I’s Sorry, Massah! (Mfume To Step Down)

Last week, I posted an article about the NAACP’s woes, it’s irrelevance, and it’s need to become a truly bi-partisan organization. I don’t know if Kweisi Mfume and Julian Bond read TheStateOf(tm), but I’m starting to think they do. Late last week, NAACP President Kweisi Mfume wrote a letter to President Bush, requesting a meeting and offering to set aside “past differences.” And today Mfume is expected to step down as head of the organization.

When a wife leaves her husband, she writes a “Dear John” letter. In the days of slavery, a letter like Mfume’s may have been known as an “I’s Sorry, Massah” letter. It goes a little something like this:

“I’s sory, Massah. I’d been a baaaaaad boi. Butt now I wants to be uh good boy. If you wud jus let me. Can I pleese come to da Whit Hous?”

Mfume partisanship during the 2004 election cycle was an embarrassment to the NAACP and it’s foundations. It also proved detrimental to black Americans, reinforcing the perception that we are all Democrats. For decades, the NAACP worked with both Republicans and Democrats–all because its leaders recognized that, in order to make progress, blacks must work with both major political parties. Mfume turned that tradition on it’s heels, and now it’s time for him to eat crow.