Healing a Society Made Sick

Adopted

WHEREAS, the NAACP is dedicated to erasing all barriers to equality  and discrimination; and 

WHEREAS, the NAACP takes action to correct laws, policies, and mistakes of individuals and governments which have a long term negative impact on our membership, constituency, and the country; and 

WHEREAS, the NAACP has advocated for reparations for descendants for slaves and Federal and State Legislative efforts have also come to no avail; and 

WHEREAS, slavery deprived the African-American of freedom, culture, a religion of their choice, dignity, and human aspirations solely because of the color of his skin from which the Black American is slowly emerging; and 

WHEREAS, official policies of national and state governments protecting slavery and limiting civil rights for 145 years after the Civil War continued a climate of violence, illiteracy, poverty, bad health, and poor diet which particularly persists today among Black Americans; and 

WHEREAS, Black males number in the country's criminal justice system is greater than the number in college; and 

WHEREAS, since the Civil War, the leadership of the southern states allowed a colonial economy to develop as raw materials such as wood, coal, and cheap labor were extracted to create finished products and profits which benefited the rest of the country and other nations rather than those in South, including Blacks; and 

WHEREAS, as a result of this colonial, extractive economy and hundreds of years of slavery and restricted rights, people in the Southern states and people of color and poor whites suffer from poor education, poverty, high rates of infant mortality, obesity, poor diet, illiteracy, and debilitating rates of imprisonment. 

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, despite many efforts to gain deserved reparations, the NAACP at this time, without abandoning previous positions, supports investments in environmental, educational, health, business, and training programs to attempt to allow Blacks and the poor to recover from hundreds of years of exploitation including slavery, post-slavery, and colonial style extractive economic exploitation; and 

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the NAACP call upon the American government and citizens to recognize the immense wealth which has been extracted from the Southern states and all people of color which has caused moral and economic exploitation; and 

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the NAACP call upon the United States Government of America and several foreign countries which participated in or benefited from the African slave trade countries to make such investments to improve the conditions of 2010 African-Americans through better schools, health clinics, job training, environmental cleanup of landfills, and other such environmental injustice to allow the people of color damaged by slavery policies to develop the health and economic standards of the entire country; and 

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the NAACP calls for such aid to directly address specific problems as violence in families and neighborhoods through improved diet and child care, high rates of imprisonment through mentoring and male role models in grades 2 — 5, and health problems through greater preventative care and neighborhood health clinics, and jobs through specific programs to recycle waste and remediated polluted sites; and 

BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED, that the NAACP call upon its members and all citizens of the United States to understand and accept the dire need to help those at the bottom of the environmental, economic, and social ladder to prosper, which is a sure way for our country to regain lost standing as the compassionate and democratic country in the world.