Bostonia: The NAACP Is Not Done
Bostonia, the alumni magazine of Boston University, profiles Cornell William Brooks (STH ’87, HON ’15) in its Summer 2015 issue. In “The NAACP is Not Done,” reporter Susan Seligson talks with Brooks, who is President and CEO of the NAACP, about the myth of a postracial America, his leadership of the NAACP, and the organization’s relevance to civil rights work today.
Brooks, a fourth-generation minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, delivered the Lowell Lecture at Boston University School of Theology in November and gave the May 2015 baccalaureate address before receiving an Honorary Doctor of Laws from Boston University.
Here are some highlights of what Brooks told Bostonia about his time at Boston University, the relevance of the NAACP, and the challenges ahead.
On Boston University: “At BU I learned moral risk-taking and courage. The teachings of nonviolence and the belief that moral reasoning is an effective and powerful tool are ones I use to this very day, and I like to believe that we don’t make any assumptions about the willingness of people to hear what we have to say.”
On NAACP: “We are really the nation’s primary care physicians when it comes to civil rights. Whether or not CNN or MSNBC follow what we do, we do it day in and day out. Let’s look at Missouri, where the Department of Justice issued a scathing report describing profound racial disparities in Ferguson, an unholy trinity of courts, police, and city hall. Where did this evidence come from? From a 2014 state racial profiling law co-written by the NAACP.”
On the dynamics of race relations in America: “We see a reactionary pandemic of police misconduct, a Machiavellian frenzy of voter disenfranchisement with irrational voter ID laws. … We’re afraid of the America we can be. Rather than welcome a democracy that is multiethnic and multiracial, there are those who believe our democracy is most true when it is most homogeneous.”
Read the full profile at Bostonia and watch Brooks’ Lowell Lecture and his baccalaureate address.