will.i.am received a 2009 NAACP image award recently. I can understand his selection of an NAACP Image award after his participation and campaigning this past year. Unfortunately, I cannot tell you that I watched the program when it aired because I did not know that it was on until after it aired. How is it possible that I did not know that the program was airing? How is it possible that I do not know what the NAACP is doing during this newly invigorated debate with a President Barack Obama in office and the possibility for change and that advancement of the people.
I believe that the NAACP does have a continued role to play in the struggle for equality in this country but I am middle age and every time I discuss the NAACP many young adults they only see it as an old folks civil rights organization and of course the annual image awards show.. I was encouraged when Benjamin Todd was elected to lead the NAACP because I had hoped that Mr. Todd would be able to broaden the message and outreach of the NAACP to the younger generation as well as grow the organization into a modern community with a current grassroots power. NAACP grassroots power was legendary during the Civil Rights struggle but does not seem as effective today.
While the NAACP gave will.i.am a 2009 Image award... I think he gave them so much more in a posting yesterday at the Huffington Post. His words provide a more modern mission, inclusive of all people of color as well as those who remain invisible because they are surviving in poverty. I hope that Mr.Benjamin Todd reads the posting as well as all the other board members of the NAACP. It is a long beautiful statement, I have included an excerpt here but I urge you to read it in full.
Who Are the Colored People?
but what about the other colors...
filipino?
brazilian?
indian?
cambodian?
afghani?
and chinese?
if the NAACP fought so that a black man could be president in a country that practiced slavery...
then the NAACP should now stand and represent all people of color...
and fight to unite every version of "pigment"...
and lack of it...
the NAACP should now march and protect the most important colors of all...
GREEN...
"the planet"...
and "GREY"...
the mind...
education...
equal education...
because no matter if you're black, white, blue or orange...
we all live on green...
and we all think with grey...
and what good is a united people if there is no green to live on...???
and what good is a united people if our grey is filled with nothingness...
will.i.am also has another line in there that seems to be causing a lot of discussion for those who want to see the struggle of equality for African American as fulfilled because our President is black...but I do not think that is what he meant because he says the battle has been won not the war. will.i.am also wants the tent to include all not some.
Is the NAACP still vital? In my one humble opinion it needs the vitality and vision of the younger generation but the cooperation network rolodex of the old heads as well as their expertise.
At 100, NAACP says it’s still vital, needed
Hall, 22, an international studies major at Emory University, leads the campus chapter of the NAACP. She recognizes the election of Barack Obama as a culmination of all the hard-won victories of civil rights activists, but it does not mean the struggle is over.
Hall also knows that it’s up to her generation to pick up the baton as the NAACP enters a new era in which racism is not always as overt or ubiquitous.
The NAACP’s new young president and CEO, Benjamin Todd Jealous, 35, has already laid out a host of issues for Obama to address: fair distribution of federal bailout funds; reducing double-digit black unemployment; reducing the disparity between unsolved murders in black and white communities; access to good schools for minority children; and confronting lenders who push minorities with good credit into subprime mortgages.
That agenda, says Hall, is evidence that the mission of the NAACP — to end discrimination — remains unchanged.
N.A.A.C.P. Calls for Economic Equity
"The election of Barack Obama is a momentous victory and one that we have worked to achieve for at least five decades," Benjamin T. Jealous, the organization’s president, said. "We celebrate the breaking of glass ceilings. But our real job is to uplift the grass roots.
"And since this is still a country in which it’s harder for a black man with no criminal record to get a job than it is for a white man with a criminal record, we have a lot of work left to do."
And to answer my own question about why I haven't heard about what the NAACP is doing...it is my own fault. Did you know the NAACP had published a white paper detailing all the inequality issues that they want Congress and President Obama to address.
And as for me I need to pay the dues and raise my middle age voice because the NAACP is still relevant, necessary and the NAACP will have to take a step forward and let the younger generation move the organization into the 21st century because NAACPpublicity, web outreach and yes community organizing is lacking. One more thing...I will send the will.i.am post to all the young adults I know.
Everyday there are important diaries posted here that beg for the attention of national organization and neighborhood communities...perhaps I will send a copy of this post to Mr. Todd as well.
I am old school and proud of it!
Peace!