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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IX. Leadership and Concerted Action - 39. Negro Improvement and Protest Organizations - 8. The Strategy of the N.A.A.C.P. - 9. Critique of the N.A.A.C.P.
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Chapter 39. Improvement and Protest Organizations 831
and it is:
. . . convinced of the futility of any program to produce separate but equal educa-
tional opportunities for education for one-tenth of America’s population, so they
work for the day when the same and not equal opportunities are open to all. But on
the way to the goal, the campaign to get those opportunities for all in states having
laws requiring separate systems of education must be waged. Equal buildings, equal
equipment in the buildings, equal salaries, equal length of school term, equal trans-
portation facilities, equal per capita expenditure—all these are steps toward our goal.®^
The N.A.A.C.P. has also been accused of being ^^radical.” This crit-
icism has been excellently evaluated by Bunche:
The leadership and membership of the N.A.A.C.P., both Negro and white, is not
recruited from the ranks of radicals. The program and tactics of the organization
remain well within the bounds of respectability. It has, of course, been branded as
radical by those who resent its militant demands for Negro equality and rights. But
never, in the history of the organization, has there been aught but acceptance of the
fundaments of the “American way” of life; the only demands for change have been
directed toward Negro status. Its membership and its hold upon the black masses have
never been strong enough to permit it to utter serious threats, nor to invoke mass
pressure. Thus its tactics have had to conform to the dictates of expediency and
opportunism; good strategy and the need for cultivating the prestige of the organ-
ization and the decree that demands shall be made and cases fought only when
circumstances are of such favorable nature as to afford good chance of victory,®®
9. Critique of the N.A.A.C.P.
The N.A.A.C.P. has been criticized by the most diverse groups for its
concentration on publicity, suffrage and civil liberties. To the Northern
sociologist with laissez-faire (do nothing) leanings, the N.A.A.C.P. and all
the other organizations represent a superficial and inconsequential quack-
doctoring of symptoms instead of a scientific treatment of causes. The ^fun-
damental causes” are conflicts of ^‘interests” which are not supposed to be
touched by propaganda or law suits.®® To the Southern liberal of a more
contemplative temper, the struggle of the N.A.A.C.P. is a Don Quixotian
battle against the unshakable ^folkways and mores” of his unhappy
region.®^ To the younger school of more or less Marxian-influenced Negro
intellectuals, the NA.A.C.P.^s policy is in the main only an evasion of the
central problem, which is the economic one.®® Different as these critical
judgments are in motivation, they all express the fundamental defeatism
in regard to the upholding of law and order which has become so wide-
spread among American intellectuals of all colors and political creeds.*
the N.A.A.C.P. is largely unjustified. In our inquiry we started out by
stressing the faltering systems of law and order in America. The low legal
‘See Chapter i, Sections ii and 12.
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