Southern Poverty Law Center: Encyclopedia II - Southern Poverty Law Center - Controversy

Southern Poverty Law Center - Controversy

The SPLC has a history of attracting controversy surrounding its politics, "hate group" identification and monitoring methods, and financial practices. Some criticisms have focused on its fundraising methods. For example, a 1996 USA Today article claimed that the Southern Poverty Law Center is "the nation's richest civil rights organization", with $68 million in assets at the time (in the fiscal year ending in 2003, its assets totalled $156 million [6]). A 2003 article in the Fairfax Journal (of Fairfax, Virginia) claimed that 89% of income was spent on fundraising and administration.

Southern Poverty Law Center - David Horowitz

Myles Kantor of the anti-Fidel Castro Pureplay Press[7] and conservative columnist David Horowitz [8] have both accused the SPLC of exaggerating the threat of racism in order to increase fund-raising revenue and of wrongfully applying the term "hate group" to legitimate organizations.

The Southern Poverty Law Center and Morris Dees have engaged in a dispute with Horowitz over material written by Chip Berlet related to Horowitz's campaign against slavery reparations, which the SPLC claims constitutes "hate speech". Horowitz writes:

The SPLC's Mark Potok responded to Horowitz by stating "we believe Mr. Berlet’s article is backed up by the evidence, and we stand by the article as it was published." Potok also forwarded a reply from Berlet in which the latter alleged that Horowitz's Center for the Study of Popular Culture uses "inflammatory, mean-spirited, and divisive language that dismisses the idea that there are serious unresolved issues concerning racism and white supremacy in the United States." [10] Horowitz subsequently replied in a letter to Dees, asserting that Berlet's attack on the CSPC "applies mutatis mutandis to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which exacerbates societal tensions by exaggerating the number of hate groups in America and by proposing that they come in only one color and one political disposition. It does this by labeling legitimate political differences as racism and bigotry." [11]

The Discover the Networks (DSN), a website operated by Horowitz, argues that the "Teaching Tolerance" program is "far from a good-faith effort to instruct schoolchildren in the merits of tolerance." According to DSN, the program is used to promote a left-wing political agenda and "spread the virtues of political correctness" among children and teachers. As an example of this agenda, DSN points to a cover story from a "Teaching Tolerance" publication aimed at students that claimed the popular Lord of the Rings movie trilogy was "little more than a glorified vision of white patriarchy," complained its actors were "whiter than white," and denounced its themes as "Eurocentric." [12]

Southern Poverty Law Center - Montgomery Advertiser investigation

In 1994 The Montgomery Advertiser published an 9-part investigative series alleging financial mismanagement, poor management practices, misleading fundraising, and institutionalized racism at the Center. The newspaper summarized its investigation as producing evidence of "a complex portrait of a wealthy civil rights organization essentially controlled by one man: Morris Dees." (Montgomery Avertisor, Feb. 13-14 1994) Findings from the Advertiser investigation included the following:

• 12 of 13 African-American former employees of the SPLC who were contacted by the newspaper reported experiencing or observing racial discrimination during their employment. Black former employees were quoted stating that the Center was "like a plantation" run by white supervisors.
• The SPLC's legal department is composed primarily of Caucasians and had only employed two African American attorneys on staff over 23 years of operation (as of 1994).
• From 1984 to 1994 the SPLC received almost $62 million in contributions but spent only $20.8 million on its anti-poverty and anti-discrimination programs.
• An SPLC fundraising letter that raised several million dollars for the organization claims the Center's legal team secured a $7 million victim's settlement against the Ku Klux Klan for the lynching of Michael McDonald, however McDonald's mother and heir Beulah Mae received only $51,874.70 from the settlement.
• A "random sampling of donors" to the SPLC, defined as "people who receive a steady stream of fund-raising letters and newsletters," indicated "they had no idea the Law Center was so wealthy" when interviewed.

The Advertiser also interviewed several former SPLC affiliates who alleged financial improprieties on the part of the Center. Pamela Summers, formerly a legal fellow with the Center, told the newspaper that the Center's legal department operates "as though the sole, overriding goal is to make money." Summers accused Dees of avoiding "go(ing) to court" on discrimination cases and instead relying upon financial contributions to obtain money.

The Center threatened legal action against the newspaper during the publication of the series, and lobbied against its consideration for journalism awards. Nonetheless, the investigative series was a finalist for a 1995 Pulitzer Prize.

The Center states that "During its last fiscal year, the Center spent approximately 65% of its total expenses on program services. The Center also placed a portion of its income into a special, board-designated endowment fund to support the Center's future work. At the end of the fiscal year, the endowment stood at $120.6 million." [13]

Southern Poverty Law Center - Harper's Magazine investigation

In November 2000, Harper's Magazine published an exposé of the SPLC corroborating the Montgomery Advertiser's allegations of financial mismanagement, poor management practices, misleading fundraising, and institutionalized racism at the Center. In "The Church of Morris Dees," Ken Silverstein writes:

Morris Dees doesn't need your financial support. The SPLC is already the wealthiest 'civil rights' group in America... One [sales] pitch, sent out in 1995 -- when the center had more than $60 million in reserves -- informed would-be donors that the "strain on our current operating budget is the greatest in our 25-year history." Back in 1978, when the center had less than $100 million, a sum that, one 1989 newsletter promised, would allow the center "to cease the costly and often unreliable task of fundraising." Today, the SPLC's treasury bulges with $120 million, and it spends twice as much on fund-raising -- $5.76 million last year -- as it does on legal services for victims of civil rights abuses. The American Institute of Philanthropy gives the center one of the worst ratings of any group it monitors, estimating that the SPLC could operate for 4.6 years without making another tax-exempt nickel from its investments or raising another tax-deductible cent from well-meaning "people like you." [14]

Silverstein adds that most alleged "hate" groups on the SPLC's are non-violent and reports that 95 percent of hate crimes are committed by "lone wolves." Further, he says that the SPLC's "'other important work for justice' consists mainly on spying on private citizens... a practice that, however seemingly justified, should give civil libertarians pause."

Southern Poverty Law Center - Chronicles Magazine article

In a July 2004 article in the paleoconservative Chronicles magazine, Kevin Michael Grace complains that the SPLC joined the drive to remove Alabama State Chief Justice Roy Moore for displaying the Ten Commandments, and that the SPLC has turned its attention to the immigration-reform movement. [15]

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Controversy", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki