With arms stretched and palms upward, the pimps are yapping. The most quotable political pimp of them all — the Rev. Jesse Jackson, whose collection cup runneth over — is again turning his short attention span to the presidential campaign, saying that “centerpiece” of John Kerry’s “vision” of a better America “should be a new civil-rights agenda.”
This is disappointing, yet not atallunexpected, considering the source. Somebody please remind Brother Jesse that Jim Crow is long dead, and that both America’s black voting population and its black political stock have come of age. While we do still hear of “the first black elected” this or “the first black appointed” that, the fact remains that black votes and black voices are right where they ought to be — in mainstream American.
Of course, that doesn’t preclude Jesse Jackson from sticking his hand out. Jesse Jackson’s “vision” calls for amending the Constitution for the “right” to vote, the “right” to a quality public education and the “right” to affordable health care. So, here we go again.
There is no doubt that the America of today is not the America of Jesse Jackson’s youth. Too bad Jesse Jackson’s politics haven’t grown along with America. A race-relations Gallup poll conducted on behalf of AARP and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, and released this week, found that most Americans — whether black, white or Hispanic — accept and celebrate multiculturalism. “This poll underscores the progress we have made as a society, as well as the critical need to do much more to improve race relations,” Wade Henderson, executive director of the conference, said.
Amid such good news, Jesse Jackson wants us to move backward instead of forward. But we really didn’t need a poll to tell us that race relations in America have improved tremendously. We can look at two civil rights giants — Rep. John Lewis of Georgia and Dorothy Height of the National Council of Negro Woman. (Miss Height is perhaps the best living example of a nonpartisan “first” for a black American, having received the Citizens Award from Ronald Reagan, the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Bill Clinton and the Congressional Gold Medal from George W. Bush.) As Miss Height says in her recently published memoirs, “children grow and families are developed” in neighborhoods and communities — and, I add, neighborhoods and communities where houses of worship were the very spine of black America.
Similarly, those who still doubt that the black vote and the black voice have become mainstream can ask Condoleezza Rice, a native Alabamian who was raised in “Bombingham” and now is national security adviser, or Colin Powell, America’s “first” black secretary of state. We also can ask Alphonso Jackson, whose appointment as secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development means that a Republican president has not one or two, but three black Cabinet members — another “first.”
All are baby boomers whose families pulled themselves up by grabbing a hand up and out of the grasp of Jim Crow. Alphonso Jackson, for example, is the youngest of 12 in his family. While his dad only had a fifth-grade education and his mom had but an 11th-grade education and became a nurse-midwife, his parents made sure that all 12 children were educated. “They could have only done this in America,” the HUD secretary said the other night at the 10th anniversary dinner of Black America’s Political Action Committee. (His remarks put tears in the eyes of more than a few listeners, including yours truly.)
See, it wasn’t at all unusual for generations barely twice removed from slavery to make handy use of their family’s bootstraps — particularly those tied to the belief that education is the primary mover and shaker behind improving one’s personal lot in life.
So I take particular exception with liberals — such as Jesse Jackson, who experienced fits and starts with his ministerial studies and duties, and John Kerry, who was weaned with a silver spoon — when the media floods us with their comments about how Big Brother can replace people like Alphonso Jackson’s parents or other honorable role models.
In his own soft-spoken way, Alphonso Jackson also admonished Americans, invoking the wisdom of the father of the NAACP, W.E.B DuBois, and of his own father when he said: “Too often what occurs is [that] when we elevate ourselves, we seem to exclude ourselves from those who need us most … all that matters is how we treat people in between … treat king and beggar the same today, because tomorrow the king might be the beggar and the beggar might be the king.”
Give that man a resounding amen. And the next time Jesse Jackson and John Kerry approach with begging hands, you should chime up and ask, “Begging your pardon, but what have you done for me lately?”
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