Stay Black and Proud...except for you.

Don't ask me why, but for some reason I was convinced to attend a meeting of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. I'd avoided the NAACP because of a run in with an NAACP official several years ago at one of their conventions. He was a person of note and I attempted to shake his hand at which point he looked at me as if I were begging him for change. I noticed him posing for photos with various people at the event at which I met him and when I attempted to get a photo with him I was treated as if I'd just crawled from a septic tank. I left feeling insulted and the following day I saw the same man who had rebuffed me nearly in tears because members of MY generation weren't joining the NAACP in the numbers we once were during the 50's, 60's and 70's. I wanted to reach into my television pull the negro through it and beat him until his mother didn't recognize him for this hypocrisy.

Regardless, I was attending an NAACP meeting. The turn out was small and the bulk of the membership were men and women in their late 50s and early 60s. There were a handful of people my age, but not many. The new people were asked to give their names and say somethin about themselves and when my turn came I said who I was and said what I do during the day to pay the bills. I thought nothing of it, but when the meeting concluded I found myself being told that the NAACP's national convention would be in our city and that I of all people should come up with an idea for a business that I could shop around to some of the well connected persons who might show up.
Another older member told me that I would "find my nitch" at some point. Mind you my day job doesn't have a pension or benefits, but it's nice to know that members of my parents generation could easily overlook the fact that I:

a. Wasn't in jail
b. wasn't breaking the LAW to support myself.
c. HAD A JOB!

yet they were wondering why I and other members of my generation weren't rushing out in DROVES to join them. In the parking lot one of the older members whom initially thought was okay took issue with the fact that one of the chapter's officers was white. He went on some drawn out racist tirade about how black organizations don't need white members etc and peppered his sentiments with a plethora of racial slurs.
He then got on me when he learned that one of my closest friends is Asian by saying how my generation has so alienated itself that we have to look to "other races" because we can't befriend one another.

I know the people I met are not the ENTIRE NAACP, but at the same time I was thinking that this cross sampling reminded me why I hadn't joined the organization in the first place. I'm not saying they don't do any good. The organization was at the forefront of the civil rights movement and many of the rights I take for granted today were secured by NAACP lawyers like Thurgood Marshall, but today's NAACP needs to find leadership that looks at today's issues rather than celebrating it's glorious past and try to appeal to men and women whose generational outlook is more in keeping with the new millineum and the problems that we (Americans of every race) will have to solve.