The World According to Jesse

Is this like the umpteenth time I've written about this topic? Must be.

Anytime a racial issue like Don Imus comes up, two names are associated with these events: Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. For a while, it was all Jesse, then Al started weighing in, and his comments were more noticed once he ran for president.

While listening to sports radio last night, I heard several guys who said they were African Americans and said neither Jesse nor Al speak for them. I have no idea how typical that is, or how typical it is for African American sports fans.

To those outside the community, there's a sense that all these two care about is the forward progress of African Americans in society. No problem with that, right? Except that Jesse Jackson leads the Rainbow Coalition that purports to unify across races, religious groups, gender, etc. And perhaps his organization does many of these things, but the only stuff anyone ever hears about his support of African Americans.

Thus, people (like me) are always quick to point out that Jesse and Al never seem to support Latino causes or gay causes or what-have-you. Perhaps they do, but those never make news. Case in point, Jesse Jackson supported the woman who accused three Duke lacrosse players of rape (I had no idea her name was not being mentioned, but apparently it's listed in Wikipedia!). When the charges were dropped, he did not issue a statement either putting down Nifong or the woman involved.

To be fair, it's a delicate issue all around. You don't want to prevent women who have gone through something as serious as rape to be quiet (or men either, for that matter, and they're far more likely to say nothing), but you don't want someone lying about it either. It's suggested that something did perhaps happen to that woman, but when and who and where and under what circumstances?

And the Duke boys weren't exactly exemplars of good behavior. John Feinstein points out that their behavior was already bad, though not heinously bad, but bad enough to warrant comments like "This is a disaster waiting to happen". They were indeed rich kids, because numbers like "millions" and "dollars" were put together regarding legal fees.

But the point is, more people would have more respect for Jesse and Al if they would take up these other cases more often, and yet, there's a sense they would lose their constituency if they did.

Jesse and Al are so marginalized, however, in these kinds of incidents, their names often muttered without appreciation. No other group with the slight exception of Martha Burk and whatever group she is part of has this kind of recognition. Gays, Latinos/Latinas, Asian Americans. Who represents them? The best you can do is get a celebrity to talk about it.

While the vast majority of talking heads appear to support the Imus firing, more than likely, plenty of people disagree with it. Even so, it says something that NBC and CBS would fire Imus, fearing this kind of association, even as it served them well for so long. I suspect many individuals, mostly non African American, find this decision, if they even care about it, more about the PC power of Jesse and Al, even as they may claim Imus was not someone they would have cared for.

Anyway, in another week, it'll all blow over. It is a kind of success, though a tainted one, that shows the power of the race card in the US. And despite the grumblings some may have about how we got here, we're living in a time where African Americans are getting more respect, even at the expense of Jesse and Al being thought of as "idiots".