The NAACP, founded in the early part of the last century, at the height of the Jim Crow era, helped lead this politicization of the civil-rights movement after 1964.

The NAACP's "social justice" agenda today is simply a boilerplate program of the political left.

The crisis in black America is poverty and a growing underclass -- about 25 percent of our black population -- whose problems largely stem from lifestyle rather than oppression. It is a social and moral crisis.

Yet the NAACP's obsession is working to allow gays to get married rather than to restore the primacy of traditional values in our hurting communities. Traditional values are the steppingstones for rebuilding black families and rebuilding the crumbled foundations of personal responsibility essential for successful lives.

Ironically, one institution that does need dismantling, the NAACP works to defend. And that is our public school system.

We read a lot today about earnings gaps and wealth gaps. These gaps are largely driven by the increasing premiums that follow from getting educated. In 1980, a college graduate earned 30 percent more than a high-school graduate. Today it is 70 percent more. In 1980, an individual with a graduate-level degree earned 50 percent more than a high-school graduate. Today it is 100 percent more.

Otherwise stated, the penalty for not getting educated is increasing.

Fifty percent of our inner-city kids are not graduating from high school. We need school choice, both to introduce competition into education and to give these kids the opportunity to go to church schools.

In church schools, these kids, mostly from broken families, and under siege by the nihilist messages of our popular culture, would have a chance to learn and absorb values critical to live successfully in a free society. The very values that are off-limits in public schools.

Yet, the NAACP fights school choice. For reasons perhaps someone else can explain, the agenda of the political left is more important to the NAACP today than honest scrutiny of the real needs of its own community and serving those needs.