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Interview with Kweisi Mfume
Q: Why would a five term congressman in a very safe seat decide
to step down and take on the NAACP, an organization with serious
and complex problems?
A: Because life is not about safety, it's about what you do
while you have an opportunity to make a difference. I was able
to spend 10 years in Congress, develop a number of skills and a
number of contacts. And for me, it's a matter of coming full
circle back to the place I started, to take those skills and
those contacts and that sensibility that I got to try to build
and create coalitions and movements and really beliefs, and give
it back to the community that birthed me. I could have stayed
in Congress, been a lifer, but it's one vote on any given day on
any given issue. This allows me the opportunity now to work
with an organization in its re-creation period, to make it so
that it is never dependent on any one corporation, on any one
individual again, and to restructure its infrastructure in such
a way that people of color throughout this nation recognize that
it's alright now to come back home.
Q: Any specifics on accomplishing that--your specific vision
for the NAACP?
A: Well, the first thing is to get the financial apparatus
working in such a way so that there is absolute and total
accountability. I want people to know around this country that
whatever took place in the past will end. Change will come, it
will be immediate, it will be clear and it will be constructive.
Secondly, that the theme of economic empowerment has to be ore
than just a theme. It's a logical extension of the civil rights
movement. We've got to give new meaning to that. We have to
understand that coalitions in this country are more than just
black and white, that coalitions also within the black community
among different groups and different organizations. We've got
to find a way to build on strength. And I want to try to
communicate a clear message to young people that the principles
that many of us were raised on, this thing about individual
responsibility, educational excellence and a reason to give back
to the community are really the foundation blocks that they have
to build on first as they develop themselves, and then try later
to give to the society. I want to talk about the political
power of the NAACP and what it will be in the future. I expect
to organize in every congressional district around this country
groups of people that will make a difference in marginal races,
so that we'll be able to fight the ultra-right conservatism that
we see as being imposed on people. I cannot sit on Congress
with a safe seat and watch that, and rant and rave on the floor
of the House when an opportunity like this has presented itself
that now will allow me to actively engage people in every one of
these congressional districts with an equal and opposite
response to what they are doing against our best interests.
Q: You talked about reforming the infrastructure, but how are
you going to do that when there's still the power of this
unwieldy board? What do you do about that?
A: Well, first thing you have to do is to recognize that it
doesn't make a lot of sense numerically or otherwise to have a
50-member staff and a 64-member board. It says something is
wrong right there. Actually it was because of staff reductions.
I said to the board when I decided that I would in fact accept
the offer that if the board was not prepared to a) reform itself
and b) go along with the reforms that may be imposed on it and
c) understand that there is no other choice, then I don't need
this job. I can go back to doing what I'm doing. And I told
them that's the only way that I would move into this post.
Merrilee Evers Williams, to her credit, has worked hard at this.
I see myself as someone helping her in the process of this
reform of the board.
Q: And the board accepted that?
A: The board accepted that. They recognize, quite frankly,
where we are: that this is a crossroads and you either go down
the path less traveled, which is often the one less certain, or
you stand where you are, and you often get swallowed up by the
changes in the course of time.
Q: One of the often heard criticisms of the NAACP is that it's
been out of touch for many years with the masses of the
African-American community. I don't want to debate that
question, but I would like to hear from you what you think they
mean when they say that?
A: What they mean is that they want to believe that any
organization, particularly their oldest and their once most
proud organization, is going to be actively involved in issues,
not running away from controversial leaders, not running away
from controversial themes, and certainly not running away from
people who are in the streets of this country. They want to
know that the fight of the NAACP really has moved from
boardrooms and litigation, it is also a fight that ought to be
in school rooms and on courtyards and on street corners, where
the people are who need help. And they want to believe that
they have an organization that is uncompromising in its
principles. If you don't have the principle of your absolute
and total belief, it's hard to bring anybody along in terms of
having a vision because you then appear visionless. People want
that, they expect it, and quite frankly, I think that
African-Americans in particular and America in general deserves
that.
