the US Supreme Court, where he is the only Black. He is often the butt of jokes, scorned as an Uncle Tom and a conservative lackey, seen as so into his White world that he has forgotten from whence he came (poor Black folks near Savannah, Ga.)
I’ve actually read his opinions and, among the columns for which I was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1996, was one defending his position in a school-discrimination case. (www.pulitzer.org, See Commentary.):
July 12, 1995
Clarence Thomas' Input in Race Debate
THREE OF MY fellow Georgians stand at the forefront of our painful national debate on racism and remedies: House Speaker Newt Gingrich, the self-proclaimed leader of the Republican revolution; Rep. Cynthia McKinney, whose racially gerrymandered congressional district the Supreme Court deemed unlawful, and Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court justice who, if you listen to some folks, was single-handedly responsible for that decision and an earlier one limiting the federal courts' role in the area of school desegregation.
Thomas has been pilloried, "called everything but a child of God," as we say in Georgia. But rather than being "an Uncle Tom," as so many are so quick to say, at times he sounds to me like W.E.B. Du Bois, the scholar, founding member of the NAACP and Pan-Africanist whose bona fides has not been called into question as far as I know.
You probably think I'm nuts, but consider what Du Bois had to say 60 years ago when educators like himself and lawyers such as Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall were debating what to do about segregated schools. Work to raise their quality, while conceding the reality of American apartheid? Or sue to end state-mandated segregation, arguing that integration was the only assurance black children could get a decent education?
In the July 1935 Journal of Negro Education, leading scholars, including E. Franklin Frazier, Ralph Bunche, Horace Mann Bond, Alain Locke and Du Bois, weighed in on the subject. Du Bois chastised blacks for their "utter lack of faith" in their own schools. "[A]s long as American Negroes believe that their race is constitutionally and permanently inferior to white people, they necessarily disbelieve in every possible Negro institution." The quality of the education should be paramount, he said, not whether black kids sat next to white kids in integrated classrooms. "The Negro needs neither segregated schools nor mixed schools," Du Bois declared. "What he needs is Education."
Thomas seemed to echo Du Bois a few weeks ago in finding that a federal judge had gone too far in requiring an elaborate desegregation plan to achieve racial balance in the public schools of Kansas City, Mo., where, in some instances, schools were 90% black. Looking at black students' poor academic performance, the federal judge concluded that there was a link between the high proportion of blacks and the low quality of the schools.
"It never ceases to amaze me that the courts are so willing to assume that anything that is predominantly black must be inferior," Thomas wrote in a passionate critique of the Kansas City plan. Of the Missouri court's insistence on racial balance, he said: "This position appears to rest upon the idea that any school that is black is inferior, and that blacks cannot succeed without the benefit of the company of whites."
Thomas, like Du Bois, would say to local school officials and parents: Fix the schools to make sure that they are indeed educating kids. Demand that every school gets its fair share of education dollars. Let kids go to school in their own neighborhoods if they choose. And forget about what proportion of students are of what race. Thomas agrees with Du Bois that it's wrong to use children as "battering rams" in the elusive goal of creating an integrated society.
Admittedly, Thomas is a strange bird, but he seems to have more faith in the ability of blacks to stand on their own two feet than do some of those who berate him. His is an Old Testament-style tough love. He is yes, I do believe this a proud black man. But a confused one.
"We're a mixed-up generation, those of us who were sent to integrate society," Thomas once said.
I'm part of that generation that was the first to integrate this, that or the other. We've got the bruises psychic, if not physical to show it. So who better than us the expeditionary troops, the cannon fodder to force Americans to confront racism and shape remedies that make sense for the 1990s? Black thought on racism did not begin with the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education case. The remedies we seek should not end with it.
****************
Check Thomas out now, with his own take on how he got to where he is today. He still thinks he pretty much made it on his own. But the White benefactors probably did see him as an affirmative action hire. Maybe he can only be comfortable in his own skin by denying that.
