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More than a month has passed since the
Reverend Jesse Jackson uttered remarks about
Senator Barack Obama “talking down to Black
people” and “telling n—s how to behave.” The
comments, picked up by a microphone during a
break for a Fox News interview, prompted
critics to dismiss the civil rights activist
and two-time U.S. presidential candidate as
a relic from the past. In a candid
conversation with ESSENCE editors Tatsha
Robertson and Cynthia Gordy, Jackson
responds to the backlash and explains why he
thinks he’s just as relevant as ever.
ESSENCE.COM: Will we see you at the
Democratic National Convention?
JACKSON: Absolutely.
ESSENCE.COM: Will you be playing any role at
the convention?
JACKSON: No, not any particular
role. I’ll be there as an Obama supporter. I
have spoken at the last six Democratic
conventions, so I wanted to certainly make
room for more speakers and broader
participation.
ESSENCE.COM: Both candidates have spoken at
length on issues such as the war and the
economy. Are there other issues that you’d
like them to focus on more?
JACKSON: Well, I think the war is
the premier issue of our time. The war is
costing money, almost a trillion dollars.
It’s costing lives. The war has alienated
America in the world community. On the other
hand, it’s not enough to stop investing in
the war. Let’s now reinvest in America. We
need an urban policy within our cities.
Nearly fifty percent of Black men in New
York City are unemployed. Bridges are
collapsing, levees are being overrun. There
must be some real plan to reinvest in
America.
ESSENCE.COM: What about the criminal justice
system, or social justice issues in general?
JACKSON: Well, that’s a big piece
of it. You know, 2.3 million Americans are
in jail. Close to 40 percent of them are
Black, and nearly 20 percent are Latino. It
is devastating to our families, as well as
the crack-sentencing disparity.
ESSENCE.COM: Why do you think those issues
are not being mentioned as much?
JACKSON: I think that becomes our
job, the civil rights community, to keep the
issues on the front burner that concern us
the most, just like labor puts workers’
rights on the front burner, and Hispanics
put on the agenda the road to citizenship,
bilingual education and immigrant rights. We
must keep on the agenda the issue of
education, employment, social justice, and
some plan to deal with the disparities of
Blacks in infant mortality and short life
expectancy. We’re [more susceptible to] home
foreclosures, number one in unemployment.
ESSENCE.COM: You make a good point about the
job of the civil rights community. But many
younger African-Americans have been
complaining that the old guard civil rights
leaders focus too much on African-Americans
as victims rather than moving the race
forward. What do you think about this point
of view?
JACKSON: This “old guard, new
guard” is an unhealthy division. Politics
must be inter-generational. You need Barack
on the one hand to talk, you need Charlie
Rangel, chair of House Ways & Means
[Committee], and John Conyers, chair of our
House Judiciary [Committee]. In politics you
grow by adding and multiplying, not by
subtracting and dividing. So “old guard vs.
new guard” is not a healthy combination. The
reality is that we achieved the right to
vote, we achieved freedom, but we didn’t
achieve equality, and that is the remaining
civil rights work.
ESSENCE.COM: The rapper Nas and writer Kevin
Powell, who is running for Congress in
Brooklyn, have said that you particularly,
and other civil rights leaders, are no
longer relevant and need to step aside. How
do you remain relevant to this newer
generation?
JACKSON: The reality is that if
you’re running for Congress, you need the
votes of senior citizens. You need the votes
of churches. You are not getting in Congress
on a youth vote. That’s not the mass that
you need to win a congressional seat. You
need an intergenerational, multicultural
coalition. And that experience cannot be
thrown away. In Dr. King’s time, Dr. King
was 34, but he reached out to A. Philip
Randolph. It took both A. Philip Randolph
and Dr. King
in tandem
to make the March on Washington take place.
ESSENCE.COM: Are you going to reach out to
some in the younger generation to make them
feel that you are relevant?
JACKSON: All you really can do is
continue to serve. Who’s relevant and
heroism is a matter of perception. You might
take a certain hip-hop magazine—they should
not say ESSENCE is not relevant; it’s just
different. The divide is not the key to
growth. The key to politics is growth, and
if there’s growth, everybody wins.
