NAACP Under a Black President

One hundred years before the founding of the NAACP, Abraham Lincoln was born. And 100 years later, the organization heard from America’s first black president.

The fact a black president addressed the nation’s oldest civil rights organization has some in the media discussing what role the NAACP plays in America now, when taking in the context of an Obama presidency and his recent speech.

We start with CNN, who spoke with former Bush aide Ron Christie. He says Obama’s speech failed to recognize how far African Americans have come in the last century.

“It almost made it seem like this speech could have been given 40 years ago and that there has been no significant progress in the African American community. I mean, we have overcome so much as a people. We have overcome so much as a race, that I think that now there are millions of African Americans who have hope, who have the dream, who have aspiration.”

But MSNBC’s Chris Matthews still thinks it’s important that Obama addresses issues concerning African-American people.

“I just think about the kid who’s 16, 17 years old, struggling in a rough neighborhood, with noise all around, perhaps violence down the hall, and this young person is struggling to do their homework. They now have a president who is with them.”

Commentator Joe Hicks tells FOX News he recognizes the continued struggles of blacks, but doesn’t see the NAACP focusing their efforts on the problems, which, he thinks, puts the organization in danger of becoming irrelevant.

“The kind of things that are facing black Americans, high rates of crime, rising incidents of AIDS, education that simply is not serving the needs of urban communities, are the kinds of things they should be looking at, but rarely get mentioned by these organizations.”

Finally, in an opinion article for the Chicago Sun-Times, Mary Mitchell says the NAACP is still relevant in that it could hold Obama accountable to the black cause.

“The NAACP and other civil rights organizations must be as colorblind as the Obama administration. By that, I mean the nation's oldest civil rights organization has to hold the nation's first black president as accountable as other presidents.”

Is Obama’s presidency changing race relations?