North Carolina NAACP Denounces Race-Baiting Ad



By Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II
NC NAACP State Conference President



The NAACP is fiercely non-partisan. We do not endorse candidates. But for over 99 years, the NAACP has also been fiercely anti-racist. In 1898 White Supremacists who controlled the North Carolina Democratic Party at that time, published racist cartoons, lies, and half truths about Black people to plow the fields for a terrorist attack that killed scores of Black people and exiled Black and White leaders of the fragile political alliance that was forming. The cartoons, the attack ads of the day, stirred up hatred and violence that scared poor White voters out of the alliance, and disenfranchised Black voters for three generations of Jim Crow.

We founded the NAACP 11 years after the racist pogroms initiated by the then Democratic Party in Wilmington. This terrorism was spread throughout the South and there was a particularly vicious terrorist attack in Springfield, Illinois that prompted a call to White anti-racists and courageous Black leaders to form the NAACP on Lincoln’s birthday—February 12th, 1909. Our purpose then and our purpose now is to stop such attacks and build an America free of race hatred. Now, 110 years since Wilmington, we will not tolerate similar attacks bent on division and fear today.

Yesterday, with a race baiting sledge hammer, the Republican Party of North Carolina put a short ad up on the Internet showing Sen. Barack Obama and his former minister, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The ad took a short snippet, completely out of context, of a long quote from one of Rev. Wright’s sermons. The internet ad, which the Executive Committee of the Republican Party has promised to put on television soon, is a not-so-subtle attempt to smear not only Black culture, the Black Church, but Prophetic ministers and to insert racist sentiments into the electoral process. The Republican’s midget sound-bite deliberately distorted the full context and social analysis of Rev. Wright’s sermon for obvious divisive reasons. Candidates have a right to criticize one another but not a right to lie and distort the truth.

Several elections ago, this same group bought massive television ad spots two weeks before the vote was taken, showing a pair of Black Hands while a serious announcer blamed these hands for taking jobs away from White workers. Again, we see desperate politicians brazenly resorting to the Wilmington race-baiting tactic. -30-

I have sent a letter to the full Executive Committee of the Republican Party requesting a written response from the full Committee as to its intentions with this race-baiting ad, and any other similar efforts the Committee has commissioned to inject the old racist politics into this year’s important elections. North Carolinians deserve an election focused on the great issues of our day: education, poverty, healthcare and economic empowerment, and war.

I have also today begun consulting with black and white clergy about holding a theological forum and church service here in Raleigh which will focus on prophetic preaching and the necessity of such critiques in the social arena.

I also call on National Republicans, Democrats, Independents and Civil Rights leaders of all races to denounce this kind of activity in North Carolina or in any state and I applaud the leaders who have already done so. I applaud WRAL, who has refused to run the race-baiting ad and I hope and call on other media to do the same. If anything is run, I hope the media will run Rev. Wright’s whole sermon, which I have appended to this statement.

Rev. Jeremiah Wright is a strong preacher when you listen to his whole sermon rather than a short phrase, snatched from a long quote. But Rev. Wright’s messages are not much different from the messages being preached in many North Carolina churches—Black and White--every Sunday morning. Like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who dared to challenge injustice with tough, stinging words of righteousness, who was mislabeled as the most dangerous Negro in America, many of my brother and sister ministers—White and Black--who have supported our 14-Point People’s Agenda, are preaching with strong words against the war. . .against the terrible poverty our people face . . . and against the racism in our schools and other institutions. In fact strong socially prophetic words like those spoken by Fredrick Douglas, Harriet Tubman, Ida B. Wells, our own National Chairman, Julian Bond, myself, and countless other civil rights leaders and social justice advocates are often not appreciated until years after history proves them to be true.

In Chapter 58, the Prophet Isaiah says: “Cry Loud and Spare Not. Tell the people of their sins.” The job of a prophetic minister is to lift the government’s corporate veil that disguises their policies of social injustice and mistreatment of the poor. The job of the prophet is to rail against this common government tactic. In the Bible prophets said, “Prayers offered by those who oppress others have the stench of manure.” Praise to God without concrete actions of justice and love was considered nothing but, “noisy sin and irreverence.” They said when leaders abuse the vulnerable and poor children, “they participate in whoredom against God.” Prophets cursed government practices that did not bring good news to the poor and healing to the broken hearted. This stinging prophetic speech is not new. It’s as old as the Bible itself. Politicians who put their hands on the Bible when they swear themselves into office would do well to remember this.