The NAACP has as much of a chance of transforming itself into the Dream Defenders or Black Youth Project 100 as a 108-year old man has of writing the next #1 song on the rap music charts. The target that Melissa Harris-Perry sets out in her thought-provoking piece is an unrealistic—and inappropriate—one for the venerable civil rights organization.

But that’s not to say that there’s not a critical role for the NAACP in today’s social justice environment. In fact, Harris-Perry identifies that role, albeit in passing, in the middle of her article, when she points to the success of the North Carolina chapter and notes that, “along with its legal partners, the branch successfully challenged the state’s monster voter-suppression law.”

That’s exactly what the NAACP, and the Legal Defense Fund, should be doing—defending the victories black Americans won during the Civil Rights movement. Those victories—the right to vote, the right to live in any community where you can afford to pay the rent, the right to decent health care via Medicaid—are under vicious assault by the forces of reaction that have coalesced within the Republican Party. Black people need organizations like the NAACP to use their connections and expertise in the legal, political and business worlds to defend those rights with the same vigor, passion and determination as the reactionaries are bringing to their campaign to undermine them.

Meanwhile, the job of the new generation of black organizations is to fight the battles we did not win 50 years ago—the battle against the rogue police officers who kill black men with impunity, the battle against mass incarceration, the battle against environmental pollution of black communities. Winning these battles will require new tactics, new coalitions and new approaches that are outside the realm of the NAACP.