The NAACP is Out of Bounds and Obsolete

By Dr. Eric M. Wallace

The NAACP’s recent “Out of Bounds” protest campaign may be one of the clearest examples yet of how far one of America’s oldest civil rights organizations has drifted from the principles that once made it credible.

At a time when young Black men and women are striving to build careers, earn scholarships, support their families, and capitalize on once-in-a-generation opportunities through college athletics, the NAACP is encouraging them to jeopardize their futures over congressional maps and political grievances most Americans neither understand nor care about.

Think about that for a moment.

The organization that once fought for equal treatment under the law is now pressuring young athletes to become political props in a progressive activist campaign centered on gerrymandered representation, a concept that has done far more to preserve political power than to improve the lives of ordinary Black Americans.

What exactly are these athletes being asked to sacrifice for? More Black elected officials?
America already has had Black mayors, Black governors, Black senators, a Black president, and a Black vice president, many elected without the aid of specially engineered “majority-Black” districts. Black Republicans in particular have repeatedly won elections in predominantly White districts, proving that ideas, leadership, and character can transcend racial voting blocs.

Yet the NAACP rarely celebrates those victories because many of those leaders do not conform to the organization’s preferred ideological framework.

Consider Winsome Earle-Sears, the Black Republican lieutenant governor of Virginia. When she ran statewide and won, where was the NAACP’s celebration of Black excellence? Where was the applause for breaking barriers? Silence. Why? Because modern progressive politics often values ideological conformity more than actual diversity of thought. Where was the NAACP when Winsome Earle-Sears ran to be the first Black female governor of Virginia? They were supporting the White progressive Abigail Spanberger.

That silence regarding Sears’ win as Lt. Governor, and support of her white liberal opponent in the governor's race, exposes the deeper hypocrisy.

The NAACP claims to champion Black advancement, yet too often it supports policies that keep Black Americans politically dependent rather than genuinely empowered. The organization speaks endlessly about “representation,” but representation without transformation is meaningless.

Chicago is a perfect example.

For decades, Chicago has been governed largely by Black political leadership or by progressive political coalitions that claim to speak for Black communities. Yet violence persists, schools struggle, families fragment, economic mobility stagnates, and many neighborhoods remain trapped in cycles of dysfunction. The political class continues to gain power while ordinary residents continue to suffer.

At what point do we ask the obvious question: If representation alone is the answer, why are conditions not improving?

The uncomfortable truth is that many progressive organizations have confused symbolic victories with actual flourishing.

The R.I.S.E. Principles offer a far better framework for genuine human flourishing:
Responsible Government recognizes that political power alone cannot save communities. Government has a role, but it cannot replace moral responsibility, family stability, faith, entrepreneurship, or personal discipline.

Individual Liberty and Fidelity remind us that people are not merely members of racial collectives. They are individuals created in the image of God, capable of making choices that lead either to success or failure. Free societies flourish when individuals are empowered to exercise responsibility and virtue.

Strong Family Values acknowledges what the data overwhelmingly demonstrates: stable families matter more to long-term success than congressional district maps.

Economic Empowerment focuses on ownership, work ethic, entrepreneurship, education, and wealth creation, not perpetual political agitation.

But modern activist movements often reject this framework because it shifts the conversation away from grievance and toward responsibility. That is why this protest feels so hollow.

Young athletes are being encouraged to risk scholarships, endorsements, team relationships, and future careers not for policies that will improve schools, reduce crime, strengthen families, or create economic opportunity, but for abstract political theater designed to energize activists and preserve ideological narratives.

And one cannot help but wonder: who benefits financially and politically from keeping racial tensions and political outrage permanently inflamed?

Because it certainly does not appear to be the ordinary Black family struggling to survive in cities governed for decades by the very political machines these activists defend.

The tragedy is that organizations like the NAACP once stood for something noble. They fought against genuine injustice and legal discrimination. But today, too often, they seem trapped in a worldview that sees Black Americans primarily as political demographics rather than as free citizens capable of independent thought, moral agency, and individual achievement.

Black Americans do not advance “as a race” in some collective political sense. We advance as free people making free choices under God within a free society.

Some will fail. Some will succeed. That is true of every people group on earth.

But genuine equality means allowing people to rise or fall based on character, discipline, wisdom, faith, and effort, not reducing them to permanent participants in political grievance movements masquerading as civil rights activism.

The NAACP’s “Out of Bounds” campaign is not courageous. It is reckless. The young athletes being pressured into this political theater deserve better than to be used as pawns in a struggle that seems increasingly disconnected from the actual flourishing of the people it claims to represent.

Dr. Eric M. Wallace, author of the new book, The Heart of Apostasy: How The Black Church Abandoned Biblical Authority for Political Ideology--And How to Reclaim It, is a trailblazing scholar, dynamic speaker, and passionate advocate for faith-based conservatism. With a distinguished academic background and an unwavering commitment to biblical truth, Wallace has become a leading voice challenging cultural and political narratives that conflict with a biblical worldview.

Wallace holds postgraduate degrees in biblical studies (M.A., ThM, Ph.D.), Wallace is the first African American to earn a Ph.D. in biblical studies from Union-PSCE (now Union Presbyterian Seminary). His scholarship and ministry experience equip him to address today’s most pressing sociopolitical issues through the lens of faith, reason, and historical accuracy.