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Re: Some other thoughts on Jesse Jackson...

Sweet Jones — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 02:50:29 -0000

Tray,

My understanding is that Jesse Jackson never went to Durham, and has repeatedly defended himself from that charge. If you have some definitive proof, please post it.

And I would think white folk would be better served 'being pissed off' at Nifong, who earned getting disbarred.

Re: Some other thoughts on Jesse Jackson...

mark — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 03:30:24 -0000

I was quite surprised and caught off guard one day to hear my (white, 65 yr old) father say that he'd always admired Jesse Jackson, and that he thought Jackson was trying to do right by black people.

On the other hand, there are people I know, respect and love that hate on Jesse partly out of their unexamined personal racism.

On the other other hand, I've been bothered a lot by a few things. For example, my reading of the news from a few years ago was that he was paying six figures to his low-on-the-organizational-totem-pole lover and mother of his illegitimate child, and then refusing to let the IRS audit him. Witch hunt or no, what was his organization hiding? I'll let that incident stand for proxy for a lot of other things, including a few mentioned in posts above, to make my point. While there are plenty of other people in the world who have done much worse things, it's bothersome to see someone display such unaccountability and, I pause to say, hypocrisy, and then so readily embrace the role of the national scold, holder of the most unassailable opinion of what true justice is and arbiter of penance and reconciliation in every issue of national scope where black people have been wronged or impugned. I realize that maybe that's overstating the damned thing, but it doesn't seem to be by much over here. Anyways, it's not that the media gives him that role. It's that he seems to like it, and functionally, he embraces it. Similar to pastor Wright, who hubristically claimed to speak for the whole "black church." (An aside, I technically agreed with most of the things he said that got him in trouble to start with, outside of the AIDS conspiracy and a couple of other things. I found it rather difficult to argue with, actually.).

Simply put, our national discussion on race can do better than to let Jesse Jackson be the arbitrator of what blackness is and what white people owe black people. Let me put it to you as straight as I can: I'm white. My great grandfather was a KKK man. When I was a boy, I asked my mother why black people and other non-caucasians were so poor and such, and she told me - this is a direct quote - "God made white people better." Racism had poisoned the well I drank out of before I could understand cognitively what was going on. I have an instinctive disdain for the "other" that I've been trying to be better than nearly long enough to put the plural in "decades." But I long for something better. It drives me insane sometimes when I realize that the same thing that causes a board room of white men to go quiet when the black colleague walks in the room is in me; when I find myself feeling separated when I'm in a room with a lot of black men and women in it, I'm part of the problem, I feel. I try to stand up for what's right and do better, but I'm still part of the problem.

I really am going somewhere with this. Really.

I may be reflexively racist and elitest at times but I've taken a little time to listen to what a small few black people are saying over the years and I am fairly confident of a few things: 1) there is an enourmous amount of racism going on in America that does in fact make it harder for a black person to get ahead, even if we have come so far as we have and things are so much better than they were 2) an enormous part of the stuff is unexamined and unadmitted. Like someone famous said, the past isn't dead, it's not even past. 3) Given number 1 and 2, it's difficult for racist America to amend its problems: like someone else famous said, it's impossible for white America to apologize for what it has never admitted to, 4) much of white America desperately needs to admit to some stuff. In that sense I'm grateful for your blog for helping me to see more of how absurd and dehumanizing much of what passes for Enlighted thought about race among many white people. You've helped me admit some stuff. As I'll discuss further below, I know my ideas on a lot of things are fucked up and twisted. The great effort you've extended to help straighten things out has been helping me.

The previous paragraph is to give context to the following: somewhere gnawing at the back of many a white dude's head is the deep suspicion that yes, there is something terribly wrong, and yes, said white person is at some level part of the problem, if for no other reason than not actively trying to be one with the solution. Said person feels as if they are sick, in need of medecine. Part of the practice of this medicine is exposure of the dark places to the light. Interestingly enough, I suspect that Jesse Jackson often brings to the microphone some of this needed light. But many people find his message to be so compromised with racism and hypocrisy that not only do they not hear what he has to say that is helpful, I suspect that in their monkey brain, hearing it from him makes them far less willing to consider that he's right. It's like they say: people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. But maybe over time their supposed act of not listening will make his helpful words fester the more for some people, over the years. However, to my analysis so far, it's not enough to say that Jesse Jackson is a hack and the problem is the media outlets that make him into a black leader. He doesn't have to accept the role, and I've never noticed evidence that he doesn't.

Which is why I have found Jackson so difficult over the years. I more and more recognize how racistly hellish things can be. It seems to me that so many, if not most, white Americans seemingly need to do better. I think most of us are feeling it at some level. Sometimes we need to hear hard, unflattering things. And he doesn't bother me so much these years. But as I said, maybe a lot of white people know they need medicine. But, my rhetorical straw whities say, why from him?

Anyhow, I'll timidly venture to say, keep up the heresy, brother.

Re: Some other thoughts on Jesse Jackson...

Tray — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 23:27:18 -0000

Well, here's an example of some Jesse Jackson shit that pisses white people off. During the Duke lacrosse thing, he flies down and does some march and says he'll pay for the stripper's tuition. He wrote at the time,

We don’t know exactly what happened that night. Initial DNA tests came back negative, incriminating no one. But something happened on the night of March 13th – something so compelling that Durham District Attorney Michael Nifong was prompted to say, “This case is not going away”.

