THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, August 25, 1994 TAG: 9408250005
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A18 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 55 lines
The turmoil over the firing of Benjamin F. Chavis Jr. as executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People could lead the nation's largest and oldest civil-rights organization to what it clearly lacks: a vision.
Social conditions have changed remarkably in the NAACP's 85 years, and younger blacks say the organization has evolved into an elitist, passive group bearing little resemblance to the grassroots legions who led the struggle against racial segregation. They want a mission tailored to today, not history.
There's little call nowadays for lunch-counter sit-ins or massive marches to the strains of ``We Shall Overcome,'' but that does not mean the struggle to improve the lives of African-Americans is over. In 1994, it's more a matter of looking internally, finding ways to boost African-American achievement and of saving some African-Americans from them-selves.
Chavis, to his credit, sought to find a way forward for the organization. His outreach to controversial Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan had supporters as well as critics. But Chavis' mercurial style seemed to alienate as many people as it inspired.
His decision to commit up to $332,400 in organization funds to settle a sexual harassment suit, as well as reportedly allowing the organization's debt to mushroom to $3 million, showed deficiencies as a manager. Chavis may see his own departure as a ``crucifixion,'' but no one else should.
The NAACP can find focus in its own name, by helping African-Americans advance beyond social conditions that entrap too many of them today: single-parent households that perpetuate reliance on government for day-to-day existence; drug abuse, which wrecks the lives of a greater portion of African-Americans than anything else; an appalling level of violence, which claims disproportionately large numbers of African-Americans, particularly young males.
Hugh Price, the new president of the National Urban League, has been quietly advancing a plan to move African-Americans from overreliance on government to reliance on their own money and talents. Given the constricted realities of government in the '90s, this is a course the NAACP could profitably pursue. President Clinton could help by in-sti-tut-ing real welfare reform.
The easy part in the NAACP flap was deciding that Ben Chavis' course was ``inimical to the best interests of the as-so-ci-a-tion.''
The challenge is for the organization to set and pursue a fresh course.
KEYWORDS: NAACP
by CNB