Comical: NAACP Calls for Resignation of School Board Head Who Called People "Animals"... For The Way The Crowd Treated a Black Speaker

Perhaps the most obvious thing about the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in the decades since the Civil Rights era is that "advancement" doesn't seem to be their goal in many instances. Instead, they often tend to fall back into a defensive mode, circling the wagons to defend ineffective or even destructive situations in the name of political expediency and patronage politics.

We have a perfect example of that idiocy developing here in central North Carolina, after a slate of candidates swept into office on a reform platform began to attempt to fix the faltering Wake County schools.

One of the proposals supported by voters and the new school board they sent to shake things up was the return to a community schools model. The proposal is simple. Instead of busing students all over the county to enforce diversity artificially, most parents and the school board desire to limit the amount of time students spend commuting. The hope is to send students no further than five miles away from their homes to school.

As the parent of a child that faces a 45-minute one-way commute every day (admittedly by choice to a centralized magnet school), I can certainly understand why parent would like to have their kids closer to home.

But North Carolina NAACP head Rev. William Barber did what the NAACP always does. Instead of debating the philosophy or statistics of the change, he instead immediately attempted to cry that the attempt to change a broken system was designed to hurt minorities.

To try to bolster his weak cries of racism, he has attacked (and continues to attack) Wake County School Board Chairman Ron Margiotta for comments he made in a meeting earlier this month.

After U.S.House candidate Bill Randall spoke in favor of ending the current busing policy—a speech that was consistently interrupted by outbursts by supporters of a failed status quo—Margiotta growled "Here come the animals out of their cages, " as he braced for an onslaught of opposition to the plan that was based on politically and racially-motivated fear-mongering instead of facts.

Despite the fact the crowd was indeed mob-like and disruptive, Margiotta was probably out of line to speak of opponents so dismissively. But he simply wasn't singling out one group or entity. He was responding to a contentious, diverse, and disorderly crowd.

Rev. Barber—a defender of patronage politics designed to infuse people such as himself with power—is using his position as the President of the state NAACP to bring the national organization to bear against Margiotta, trying to get him to step down by misrepresenting his non-racial comment.

Barber's goal is clear: use false charges of racism to undermine the clear will of the majority of Wake County voters.

But is is clear that there was no racism in Margiotta's outburst, even if he was in a foul temper by that point. Congressional Candidate Randall was trying to make a speech, and opponents tried to drown him out.

Barber and the NAACP are welcome to debate the merits of various approaches to education policy, and they are welcome to file lawsuits if the feel they the new policy will negatively impact children in Wake County schools.

But trying to claim there is racism when it clearly does not exist is the petty act of an organization that has long outlived its originally function and utility, and the state and national leaders that stoop to this level are the leaders that desperately need to be replaced.