Via Gateway Pundit:

A conservative African-American social networking group set out Monday morning to criticize the city's NAACP chapter for not supporting a black man who said he was beaten outside a forum on aging earlier this month. [....]

[Kenny] Gladney to KMOX reporters: "Why hasn't the NAACP come to my aid?"

Why indeed?

Karl Marx believed history was driven by a class struggle, and that the coming proletariat Communist revolution was a "scientific" ("scientific" apparently meaning "whatever I think") certainty. When it failed to materialize in European industrial nations, as Marx had predicted, his followers went back to drawing table.

Neo-Marxism, then, took the same template and applied it more broadly: aggrieved group X (the poor, Native Americans, Blacks, women, Hispanics, homosexuals, the deaf, Muslims, etc.) are being oppressed by "society", and must support leftist doctrines in order to be "authentic." You're not a real X (black/woman/Hispanic/gay/lesbian) unless you are in favor of whatever leftist dogma is trotted out for you to support today.

So we see Bill Clinton, a white man with an undistinguished civil rights record, being called "our first black president", while Colin Powell (first black SecState), Condaleeza Rice (first black SecDef), Clarence Thomas (first black SC Justice) are not "authentic", or even "black" (and Sarah Palin's not even a real woman) — because they fail to support leftist dogmas. Witness, also, the lovely spectacle of lily-white Barbara Boxer lecturing a black businessman on how he's supposed to agree with Global Warming because, you know, it's a black thang now. (And Babs' an authority on that! Her group, after all, paid "his" group for that status.)

Sadly, mockery aside, this strategy seems to have been effective with the targeted groups, and certainly their self-appointed political leaders. If you look at the black civil rights leadership before the late 1960s, for example, their demands would be "conservative" today (and indeed, most of them were Republicans): leave us alone, treat us like anyone else, judge us by what we can do, not our skin color, we're full-fledged Americans who want integration.

In the late 1960s, however, black leadership caught the socialist bug. The Black Panthers, for example, despite being obviously a neo-Fascist mirror image of the KKK (and their criminality), were treated as "authentic" by the New Left — undoubtedly for the same reason guys like Che and Mao were romanticized by pampered young white academic in the 1960s, and "progressive" middle-aged white music executives promote "Gangsta" culture today as authentically black.

"Leaders" like Jesse Jackson followed, 'progressively' moving from demanding to be treated like anyone else ("judged by the content of our character, not the color of our skin") to, stunningly, demanding explicitly race-based tests and standards. ("To ignore race and sex is to be racist and sexist", Jackson said recently.) Of course, this went hand in hand with his abandonment of other issues he once cherished (opposition to abortion, for example) and his transition to a money-motivated shakedown artist, but let's pass that by for now: the key point here is that Neo-Marxism ultimately succeeded: minorities stopped asking to be treated like anyone else, to participate fully in the American dream, etc, and started demanding the same kind of Balkanized race- and "nationalist-" tinged socialism which had previously proven so popular among white groups like the Nazis and KKK.

Today, "diversity" means one thing: straightjacketed ideological Leftism. Want to be an "authentic" African / Lesbian / Teacher / Environmentalist / Woman / Artist / Chicagoan / New Ager / Musician / Episcopalian / Latin American / Native American / Transvestite / Union Member / Scientist? Be a leftist! It's Invasion of the Body Snatchers: the people around you still look like your old friends, neighbors, shopkeepers, and family. But scratch the surface and it turns out they're all composed of the same uniform political substance, united by the same plan.

The St. Louis NAACP couldn't care less if a black man was beaten by white goons. Nor could its national office. Nor does it care that their new political allies support abortion, oppose school choice, have perpetuated poverty in the cities they govern, denied education in the schools they control, and embrace other stances largely opposed by their membership. Similarly, feminists could care less if Sarah Palin was widely and publicly criticized in grossly gynecological terms.

Because these groups primarily defend Leftism, not their alleged constituents.

Wake up, people, and start thinking for yourselves.

UPDATE: On a happy note, many senior citizens CAN think for themselves, apparently:

CBS News has learned that up to 60,000 people have cancelled their AARP memberships since July 1, angered over the group's position on health care. Elaine Guardiani has been with AARP for 14 years, and said, "I'm extremely disappointed in AARP."

Just imagine what other groups could achieve if they'd take the same approach.