The Town of Chapel Hill was perfectly just in its recent firing of two sanitation workers for failing to do their jobs and repeatedly showing aggression toward their coworkers, their supervisors and town residents.
If anything, evidence suggests that the town should have fired these men long ago. And by acting as advocates for two men who are clearly in the wrong, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is diminishing its own credibility and giving ammunition to those who accuse it of being reactionary.
We understand the need for an organization to advocate for those who might otherwise feel disenfranchised.
But in the interest of preserving the credibility of such an organization, leaders of the Chapel Hill NAACP should be more, well, discriminate in their choice of causes. In the case of the two sanitation workers, there is ample evidence that the men failed to perform the duties of their job.
The memoranda notifying the men of their termination offered a litany of transgressions reported by a variety of sources over an extended period of time. The idea that such an array of residents, fellow sanitation workers and supervisors could all be engaged in a racially motivated conspiracy to victimize these men is ludicrous.
Out of respect for the NAACP, these men should take responsibility for their wrongs rather than risk the credibility of an organization that is trying to help them.
And out of respect for itself and its founding aims, the NAACP should stop taking up causes without a more thorough vetting of their legitimacy. It only harms the organization’s other valid complaints and questions when the concrete examples it tries to use illustrate how these complaints fail to hold water.
