New York, Nov. 28—The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has finally moved. For years and years it subscribed to the futile doctrine that one cannot criticize one’s own: one’s own being, in this case, all other colored people. Insiders and not a few outsiders knew that such gentlemen as Roy Wilkins and John Morsell, the two principal executives of NAACP, have been aghast at the extremism that has issued from the irresponsible black Left. But until now, the Association has been reluctant to identify black extremism for fear of appearing treacherous; so that the present break suggests that, on reflection, their policy of see-no-evil, hear-no-evil over there in the fever swamps of black ideology has struck them as unsound. Or it suggests that the intensification of extremist activity is now such that it cannot, as a matter of fact, be ignored.
I think of the Reverend Ralph Abernathy who, facing a college audience the day before the NAACP published its disavowals, was asked the question: “Do you believe that Richard Nixon and William Buckley are racists?” to which he gave the answer: “Well, they are very nearly that.” Granted, it is hard to wrest any analytical meaning from such a statement, it being as hard to be very nearly a racist as to be very nearly pregnant.
Comments