Word: civilizations
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...fate of Mfume's social initiatives proved less successful and were emblematic of an identity crisis within the group. "We have all this money to spend, but I don't feel like the N.A.A.C.P. is effective as a civil rights organization," says Michael Meyers, a former assistant director of the organization and now executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition. While Mfume made headlines for grading Hollywood on minority representation and denouncing ebonics ("black English"), detractors say he did little to draw attention to the health, education and criminal-justice issues that still cripple many in the black...
...increasingly hostile political climate. After declining to speak at the group's annual meeting last July, President Bush called his relationship with the N.A.A.C.P. "basically nonexistent." (Bush met privately with Mfume in late December.) Then the President named Gerald Reynolds, a conservative black Republican with a record of opposing civil rights protections, to head the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. "Racism is not a deal killer like it was in the '60s," Reynolds told TIME. "You can work around it." And a new study by Syracuse University found that federal enforcement of civil rights laws fell drastically from...
Perhaps an even bigger challenge to the organization is the task of coming up with a clear and inclusive agenda. During the civil rights era, poor and middle-class blacks were united in their need for basic access to schools, housing and jobs. Now a growing black middle class has moved out of the inner cities and become increasingly detached from the needs of poor blacks. Some 27% of black households earned more than $50,000 a year in 2001, vs. just 12% in 1971, according to U.S. Census data, adjusted for inflation. Despite those gains, about 20% of blacks...
...shift gears. "There was a time to do a lot of marching," says Elijah Cummings, a Democratic Congressman from Baltimore and the outgoing leader of the Congressional Black Caucus. "Now it is time to do a lot of negotiating." That means reaching beyond liberals who have supported the civil rights agenda. Even within the black community--and the N.A.A.C.P.--there is a growing conservative voice. Some 11% of blacks voted for Bush in 2004, up from 8% in 2000. Mfume notes that the N.A.A.C.P.'s 64-member board of directors has more than a dozen Republicans. And the nine-member...
...everything from racial profiling to employment discrimination. "For me, it's about giving back," says Callender, a water-company lobbyist, when explaining why he got involved. He is training the next generation of leaders through the chapter's Youth Leadership Academy. After all, the future of the civil rights movement will be in their hands...