10 July 2008

Jesse Jackson and the double standard

So by now you have probably heard about the Reverend (do I really have to call him that?) Jesse Jackson's whispered comments about Senator Obama. They were caught on tape as the microphone he was wearing at the time was live, unbeknownst to him.

Essentially, Jackson said that Obama "talks down to black people" and that he "wants to cut (Obama's) (part of the male anatomy) off."

Wow.

I assume Jackson is referring to Obama's speech on Easter about how fathers in the black community need to step it up. I thought the speech was generally fine, at least until he got to the part where the federal government should pay black fathers to step it up.

But the fact that Jackson is upset about it represents the problem the black community faces. Bill Cosby tries to talk about it and is essentially blacklisted now. Obama talks about it and Jackson wants to disfigure him.

Anyway, I just wanted to illustrate the double standard here. Jackson apologized today and Obama said, "No problem."

Can you imagine if a McCain supporter had said something so crude? He'd be crucified. See: Don Imus.

But no, Jackson is black, so everything's fine. It's ridiculous.

Apparently Jackson also accused Obama of "acting white" last September. What does that even mean?

Can't we judge people on the content of their character and just be done with all this racial division stuff?

3 comments:

Seth said...

Amen brother. Amen.

Matt Gibb said...

A lot of (white) people have noticed this, and noticing it doesn't help anything get done about it. Guaranteed it will be at least another generation or two before we recover from Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson continually reopening the race wounds that most people want to allow to heal.

Brandon said...

Your last statement is key, IMO. I think as a nation we'd like to move past making race an issue, but some individuals base their careers off of doing that just. It's not in their interests to heal the wounds... they need to keep them open.