ESSENCE.COM: Earlier on you made an argument
about the need to push for social justice. A
lot of these tend to get branded as “Black
issues,” and some argue that Senator Obama,
in particular, must tread carefully in that
area, to be representative of all of
America. What are your thoughts on that?
JACKSON: That’s what we did in
the Rainbow Push Coalition campaign. We
focused on family farmers and urban workers;
a comprehensive health care plan for
everybody; equal access to public
education—that is a way to frame the debate.
Some issues that are being pushed as “Black
issues” are not. Affirmative action, for
example, is not a Black issue; it’s a
majority issue. Affirmative action is [a
part of] Title 9 and affects majority white
women. Even the voting rights struggle that
has made Barack’s candidacy possible was
always broader than just Black. When we went
to Selma to vote in 1965, White women
couldn’t serve on juries; farmers who
couldn’t pay a poll tax couldn’t vote—that
was not for Blacks only.
ESSENCE.COM: It’s interesting that you
describe your platform as inclusive because
oftentimes your presidential runs are framed
as having been centered on Black people. And
now Senator Obama is heralded as being very
different from that—
JACKSON: We won Vermont, Alaska
and Michigan because we reached out. What’s
different today is not that Blacks have
changed, but Whites have changed. Whites who
once terrorized us and denied us the right
to vote are now voting for us. Many Whites
are maturing and becoming less insecure in
the voting process. But we’ve been reaching
out for a long time.
ESSENCE.COM: We’ve seen you champion
African-American issues and fight against
injustice. Many people simply want to know,
when you mentioned the N-word in your
off-air remarks about Obama last month—why?
They want you to tell them, as an
African-American, why did that happen?
JACKSON: It should not have
happened. What was private talk became
public controversy, and I am embarrassed by
that. There is no virtue in that kind of
talk, and it should always be discouraged.
My appeal even then was that responsibility
is a significant message, but our needs
require real government intervention and
private sector incentives to address the
issues of unemployment, building affordable
housing and making education more
affordable, which really was my point. It
was a very painful period for me to have
gone through that. The good news is that
it’s behind us now.
ESSENCE.COM: Have you talked to Obama about
it?
JACKSON: Yes. As a matter of
fact, he sent me a welcome to the convention
and made credentials available to me. We’ve
gone on to the next stage.
ESSENCE.COM: Your son disagreed with you (on
the off-air comments). What do you think
about your son’s comments? Is it further
evidence of you not reaching a new
generation?
JACKSON: Well, Jesse’s a co-chair
of the campaign, and he’s also a
congressman. He felt that pain of that too.
He’s free to express himself, and it does
not bother our relationship as father and
son at all. He was taught to give his
opinion in our household, and he did it in
love. He’s tough, he’s smart. He has a
future in politics. He didn’t want the
impression to be that that my faux pas was
his faux pas, because it was not. I respect
his right to express himself.
ESSENCE.COM: In Senator Obama’s speech that
he gave at a Chicago church this past
Father's Day, he urged more Black fathers to
be involved in their children’s lives. He
received backlash for that—
JACKSON: Well, the message of
responsibility should be broadly applied and
not appear to be just directed to Blacks.
Black men need to be responsible—they also
need to be employed.
ESSENCE.COM: So would you say that children
without fathers in the home is not that
critical an issue in the Black community?
JACKSON: Men across the board
must be more responsible. But again, in the
context of the Black situation, we have a
requirement for governmental intervention.
You’ve got a million blacks in jail with
three or four kids apiece; that’s a state of
emergency. I think that responsibility was
always embraced. But we’ve got some real
structural inequality and exploitation that
must also be addressed; that’s all.
ESSENCE.COM: As Senator Obama moves forward
in the campaign, do you have any words of
advice for him?
JACKSON: I think we have an
outstanding candidate. We have the burden
now to fully register and vote. There are
still maybe 6 to 8 million Blacks
unregistered who should not miss this hour,
this opportunity. Now that we have a who,
let’s focus on the what. What is an urban
policy that can begin a renewed commitment
to educate our children and to employ adults
and provide public health care? These are
the issues he has embraced. We have a
candidate who has a good grasp of the issues
that matter. But the burden is upon us now
to maximize registration and output.
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