Then they turn out to be innocent and District Attorney Michael Nifong gets disbarred. Jesse never apologizes. Shit like that pisses white people like me off.

Re: Some other thoughts on Jesse Jackson...

batojar — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 21:28:18 -0000

I find his historical earnestness to be the "black leader" a bit off-putting, especially some of his tactics (bloody shirt?) The hymietown thing also not so good.

I agree with elw, the primary vitriol is probably from folks who just don't like talking about race. I guess I feel about Jesse the way I do about the Whitney Biennial - I'm glad they have it, and I get to see it, but I wouldn't want that stuff hanging on my walls.

Re: Some other thoughts on Jesse Jackson...

Warren Terra — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 19:48:15 -0000

I've seen a fair few takedowns of Jackson in the genuinely liberal opinion media complaining about how he's built a profitable industry out of racial guilt and swooping in to exploit and then, for a fee, bury racial tensions. Companies are caught with racist hiring practices or propagating a racially oppressive work environment, or a major company officer says something spectacularly dumb on tape, and in walks Jackson and his organization to, if you will, whitewash it all. In return, of course, Jackson's organization pockets huge fees. The articles I'm vaguely remembering criticized Jackson's actions from the left and from a social-justice perspective, basically saying that by paying off Jackson these companies managed to avoid more sweeping changes and truly coming to terms with their actions. So I've got no use for the man at all. The fact that I'm Jewish doesn't help, but I wasn't even 10 at the time of "Hymietown" and I think Jackson has avoided similar slurs since.

But as to what the Dittoheads have against Jackson, I don't think there's any need to look farther than the man's race and outspokenness. I mean, they should love him: he has achieved virtually none of his purported goals (which goals they dislike) and he rents his cloak of anti-racist respectability out to their corporate friends. But I don't think they see it from so rational a perspective.

Re: Some other thoughts on Jesse Jackson...

JT (Chicago) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 18:12:12 -0000

elw is correct. Rev. Jackson makes white people of a certain age uncomfortable because he symbolized a time when they were finally getting called out for racist attitudes. As to younger white people who don't like him, they probably consider him a media moth who is almost always going on about race.

The older folks will remember that back in '72, Rev. Jackson (along with lakefront liberal Ald. Singer) actually led a fight to unseat Chicago Mayor Richard J Daley & his machine from the Democratic Convention. They argued that the Daley delegation did not represent women, blacks & hispanics properly. When the Daley delegation was unseated Rev. Jackson (wearing a most radical dashiki - oh my!) celebrated their victory on stage in front of the national cameras. This was seen by many soon to be Reagan Democrats as one of the final straws in pushing them toward the Republicans.

So, I think that is probably the origin of white disdain for older white folks, at least on the large national stage. Oh, besides being with MLK during his final years.

Re: Some other thoughts on Jesse Jackson...

elw — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 17:48:43 -0000

I'm thinking about this more, and another guy who gets that kind of hate, even from some of the white liberals that I know? Jeremiah Wright. Maybe another common theme is white fear of black anger.

Re: Some other thoughts on Jesse Jackson...

elw — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 17:42:41 -0000

I -- I'm white -- like Jackson (and Sharpton too) because I think they say things that other people with access to mainstream media often don't - even when I don't agree with them. My suspicion is that lots of white people dislike them for the same reason. The white people who don't like them don't like that they think about/talk about the racial context for things, because they (the white ones) would rather believe that we live in a fair and equal society and black poverty is all a failure of black responsibility, etc. I hear them called "racial hucksters" or talk about how they "play the race card," and I think it just means that they talk about race, and this makes people uncomfortable.

Re: Some other thoughts on Jesse Jackson...

Kathy G. — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 16:54:27 -0000

My take on Jesse and "nutcuttergate":

http://thegspot.typepad.com/blog/2008/07/nutrippergate-.html

Re: Some other thoughts on Jesse Jackson...

cleek — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 16:08:31 -0000

Jesse's a bit of an attention-seeker. any time there's a news story with a racial element, you're bound to see Jackson on two or three channels. so, people are a little sick of him.

and, somehow, he's made himself the go-to guy if you need to apologize for a racist remark.

plus, you know, he keeps telling white America that we're doing it wrong. and even if we are, nobody likes to be told that.

Re: Some other thoughts on Jesse Jackson...

Michael O'Neill — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 16:02:46 -0000

Why does Jesse get a special kind of hate? I think Jesse does it to himself and has for as far back as I can remember.

As an example (not an equivocation), would W be hated as deeply and truly if he could actually master basic English? His hack and slash vocabulary and verbal idiocy has definitely amplified the momentum of his haters.

I think the same sort of situation rolls Jesse's way too. It's just too easy to ramp up hate against the buffoon.

I'm aware that Jesse hasn't always been a buffoon, but he does have a pretty strong record of it the past quarter century that I can recall personally.

Re: Some other thoughts on Jesse Jackson...

DaveG — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 15:09:15 -0000

This is nitpicky, but shouldn't everyone be offeneded by something like the "hymietown" comment, not just Jews? Although I'm white (and Jewish), I was still offended by George Allen's "macaca" comments.