It’s a shame that Maine Governor Paul LePage adopted a black boy. What kind of education is that boy going to get when his father considers the NAACP nothing more than a “special interest” group that can “kiss his butt”? After all, all the NAACP did was invite the new governor to attend some events honoring the late Martin Luther King Jr. When the governor declined those invitations the NAACP expressed disappointment.
Paul LePage, a newly elected Republican, is facing criticism from the NAACP for turning down invitations to events marking the MLK holiday on Monday.
“Tell them to kiss my butt,” the governor, who’s been in office two weeks, said in a local TV interview…
“They are a special interest – end of story,” he said. “And I’m not going to be held hostage by any special interests.”
He then appealed to the fact that he has an adoptive black son as proof that he isn’t a racist. Well, I don’t care if he is a racist or not, but his son deserves to know the NAACP’s venerable history.
The NAACP organized opposition to Woodrow Wilson’s segregation of the federal government. They successfully fought to have blacks eligible to serve as officers during World War One. They fought for anti-lynching laws that southern Democrats successfully blocked in the years between the two world wars. They fought successfully to get the Supreme Court to overturn Plessy v. Ferguson, one of the worst rulings in the history of the Court, by winning the Brown v. Topeka Board of Education ruling that led to the desegregation of our public schools. They helped organize the Montgomery bus boycott. And they continued to be influential in the Civil Rights Movement until Jim Crow was finally dismantled.
The NAACP worked with Republicans and northern Democrats to win civil rights for blacks. If they have ceased to have much use for Republicans over the last forty-five years, the blame doesn’t lie with them, but with the Southern Strategy originally adopted by Richard Nixon. No one can blame an organization dedicated to the advancement of colored people for being “specially interested” in black people, but if there is a criticism that they’re too partisan and too aligned with the Democratic Party, the Republicans should take responsibility for it. It’s their fault.
But I doubt LePage’s son is going to learn any of that at home. And that makes me sad.