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| The Role of the Black Elite in Outreaching to the Black Lower Class... |
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| Written by Dr. Martin Kilson, PhD | |
| Thursday, 27 September 2007 | |
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Page 4 of 14 Unique Social Crises Facing Today's Black Lower Class - The Crisis Context
Returning our discussion to present-day circumstances, in our early 21st century contemporary era it has become indisputably clear that the multi-layered social crises plaguing the African-American lower-class sector have impacted the affairs of the NAACP in unique ways. In fact, these crises impact the affairs of Black leadership in general. After all, the social crises plaguing lower-class African-Americans are systemically and culturally tenacious crises. Among them are the following:
These post-Civil Rights Movement era social crises that are now ravaging the life-cycle and life-chances of lower-class African-Americans have brought forth a new type and range of claims upon the mainline African-American leadership institutions, and especially on the premier of these leadership institutions — the NAACP. I for one have enormous faith in the leadership resilience and innovativeness of the great warhorse of Black people’s freedom that the NAACP has been and remains today. So I am in full concord with the “can-do leadership ethos” that former NAACP executive official Bruce Gordon demonstrated during his all-too-brief two-year tenure. Be that as it may, in order to gain a sharper understanding of the current depth-and-range of social crises now plaguing the life-chances of today’s weak-working class and poor African-American families, let me discuss several facets of these social crises that have been cogently portrayed in articles by one of the major columnists writing today in top-rank national newspapers — namely, The New York Times columnist Bob Herbert.
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