I Condemn the NAACP: It Has Betrayed its History

The NAACP’s resolution condemning the Tea Party movement for being explicitly racist is a betrayal of the organization’s historic importance to our country. It saddens me as the chairman of a civil rights organization that is the spiritual grandson of the NAACP that they have allowed their name and their tradition to be pimped by politicians who are worried about keeping their jobs in 2010.

As a student of history, particularly African-American history, I know that the racial pendulum often swings dramatically. In less than two decades after the Civil War, African-Americans would go from being represented in halls of congress and state legislatures all across our country into the neo-slavery of segregation.

While historians often condemn Southern Democrats and Northern white Republicans for this travesty, few have acknowledged the excesses of the Reconstruction period (1865-1876), perpetuated by some African-American leaders and their white patrons. America has come a long way in terms of race relations, and America does not want to turn back.

I urge my brothers at the NAACP, Al Sharpton and others that use racism like political currency to be students of history. Let us all remember Santayana’s words, “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it