Go to this web address:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-thomas3mar03,0,4638507.story?track=ntothtml
We do not often hear from Justice Thomas beyond his utterances through the US Supreme Court, where he is the only Black. He is often the butt of jokes, scorned as an Uncle Tom and a conservative lackey, seen as so into his White world that he has forgotten from whence he came (poor Black folks near Savannah, Ga.)
I’ve actually read his opinions and, among the columns for which I was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1996, was one defending his position in a school-discrimination case. (www.pulitzer.org, See Commentary.):
July 12, 1995
Clarence Thomas' Input in Race Debate
THREE OF MY fellow Georgians stand at the forefront of our painful national debate on racism and remedies: House Speaker Newt Gingrich, the self-proclaimed leader of the Republican revolution; Rep. Cynthia McKinney, whose racially gerrymandered congressional district the Supreme Court deemed unlawful, and Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court justice who, if you listen to some folks, was single-handedly responsible for that decision and an earlier one limiting the federal courts' role in the area of school desegregation.
Thomas has been pilloried, "called everything but a child of God," as we say in Georgia. But rather than being "an Uncle Tom," as so many are so quick to say, at times he sounds to me like W.E.B. Du Bois, the scholar, founding member of the NAACP and Pan-Africanist whose bona fides has not been called into question as far as I know.
You probably think I'm nuts, but consider what Du Bois had to say 60 years ago when educators like himself and lawyers such as Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall were debating what to do about segregated schools. Work to raise their quality, while conceding the reality of American apartheid? Or sue to end state-mandated segregation, arguing that integration was the only assurance black children could get a decent education?
In the July 1935 Journal of Negro Education, leading scholars, including E. Franklin Frazier, Ralph Bunche, Horace Mann Bond, Alain Locke and Du Bois, weighed in on the subject. Du Bois chastised blacks for their "utter lack of faith" in their own schools. "[A]s long as American Negroes believe that their race is constitutionally and permanently inferior to white people, they necessarily disbelieve in every possible Negro institution." The quality of the education should be paramount, he said, not whether black kids sat next to white kids in integrated classrooms. "The Negro needs neither segregated schools nor mixed schools," Du Bois declared. "What he needs is Education."
Thomas seemed to echo Du Bois a few weeks ago in finding that a federal judge had gone too far in requiring an elaborate desegregation plan to achieve racial balance in the public schools of Kansas City, Mo., where, in some instances, schools were 90% black. Looking at black students' poor academic performance, the federal judge concluded that there was a link between the high proportion of blacks and the low quality of the schools.
"It never ceases to amaze me that the courts are so willing to assume that anything that is predominantly black must be inferior," Thomas wrote in a passionate critique of the Kansas City plan. Of the Missouri court's insistence on racial balance, he said: "This position appears to rest upon the idea that any school that is black is inferior, and that blacks cannot succeed without the benefit of the company of whites."
Thomas, like Du Bois, would say to local school officials and parents: Fix the schools to make sure that they are indeed educating kids. Demand that every school gets its fair share of education dollars. Let kids go to school in their own neighborhoods if they choose. And forget about what proportion of students are of what race. Thomas agrees with Du Bois that it's wrong to use children as "battering rams" in the elusive goal of creating an integrated society.
Admittedly, Thomas is a strange bird, but he seems to have more faith in the ability of blacks to stand on their own two feet than do some of those who berate him. His is an Old Testament-style tough love. He is yes, I do believe this a proud black man. But a confused one.
"We're a mixed-up generation, those of us who were sent to integrate society," Thomas once said.
I'm part of that generation that was the first to integrate this, that or the other. We've got the bruises psychic, if not physical to show it. So who better than us the expeditionary troops, the cannon fodder to force Americans to confront racism and shape remedies that make sense for the 1990s? Black thought on racism did not begin with the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education case. The remedies we seek should not end with it.
****************
Check Thomas out now, with his own take on how he got to where he is today. He still thinks he pretty much made it on his own. But the White benefactors probably did see him as an affirmative action hire. Maybe he can only be comfortable in his own skin by denying that.
Go to this web address:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-thomas3mar03,0,4638507.story?track=ntothtml
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