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Black Voters Reject NAACP Endorsement Of Same Sex Marriage |
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Thursday, 20 November 2008 |
 Hardy L. Brown
NAACP for what appears to be consistent conflicts of interest. The voters seemed to agree
and Blacks voted overwhelmingly to ban same sex marriage. It has been reported by various
media outlets that as a political consultant Alice Huffman has been known to serve as a paid contractor on campaigns that are later supported by the NAACP.
She has argued elsewhere that she fully discloses all of her business dealings with the NAACP state executive committee, but she has to make a living and her chosen line of work is political campaigning and grassroots advocacy.
This fall’s big election was no exception. Ms. Huffman reportedly consulted on several campaigns that the state NAACP also supported including propositions for redistricting and against same sex marriage. The redistricting initiative was not supported by Black political groups because many believed that it would further disenfranchise African-American voters. The same sex marriage ban was also controversial, especially in the African-American faith community, which has a tremendous influence on Black voters as witnessed by the overwhelming support for Yes on 8. An outspoken leader for gay rights, she was reportedly paid $400,000 by the No on 8 campaign to outreach to the African-American community. Huffman’s position as paid consultant promoting the cause was clearly linked to her position as the
leader of the top civil rights organization in the state as evidenced by the “education” campaigns targeting the African-American community by No on 8 supporters. If the polls are correct, 70% of African-Americans did not see same sex marriage strictly as a “civil rights” issue and rejected the comparisons made to African-Americans’ history of racial discrimination in this country.
As part of the campaign, Ms. Huffman’s “Minority News” mailer with headlines supporting her paying clients is distributed in bulk through local NAACP branches. The mailer is published by Ms. Huffman’s firm for the Committee to Protect the Political Rights of Minorities. There is a question about how many of those mailers are actually distributed. I know as past president
of my local NAACP these publications sat (and continue to sit) in boxes because there was no infrastructure to distribute them. I also know that they were shipped to the branches by her firm.
As I said in my earlier editorial, I have no problem with Ms. Huffman getting paid as a political consultant.
But year after election year the conflicts of interest seem to chip away at the credibility of an organization that has such a significant role to play in the continued development of this republic. When the head of a civil rights organization is paid to advocate for a cause, presents
that cause to the organization’s leadership for approval, and then distributes information promoting that cause through the branches as president of the organization (not a paid consultant), then it seems to me to clearly be a conflict.
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