The Bush administration came under severe attack last week during the 93rd Annual Convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People held at the George Brown Convention Center in Houston. Like ballistic missiles, it was coming from all angles leaving the administration with little or no defense on numerous charges made against it.
Apart from President Bush getting most of the blame for what the human rights group described as a one-sided administration, some hotel chains were also cited for lagging behind others in their treatment of minorities. The NAACP urged consumers to use the group’s hotel report cards in deciding where to stay.

The report cards, which consider employee diversity and advertising in Black-owned media, among other factors, assigned grades to 11 national chains. Marriott received the highest grade, B, on the 2002 report card; Starwood was the lowest with a C.

The convention ended last week, but the charges and reports it unleashed remain controversial, especially issues raised by some Black leaders, including Julian Bond, Jesse Jackson and Kweisi Mfume who said the president had done little to attract Black support.
Civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson told the delegates earlier in his address that “today we have a government that is enfranchised by miscounted or uncounted votes. Even though it lost the election, it operates as if it has a mandate to take our rights.”

But Julian Bond, chairman of the NAACP’s board of directors, took the lead in denouncing the Bush administration in a strongly-worded opening address, on July 7. He said of Bush, “When he spoke to our convention in Baltimore in 2000, he promised to enforce the civil rights laws. We knew he was in the oil business -- we just didn’t know it was snake oil.”
The next day, NAACP president Mfume told the delegates numbering about 3,000 that he considered Bush “a likable fellow.... but I don’t like his presidential practice of divide and conquer when it comes to Black organizations and Black people ... you can’t be president of all the people when you only want to be the president for some of the people.”
Battered Bush offered a watery but unintelligible defense, when he said, “Let’s see, there I was sitting around the table with foreign leaders, looking at Colin Powell and Condi Rice...” He actually was trying to convey a point-the kind that his critics would hate to hear - that as long as you have people of color in your administration, anything goes.

The president, however, sent a message that did not help matters. He had sent some worded greetings to the convention participants, praising the group for supporting civil rights. But the group yet remained unmoved by the president’s compliments. Mfume had complained that “President Bush has not found the time or the inclination in two whole years to sit down and have one 30-minute dialogue, honestly and openly, with this organization.”

At this date, Bush has offered no reason for snubbing the NAACP, even as concerns are known to be very sensitive. Apart from citing a pretentious regime flavored with all time inequality, the group had consistently complained about an obsolete and complex electioneering system operated by various states, that makes voting by African-Americans difficult. This deplorable factor was evident in the last presidential election when Bush was declared victor with thousands of Black and other minority votes uncounted.

Said Mfume, “two years later, we are now on the verge of mid-term elections, yet people are still wondering when local, state and federal governments will work together to protect the right of all Americans to be able to cast a free and unfettered vote, and the right of those Americans to have every belief that vote will be counted and protected.”

The NAACP 93rd Annual Convention saw in attendance, Hector Flores, the newly elected national president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, who made an touching speech on the last day. This is the first time LULAC’s top leader has addressed an NAACP convention; Texas U.S. Senator, Kay Bailey Hutchison who got a poor rating from the group; NAACP Texas state president Gary Bledsoe; and Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Ron Kirk, the first Black Texan to win a major party’s Senate nomination.