If you're looking for engine of racist social change, that's the one that seems to create the most. Hello, incarceration rate? Prisons as the new plantation? Black and white drug use rates almost the same, but zillions more black users end up in prison?

But I guess that's a complicated problem for them to address, since the War on Drugs keeps the price of cocaine high, and the price of cocaine is very important these days to the urban economy.

Like, you know, to the rap music industry, where people don't even blink these days when they find out a recording session was financed by a coke deal.

Oh yes and -- the drug enforcement and prison industries employ a lot of African Americans.

So the War on Drugs has been integrated into the economy to such an extent that there are too many people making money from it for there to be much desire to have it stop.

Maybe that's one reason why the NAACP has lost its way?

Perhaps it's because the organization became a self-serving, money-making enterprise that refused to have rationale debate without evoking racism at every turn. Racism is alive today, but it cannot be blamed for everything. The NAACP did not accept that.

This is why Barak Obama has a legitimate shot at the White House while Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton never stood a chance.

Without necessarily disagreeing with the remainder of your post, your statement about the NAACP being a money-making enterprise is just dead wrong. It has been a money-losing enterprise for decades.

I was wondering how mnay letters it would take before somebody made a stupid reference to Jessie Jackson and/or Al Sharpton. Btw, the NAACP is a money-making organization that's raking in the dough, huh? Too funny.

Anyway, I can see DD's points and they are well taken but I think there is merit in the NAACP shutting down some of it's regional structure and focusing on it's core mission - civil rights advocacy. As Bond implied, there are existing organizations, like the Urban League, that do a great job focusing on the those other issues DD is talking about in her column. Also, I'm not sure it's totally accurate to say that their tactics are outdated. While they are known for broad protests, they have always employed other tactics (e.g. lawsuits, negotiations, etc.) in pursuit of their goals.

And they're still losing money? Say no more. That's your problem right there. How could an executive director possibly chart a new course and still keep 64 board members happy, 64 board members who between them still cannot manage to raise enough money to maintain the organization? They need to do a weekend retreat somewhere and have some strategic planning sessions. Sheesh...

A few years ago Jeb Bush announced the end of racial quotas in university admissions in Florida, and protestors lined the avenue up to the Capitol. An onlooker said "Maybe that's not the way you change things anymore." I think he was right. OK, so you have a protest. Then what? The Southern civil rights protests worked because the white establishment reacted like jerks while the TV cameras were rolling, and the Northern marcjes worked because people in the North had been thinking "Well, we don't have any discontent here, do we?"

Today, there's a march de jour. The irony to me is that the NAACP resisted the civil rights protests by the SCLC, seeing them as disruptive. The NAACP of the 50s and 60s at first thought they could work quietly, within the system. Now that the doors are opened, maybe that's true now.

So what is the right way to change things? Money, as in the Texas Utilities buyout? Grassroots organizing? (That always sounds mom-and-apple-pie good, but how do you do it?) Blogging? (Nah, get real)

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/billcosbypoundcakespeech.htm

The NAACP lost its way when it turned it back on Bill Cosby.

Over 5 dozen board members? A business leader was okay with this?

Mrs. Dickerson said it all "I'd be cleaning Salon's office today instead of writing this column."

The fact is that she is writing this column, not cleaning the office. She does not face anything like the kind of racism that existed in 1909 when the NAACP was founded. All of the anger, the fighting, and the protesting worked. The major problems have been fixed, but the anger, the fighting, and the protesting continues.

The biggist justice story of the past year was the Duke Lacross non-rape non-assult. The NAACP fought to continue the prosecution even into this spring when all available evidence pointed to total innocence. 98 years of anger being used to perpetuate injustice...

I have thought this about the NAACP for some time. Our communities are still in turmoil, many of our youth are still lost and too many of our able bodied folk are still unemployed. Many African Americans who want better opportunities for themselves and their families, and are tired of fighting for the community, flee to the suburbs to return only for a hot minute to go to church or get their hair done.

I am grateful that the NAACP helped pave the way for me and others like me but this dinosaur of an organization needs new ideas and it has to be more proactive. The old guard is still necessary (as advisors perhaps) but the yunguns need to step up, get in the trenches, do some serious fundraising and work for the betterment of a new generation. And this can be done without a board of 64! Count me in when someone is willing to listen.

Well, never say never. I have been a full on critic of almost every D. Dickerson column written on Salon, but I have to say that she is right on with this one.

My parents were active members of the NAACP and the Urban League. So I grew up watching these black leaders fight for the betterment of all blacks and increased opportunity for black children, but as I grew older and wiser there was a larger societal shift that left the tactics of old in the past and antiquated. My friends and I often discussed the efficacy of marches, boycotts and those grassroots movements which initiated such groundbreaking change back in the day.

Actually, I think boycotting is an extremely smart economic strategical attack that needs to be used more often in the bottom-line driven world of today. Hit 'em where it truly hurts, right in their pockets, I mean profits.

But as young black professionals we also realized that we certainly felt removed from the path that the NAACP was still on. It hadn't changed since the 60's and this was clearly an organization that needed to revamp and evolve its ways to remain effective in this new world order.

Let's not get it twisted though....racism and prejudice still exist. As a matter of fact, I think in some ways it is as obvious as a black man swinging from a tree.

But there has been progress. Black people have progressed and gained economic and political power that wasn't previously had. This means we have new weapons, new tactic and strategy at our disposal to attack this age-old problem.

It's not like the fight is over and it's a damn shame that the leadership of this grand ol' organization cannot get beyond themselves (or living in the past) to bring in youth, innovation, change and a renewed spirit for this institution. Instead they remain stubborn and stagnant to its demise.

Well put, D. Dickerson.