White ain’t right: NAACP under fire for advertising in white newspapers only
Maybe this is just what happens when you elect a black guy who’s whiter than most white people as President of the NAACP.
Maybe this is just what happens when you elect a black guy who’s whiter than most white people as President of the NAACP.
NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous admits that “a grave mistake was made” right under his nose when advertising inserts were placed only in White newspapers on the eve of the organization’s annual image awards, which aired March 4. Danny Bakewell, chairman of the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), a federation of more than 200 Black-owned newspapers, is demanding justice.
Ben Jealous, the whitest black man in history, is President of the NAACP
“If the NAACP desires to advertise with the White press, they need to understand and experience the repercussions of going outside of their ‘house’ (The Black Press). The NAACP needs to know that by ignoring the Black Press they are ‘cutting off their nose to spite their face,’” Bakewell said in a March 7 letter to NNPA publishers, obtained by the Trice Edney News Wire. “We have marched side by side with them and been their voice in the African American community. It is truly disheartening to be on the battlefield with someone and not be able to share in the spoils.”
Share in the spoils? Let’s go to freedictionary.com to see if “spoils” means what we think it means:
a. Goods or property seized from a victim after a conflict, especially after a military victory.
b. Incidental benefits reaped by a winner, especially political patronage enjoyed by a successful party or candidate.
Yup, that’s what we thought it meant. We’re just surprised that Bakewell admits publicly that the NAACP is all about reaping benefits from political patronage.
So much for the old kid’s riddle, “What’s black and white and read all over?”
Now, thanks to the wonders of 21st century race relations, we discover newspapers are either black or white, but not both.
