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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IX. Leadership and Concerted Action - 39. Negro Improvement and Protest Organizations - 9. Critique of the N.A.A.C.P.
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Chapter 39. Improvement and Protest Organizations 835
not this is the proper task for the N.A.A.C.P. To an extent it is, undoubt-
edly, and the Association has, during the New Deal, become increasingly
active in fighting discrimination in public welfare policy and in the labor
market. Outside such questions of discriminatory legislation and adminis-
tration as the Association is particularly competent to handle, it leaves
most of these problems to the Urban League, and the two organizations
even have a gentleman’s agreement of long standing to observe such a divi-
sion of responsibility. The Urban League has, however, even stronger rea-
sons for not embarking upon broad and fundamental economic reform pro-
grams, as we shall see shortly.
There is thus, unquestionably, room for more concerted action on the
side of the Negro people. Particularly there is need of an agency attempt-
ing to integrate Negro labor into the trade union movement.® But the real-
ization of this need should not be turned into criticism of the existing
agencies serving other functions. Instead, the critics should go ahead and
form the organizations they see the need of—soliciting advice and aid
in their work from the experienced and established organizations. These
critics—like most people who discuss the Negro protest and betterment
organizations—^assume without question that there should be just one unified
Negro movement. We shall take up this important problem of Negro
strategy later. Our conclusion will be that a suppressed minority group like
the Negro people is best served by several organizations dividing the field
and maximizing the support that can be gained from different groups of
whites.
In this light should also be judged the criticism against the N.A.A.C.P.
that it has “not become an important factor in the national political
scene.”^^ In our discussion of the Negro in. politics, we have observed the
need for organizing, locally and nationally, a collective bargaining agency
for the Negro people to deal with the political parties,’^ But agaih there is
a question whether the N.A.A.C.P. can undertake to carry out this task
to a greater degree than it already does—which involves taking a stand in
local and national political conflicts and supporting one party or the other
—^without losing in effectiveness in its primary function of fighting for legal
equality for the Negro. Again it is a question of whether this task should not
be given to another agency.
An indisputable weakness of the N.A.A.C.P. is its lack of mass support.®
“See Chapter i8, Section 3.
**
See Chapter 23, Sections i and 2,
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