I guess I overstated my case against the NAACP - but there is a personal side to it. When I moved to Baltimore at the end of 1992 I discovered that it is easy to be a nice anti-racist liberal when you live on a college campus or perhaps in the suburban wasteland isolated form the real life. But if you live in an inner city - it is a very different story. When every day you see characters from racist stereotypes parading in front of your eyes, you start having doubts: you either believe what you see or you believe in what someone told you is politically correct.
To make a long story short, I believe what I see and that is why I started actively looking for counter-examples to the characters from racist stereotypes parading before my eyes on the streets of Baltimore. In other words, I started actively looking for American Blacks who were sharp, professional, and on-the ball.
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Well you *overstated* the case only a bit. Your criticisms (minus the original call for NAACP social engineering) are valid and worth serious consideration.
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Regarding internal struggle against belief in stereotypes...
The personal info you offered was very interesting. I admire the practical, logical approach you took to countering facile understanding.
Since, being Black (or, to throw a bone to the correct-o-bots, African American) I grew up with Black folks and met a wide variety of personalities, from the inadvertantly KKK assisting jackasses to the brilliant, - as well as the working and middle class people forming the great center - I never believed the brain-dead stereotypes thrown at me via the media or the occaisonal White person with a very bad attitude I'd come across.
Because, simply, I knew too many counter-examples including my not-stupid self and my excellent family.
[an aside: an old friend (also Black) with whom I grew up believed in the natural superiority of White people when we were around 13 or so. He only shared this belief with me because he knew I would debate the point instead of freaking out. Anyway, correction came when he actually began spending time around White kids in the suburban private school his family sent him to. *These guys are spoiled jackasses who don't know shit!* he said. In other words, not super-human, merely human. Goodbye quiet self-loathing, hello reality.]
Of course, people who don't have this experience would base either their liberalism (so to speak) or their racism upon pure perception and recieved info. And, those who only meet people like the sorts they've been warned about will nod in approval of the sagacity of their teachers.
Interestingly, it's been my observation that even amongst people who proclaim their liberalism, particularly the young fleeing their parents seeking some sort of boho nirvana (as seen on TV) in the gritty metropolis, there's a tendency to see the Black guy who's hanging on the corner with 40 oz. of malt liquor as *real* and the hard working guy driving the ground-shaking truck at 5 AM or the corporate striver zooming by in his Bavarian 7 series as *un-real*.
I once had a very bizarre argument with a dread-locked White dude while waiting for an awful play who attempted to explain to me why my nice haircut, clean shave and decent clothes were a *betrayal* (I wish I was making this up) of the *authentic rebel spirit* of the Black man.
How I longed at that moment for one of those immense hammers Bugs Bunny always seems to have on-tap, just behind his back in a hyperspatial niche.
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Actually, I can, in a way, relate to your experience somewhat directly.
Growing up, I knew how many Russians? Zero, the answer is zero. Following the USSR's transformation from SU into FSU the number of Russians I knew increased many times over as immigration became possible on a large scale and the circles in which I travelled began to include a fair number of these emigres for a variety of reasons (some still mysterious to me).
The Russians I met were mostly dissaffected club trolls, wannabe (or actual) gangsters and assorted other pretend or real nihilists. My view of the Russian people, based on this very narrow sub-set, was moving in a direction I didn't like.
Happily, a very cool Georgian bud, quite a hit with the ladies, introduced me to a wider social set of newcomers from the east and I was able to perform a course correction.
DRM