Despite opposition from a majority of NAACP activists, the local NAACP branch is partnering with the Minneapolis School Board and the Minnesota Department of Education to operate two parent information centers.
The NAACP's role in operating the NAACP Parent Information Centers is a departure from the NAACP's traditional role as an advocacy organization. The original mission of the NAACP was to fight for changes in the system. And because the people who run the school system don't want to change it, it is impossible for the NAACP to form a partnership with them, unless the NAACP stops agitating for changes in the system. By contrast, the Urban League was set up at about the same time as the NAACP to work within the system and enjoyed the patronage of Andrew Carnegi and other extremely rich people who provided financial support to black churches and black newspapers. That's why Booker T. Washington, who was closely associated with the Urban League, was the most powerful of the power-brokers in the black community at the time. Washington and the early leadership of the Urban League sought to improve the condition of blacks through social work projects, which required funding sources that would quickly dry up if the Urban League began to agitate for changes in the system. The problem, in Washington's view, was that blacks didn't have the power needed to change the system and didn't have the immediate perspective of forming alliances with whites that would be powerful enough to change the system. Given that situation, it was best to work for the improvement of black folks within the system, or so the argument goes. The thesis that a defect in culture / psychology has been holding back poor blacks, and not changeable, policy-driven, systemic factors, was advanced in Daniel Patrick Moynihan's 1965 report, The Negro Family: A Case for National Action. This view was adopted by many black cultural nationalists, and has become popular within the black political elite. Yes, even Jesse Jackson has articulated this idea in recent years. See "On Reparations," by Adolph Reed http://educationright.tripod.com/id266.htm The public schools have also been extremely effective in promoting the notion that academic (and economic) success and failure is almost entirely a reflection of a person's innate abilities and effort, parental support, etc. In research summarized in the book "Keeping Track: How Schools Structure Inequality," Jeanie Oakes found that students almost invariably credited or blamed themselves for their success or failure in school, and almost never their teachers, school administrators or "the system." -Doug Mann, King Field http://educationright.tripod.com TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. 2. If you don't like what's being discussed here, don't complain - change the subject (Mpls-specific, of course.) ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
