In an apparent aside recently, the Reverend Jesse Jackson was quoted as expressing anger and disappointment toward Senator Barack Obama for his tendency to “talk down to Black people”. On the face of it, it will seem like a simple “mis-speaking” – a word that is getting a life of its own in this campaign season.
On deeper analysis, one has to say plainly that the Reverend’s anger is not necessarily because Senator Obama “talks down to Blacks”, but rather that he (Obama) has not gone around dragging the likes of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and the rest of the so-called leaders of the Black community with him during his campaign. Most likely, the good Senator does not consult the Reverend Jackson before he makes his speeches. It may well be that Senator Obama does not pretend to be as racially focused on certain issues as a Black man, like the Reverend Jesse Jackson would. “I was in a conversation with a fellow guest on Sunday. He asked about Barack’s speeches lately at the black churches. I said he comes down as speaking down to black people,” Reverend Jackson was quoted as saying.
Remember the criticism Reverend Jackson laid against Senator Obama in the early days of the campaign. Then, Obama was acting like a white person because he did not rain fire and brimstone on the white community over the issue of the severe charges filed against six black students in the beating of a white student in Jena, Louisiana, a racially charged case that sparked a national outcry. “If I were a candidate, I’d be all over Jena,” the Reverend Jackson said then, obviously targeting Senator Obama in that remark.
The difficulty white Americans have with Senator Barack Obama seems to be plaguing the African-American community also. He is not white enough to overwhelmingly win over the White community, and in some respects, he is not Black enough, in the eyes of people like the Reverend Jackson, to represent the Black community. Maybe it is this half-and-half make up of the candidate, not just as a bi-racial American, but as an individual who is not dogmatic in the kind of issues he advocates simply because they play to the emotions of a particular ethnic group that will make Senator Obama a different kind of president if he is lucky enough to win this year’s presidential election.
The old seemingly racist tendencies of people like the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Jesse Jackson, John Hagee et al, must give way to a new leadership that sees the world in a broader perspective, not just in “black and white”. Sure the generation of these old guards witnessed untold brutality in the hands of the American ruling elite of their era, but that in itself is not enough reason to pull down those who are advocating a need to move beyond the hatred that was spurned by those dark episodes in American history. Telling young African-American men that “…what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child — it’s the courage to raise one.” is not talking down to them. That to me sounds like talking some sense to them. We all know too well how many African-American men in their teens are “fathers” in the United States today. Many of these young men can barely take care of themselves, not to talk of raising a child. As someone who grew up in a home without a father, I think Senator Obama knows a thing or two about parental responsibility.
Apologies are not just enough from Reverend Jesse Jackson. He needs to enter into a full discussion of his ideas of American civil society today. He needs to tell us if he prefers a society of constant antagonism and strife. He needs to let us know his thoughts about the so-called causes he fought for all these years. Did he really engage in those protests and marches because he truly cared, or was it just for the television? Is he angry with Senator Obama for not taking the route of the Black Panthers, the dark rhetoric of Louis Farrakhan, the fiery speeches of the Reverend Al Sharpton, or the bombastic invectives of the Reverend Jackson himself, in his discussion of the issues facing the African-American family today in America?
No doubt this will be a discussion that will go on for some time.