The NAACP at a Crossroads

As I read this Op Ed from yesterday's WSJ, I was thinking to myself, "Who's this right-winger saying these politically incorrect things about the NAACP?" -- and then saw that it was written by the executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition and a former assistant national director of the NAACP!  This is 100% spot on:

Third, the  NAACP must make public education the civil-rights issue of our times.  Everything else will fall into place if young blacks overcome illiteracy, stay  in school, and are inculcated with a love for learning and for the pursuit of  excellence instead of trained to accept mediocrity and quotas as a means of  social advancement.
 
Holding school authorities accountable --  including black teachers and black-dominated school boards such as in Newark,  N.J., and Washington, D.C. -- must be the priority. That means tutoring pupils  and coaching teachers so that they pass standardized competency tests, and eschewing notions that such examinations are "culturally biased."
 
A revamped NAACP should not accept any alibis for  blacks' academic underachievement. It would take the lead in answering those black educators and their paternalistic allies who develop ghetto industries for grants and careers explaining blacks' deficits. It would confront  separatist schemes such as "black paradigms" of learning and Ebonics as the  language of Africans in America.

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The NAACP at a Crossroads
By MICHAEL MEYERS
September 4, 2007; Page A17
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118887208717816561.html

The highlight of the NAACP convention in Detroit this summer was a symbolic burial ceremony for the n-word. In other words, the nation's oldest, largest and once-fierce champion of civil rights has been reduced to staging publicity stunts.