'Left of Black': Episode #16 featuring Byron Hurt and Blair L. M. Kelley

Left of Black #16—January 10, 2011
w/Mark Anthony Neal

Left of Black host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal is joined by filmmaker and activist Byron Hurt in a discussion of his recent film Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes and his in-progress film Soul Food Junkies. Neal is also joined in-studio by North Carolina State University historian and critic Blair L.M. Kelley in a wide ranging conversation about social protest in the early 20th Century, social media and contemporary Hip-Hop.

Byron Hurt is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, a published writer, and an anti-sexist activist. His films include the award-winning Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes and I AM A MAN: Black Masculinity in America. Hurt is currently completing his next film Soul Food Junkies, which explores the health advantages and disadvantages of Soul Food.

Blair L. M. Kelley is the author of Right to Ride: Streetcar Boycotts and African American Citizenship in the Era of Plessy v. Ferguson (UNC Press, 2010) and is Associate Professor of History at North Carolina State University.

To Forge a Better NAACP

To Forge a Better NAACP
by Blair L. M. Kelley

What happened to the NAACP? It’s odd to think that the venerable and historic National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has been reduced to a talking point in the national media cycle this week.

They received national attention in June when the Los Angeles chapter lodged a protest against a Hallmark card with a recorded message that they thought somehow insulted black women. Then in July, the national meeting of the NAACP issued a statement calling on the conservative Tea Party movement to “repudiate racist factions” in their midst, one year after many in the media and blogosphere had already pointed out evidence of racism during the health care reform protests. Then NAACP President Benjamin Jealous said they were “snookered” by a video posted by right-wing blogger Andrew Breitbart that purported to show civil rights veteran and USDA official Shirley Sherrod “revealing her past racism.” Sherrod was really telling a story about her own transformation, from a person who wanted to aid poor black farmers, to a person who wanted to assist poor farmers no matter their race. The NAACP of today should be celebrating the work of people like Sherrod, not misunderstanding who she is.

Students frequently ask me questions about today’s NAACP. They ask if I think the NAACP is still necessary in today’s “post-civil rights” world. They ask what work the NAACP should be doing now. Many students dismiss the NAACP as old and ineffectual, out of touch with their generation. These incidents seem to reinforce this notion that the NAACP is spinning its wheels, late to point out injustice, or failing to address real crises while targeting the wrong people or imagined problems.

Part of the problem is that in contemporary conversation it seems like the NAACP has been painted into a racialized corner as an all-black organization that is somehow “reverse racist,” selfish, and self-interested. Many accuse the NAACP of lacking new ideas and new energy that can address what social justice should be in the 21st century. It might be a good time for the NAACP to remember its own history.

Read the Full Essay @ UNCPressBlog

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Blair L. M. Kelley is associate professor of history at North Carolina State University and author of Right to Ride: Streetcar Boycotts and African American Citizenship in the Era of Plessy v. Ferguson.