Four Issues NAACP Should Tackle, Not Sagging Pants

NAACP overlooks more pressing civil rights issues to defend black man arrested for sagging pants

It appears that the NAACP's latest quest for relevance as an institution of activism involves defending University of New Mexico football player Deshon Marman, a twenty-year-old who was arrested for not pulling up his sagging pants on a US Airways flight in San Francisco where he was attending the funeral of a friend. 

To protest, the 20 members of the San Francisco NAACP chapter picketed at the city airport's US Airways terminal. Really, NAACP? 

While it's nice that about two dozen people showed up to support Marmon's cause, aren't there much bigger fish for the NAACP to fry when it comes to discriminatory issues concerning blacks? If you guys need help coming up with some, we got you:

• Health: The NAACP can and should explore and introduce ways to improve black men's life expectancy, outside of prison.

• Literacy: Ballou High School, Washington, D.C.’s second largest high school, only had sixty-three books in the literature section of its library, as of January 2011. In total, there's an average of one library book per student there, when the standard is 11 books per student. How about an NAACP book drive?

• HIV/AIDS: Black women still account for two-thirds of new HIV/AIDS cases among women aged 13 to 24. Maybe your time would be better served educating them on new and experimental treatment options.

• Employment: The unemployment rate for black Americans is at 16.2 percent, double the rate of white Americans.