NAACP leaders blast Bush policies, bury n-word

Corey Williams

DETROIT — The NAACP is needed now more than ever because the Bush administration has done little to support blacks, the civil rights organization’s national chairman said Sunday as its 98th annual convention opened.

From the administration’s slow response to Hurricane Katrina to the war in Iraq and immigration issues, Bush has seen his presidency questioned, Julian Bond, board chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, told an audience of about 3,000.

The number of Americans living in poverty has increased by more than 5 million, to 37 million, during the Bush administration, Bond said.

“And the gap has grown between the haves and the have-nots,” he said. “Almost a quarter of black Americans nationwide live below the poverty line, as compared with only 8.6 percent of whites.”

Bond called present-day inequalities and racial disparities cumulative, the result of racial advantages compounded over time.

“Many Americans maintain … that racial discrimination has become an ancient artifact,” he said. “At the NAACP, we know none of this is true, and that’s why we are dedicated to an aggressive campaign of social justice, fighting racial discrimination.”

He noted that the Supreme Court, which includes two justices nominated by Bush, upheld rulings saying school systems could not voluntarily use race in assigning students to schools.

“The Bush court removed black children from the law’s protection,” Bond said.

And the possibility that New Orleans’ heavily black Lower Ninth Ward, ravaged by Hurricane Katrina, will never be rebuilt is comparable to a “lynching” because the work of generations was wiped out in a single day and black landholders are being dispossessed, Bond said.

“Katrina served to underscore how the war in Iraq has weakened, rather than strengthened, our defenses, including our levees,” Bond said. “The problem isn’t that we can’t prosecute a war in the Persian Gulf and protect our citizens on the Gulf Coast at home. The problem is that we cannot do either one.”

A message seeking comment was left Sunday night with the White House press office.

The NAACP is experiencing changes that include the search for a new CEO and downsizing in which more than 70 employees lost their jobs. The organization is also in the early stages of a $100 million fundraising drive.

The organization must strengthen its branches and state conferences and build membership, Bond said.

Detroit resident Akindele Akinyemi, 32, said before the speech that he was curious about the direction the NAACP will take during the next year.

“I want to find out what strategies they would use to bring younger members on board, and what issues are relevant to young adults,” he said.

Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, 37, agreed in brief remarks to help open the meeting, saying: “I don’t believe we can continue to put people over 50 as leaders of civil rights organizations and expect to galvanize the power beyond measure.”

Toward that end, hundreds of onlookers cheered Monday afternoon as the NAACP put to rest a longstanding expression of racism by holding a public burial for the n-word during its annual convention.

Delegates from across the country marched from downtown Detroit’s Cobo Center to Hart Plaza. Two Percheron horses pulled a pine box adorned with a bouquet of fake black roses and a black ribbon printed with a derivation of the word.

The coffin is to be placed at historically black Detroit Memorial Park Cemetery and will have a headstone.

“Today we’re not just burying the n-word, we’re taking it out of our spirit,” said Kilpatrick. “We gather burying all the things that go with the n-word. We have to bury the ‘pimps’ and the ‘hos’ that go with it.”

He continued: “Die, n-word, and we don’t want to see you ’round here no more.”

The n-word has long been used as a slur against blacks, but is also used by blacks when referring to other blacks, especially in comedy routines and rap and hip-hop music.

“This was the greatest child that racism ever birthed,” the Rev. Otis Moss III, assistant pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, said in his eulogy.

Public discussion on the word’s use increased last year following a tirade by “Seinfeld” actor Michael Richards, who used it repeatedly during a Los Angeles comedy routine and later issued a public apology.

The issue about racially insensitive remarks heated up earlier this year after talk show host Don Imus described black members of the Rutgers University women’s basketball team as “nappy-headed hos” on April 4.

Black leaders, including the Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, have challenged the entertainment industry and the American public to stop using the n-word and other racial slurs.

Minister and rap icon Kurtis Blow called for people, especially young people, to stop buying music by artists who use offensive language.

“They wouldn’t make rap songs if you didn’t buy them. Stop supporting the stuff you don’t want to hear,” said Blow, who is credited with helping create the genre’s popularity in the late 1970s and early 1980s. “I’ve never used the n-word and I’ve recorded over 150 rap songs. I’ve never used profanity. It’s possible you can use hip-hop and not offend anyone.”

The Rev. Wendell Anthony, pastor of Detroit’s Fellowship Chapel and member of the NAACP’s national board of directors, said the efforts were not an attack on young people or hip-hop.

He said they were a commentary on the culture the genre has produced.

“We’re not thugs. We’re not gangstas,” Anthony told the crowd. “All of us has been guilty of this word. It’s upon all of us to now kill this word.”

The NAACP has been criticized of being out of touch with young blacks, but Tiffany Tilley said the organization is moving in the right direction.

“This is a great start,” the 30-year-old Detroit resident said. “We need to continue to change the mentality of our people. It may take a generation, but it’s definitely the movement we have to take.”

The NAACP held a symbolic funeral in Detroit in 1944 for Jim Crow, the systematic, mostly Southern practice of discrimination against and segregation of blacks from the end of post-Civil War Reconstruction into the mid-20th century.

The organization’s 98th annual national convention ends today.

(Associated Press)