Imagine the following scenario. The regional director of a mainstream Jewish organization in a city that is home to sizable Jewish and black communities starts sharing ugly, racist caricatures of African-Americans on social media. In a speech at a local synagogue, this same person denounces the influence of African-Americans on our broader culture as “Satanic.” Then, when this outrageous behavior becomes the subject of media attention, that individual refuses to resign from their post and even retains the backing of their organization.

You can’t seriously imagine something like this because it wouldn’t happen outside of an alternate universe. The core ethics of every American Jewish organization would be utterly violated by such expressions of naked racial hatred, and the person responsible would be suspended immediately, and most likely, fired. That is how it should be.

Unfortunately, the inverse version of this imagined example is all too real. In Philadelphia, the local president of the NAACP, Rodney Muhammad, has offered only a grudging semi-apology, alongside an adamant refusal to step down from his post after a grotesquely anti-Semitic image that he shared on his Facebook page garnered wider attention. In the two-week long furor that followed, the NAACP remained mum on Muhammad’s provocations at the same time as Pennsylvania’s governor, its attorney general, and local black and Jewish leaders were calling on Muhammad to do the right thing and step down.

Recently, the NAACP finally broke its silence. In a statement that was emailed to the Philadelphia Tribune, its national spokeswoman, Austyn Ross, relayed that the organization’s national leadership was “saddened and deeply disappointed by the harm caused by Mr. Muhammad’s actions” and that Muhammad “now recognizes the offensive nature of the imagery and post.”

“Hate speech has no place at the NAACP, and such language and imagery are reprehensible,” Ross said in the statement.

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