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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IX. Leadership and Concerted Action - 39. Negro Improvement and Protest Organizations - 9. Critique of the N.A.A.C.P.
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834 An American Dilemma
and often not even Socialists—deprecate the N.A.A.C.P. as ^^bourgeois”
and ^‘middle class.”
To this criticism the N.A.A.C.P. answers that it considers its work in the
civil liberties sphere important enough not to be lightheartedly jeopardized
by radical adventures in other directions. It has machinery set up for this
work, and three decades’ experience has gone into perfecting it. This is a
form of capital working for the Negro people which should not be squan-
dered. It has “good-will” and a public “respectability” which might appear
only as an object of ridicule to the radical intellectual but which, in the
daily fight of the organization, is an asset. For a Negro protest or better-
ment organization to adopt a revolutionary program would be suicidal for
the organization and damaging to the Negro cause.®
To the outside observer the reasons are strongly on the side of the
N.A.A.C.P. against its critics. The American Constitution and the entire
legal system of the land give the Negro a strategic strength in his fight
against caste which it would be senseless not to utilize to the utmost. As it
is possible to get the support of the Northern liberals—and of an increas-
ing number of the Southern liberals, too—in the Negroes’ fight for justice,
this should be taken advantage of. A more or less radical economic program
would not only jeopardize this support, but from a technicaJ viewpoint, it is
also impracticable to over-burden an agency with such divergent tasks.
Leaving aside their assumption that the economic factors are “basic,”^
the critics are, of course, right in urging that there be organized efforts to
tackle the Negroes’ difficulties in breadwinning and, particularly, in gain-
ing entrance into the labor unions. The question is, however, whether or
“I feel very strongly that critics of the Association are not being reasonable where
they maintain, in the light of the known American public opinion, and the known shackled
condition of the Negro in the country, that an organization for his improvement should
embark upon a political and economic revolutionary program.
“These organizations, if you will, must be somewhat opportunistic in their operation.
The identification of the Negro’s cause prominently and predominantly with a political
and economic revolutionary program would be suicidal. The dangers inherent in such a
procedure are but demonstrated by the fact that no racial group in America has adopted
such a program.
“Indeed, it may be questioned whether the white masses have accepted such a philosophy
as the way out of their obvious difficulties. Only an infinitesimal minority of persons in
this country subscribes openly to and works actively in such a program. To ask the Negro,
the most vulnerable, the poorest, the one most at mercy of the majority, to embark upon
this is asking more than is practicable or sensible.” (Roy Wilkins, in memorandum of
March 12, 1941.)
“The white masses of America are not radical, to say nothing of the black masses. They
are radical only with respect to the status of the Negro; on all other matters they are
as conservative as the average American.” (Roy Wilkins in memorandum of August
11, 1942.)
®Sec Chapter 3, Section 5, and Chapter 38, Section 6.
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