Q: Something about your decision to leave Congress sounds like
a repudiation of the electoral process as it works for the black
community. You and Bill Gray [former House Budget Committee
chairman who left for the United Negro College Fund] are among
several who decided to give it up. What are we to make of that
about the institution of Congress?
A: I believe in the institution of Congress. I believe in the
electoral process. I spent 16 years in elected office. But I
think we cannot see that as the beginning and ending of our
struggle, and that we ought to be judged with the same yardstick
that white members of Congress are judged when they decide to
leave and go to work for a foundation, or go back to their
respective religious group or community and give. It is a
process that has always occurred, at least among those who
realize that once you are given something that you have a burden
to do something with it and that the electoral process, and
certainly the seat that I held, was not mine. It belonged to
the people who sent me there. And I'm convinced that if we
trust people, they will always find good replacements, but if we
don't trust people, they will always question our real
commitment to change. So it's not a repudiation of the system,
it's rather an embracing of the community that first nurtured me.
Q: One question about yourself. You've come out of a tough
neighborhood, shown a lot of personal drive, and I was wondering
how much do you think the problems of Black America are a result
of the personal responsibility question as opposed to needing a
helping hand from an institution?
A: I think that the problems find their genesis in a number of
areas. One of the cures, I think, is personal responsibility,
which is why it was one of the first things that I suggested.
We've got to find a way to say to children while they're young
and in their formative years, and later, when they're
adolescents, that it's alright, that you're supposed to have a
sense of personal responsibility. But at the same time, we've
got to recognize that the genesis of some of those problems also
came from a system of neglect, of institutionalized racism, of
an unwillingness to do what was right in this country. In 1909,
when a group of people got together in a New York apartment to
form what later became known as the NAACP, Charles Kellogg in
his book which chronologizes that period, remarked about the
fact that it was absolutely clear in this society that with
court decisions following Reconstruction, with a move by the
intellectual press to put down the Negro, as it were, with all
sorts of decisions to reinterpret the 14th and 15th Amendments,
that the rights of Black people would never see the light of
day. So now we find ourselves in the last decade of the last
century, where court decisions by a wickedly mean Supreme Court,
where interpretations of Constitutional law by Congress and
others and where the intellectuals of the so-called white press
are still putting us in a place where we have inconsequential
meaning. That can't continue, and that is why, for me, it was
not a matter of walking away from a safe seat, it was a matter
of walking back to a community and to a group of people who have
nurtured me, with the sense that we can move forward, and
coalition with new vision and not be afraid of tomorrow.
Q: Your predecessor Ben Chavis attempted to broaden the reach
of the NAACP, and he was criticized. He embraced Minister
Farrakhan, he also embraced gangs, gangster rappers, will you
attempt to do the same as part of your strategy?
A: I don't criticize the efforts of Mr. Chavis to reach out.
If you're not reaching out then you're standing still, and you
can't expect people to move towards you. I think that the
manner in which some of it was done perhaps created more of a
problem than he needed. I'm a person that by nature believes
that you've got find ways to reach out and embrace other
concepts, and other people to create at least a willingness to
try. If it fails then so be it, you find something else to do.
But these efforts towards youth in particular are something that
we can't lose sight of. Young people need to feel that people
want to hear what they have to say, and they do have something
to say. And they have to feel also that they have a role in the
making of policy, in the making of society. That's going to
continue under me, the effort to reach out to groups in our
society no matter who they are or where they may be, if in fact
they are prepared to embrace the concepts of the NAACP is
something that I'm going to do. But the first order of business
is to straighten out the NAACP and that will come swiftly. And
that will be measured not by words, but by deeds.
Q: But some of the money began to dry up once the NAACP began
to align itself with Minister Farrakhan because of some of his
views.
A: That may be true, and that's why I began my remarks by
saying never again will this organization be dependent on a
corporation, or for that matter corporate America, to determine
whether or not it's going to have fiscal solvency. Its greatest
amount of money comes from its membership. Its membership is
overwhelmingly African-American. But its membership expects
also the right kind of an accounting, and that will take place
from this point on.
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