Can Jesse Jackson just please retire? He's become such a pale shadow of his former self that he's almost become a cartoon character, such that it threatens to tarnish his well-earned legacy as a civil rights' leader.
While he once stood with sanitation workers in 1968 who were fighting for a living wage, he now is standing up for an 'oppressed' baseball player who is paid more in than 45 minutes (salary alone) than a someone on minimum wage earns in a month.
And what exactly is this baseball player's great burden that so enrages the reverend?
I mean, besides his poverty wages.
Barry Bonds is about the break the Major League Baseball home run record and the commissioner hasn't yet promised to be in attendance.
When is Bonds going to break the record? No one knows. It's different than when Cal Ripken Jr broke Lou Gehrig's record and pretty much everyone could point to a date on the calendar when it was going to happen. Why should Selig put his life on hold for something which might happen tomorrow or might happen in three weeks?
Bear in mind, Selig hasn't even actually snubbed Bonds yet because the event hasn't occured.
But of course Bonds is black so it must be made into a fake issue by Jackson. Selig's non-committal status has been condemned by Jackson. But the reverend has not, to my knowledge, attacked Hank Aaron (whose record Bonds will break) for also not committing to attend the record-breaking night whenever that might be.
Does this dichotomy in Jackson's behavior have even a tiny bit to do with the fact that Selig is white and Aaron is black?
When Aaron broke the home run record in 1974, then-commissioner Bowie Kuhn was not in attendance. Strangely enough, I don't know of any histories of the civil rights' movement that mentions Kuhn's 'snub.' Maybe because within the context of desegregation, voting rights and the fight against lynching and poverty, Kuhn's failure to attend a baseball game was insignificant.
Increasingly, Rev. Jackson, who I once held in great esteem, is a man in search of fake causes to keep himself in the public limelight. Some argue that he was always like that. Maybe I used to be willing to overlook that because he used the publicity to bring publicity to real causes. Not any more.
While racism is certainly less pernicious than it was 40 years ago, there remain many issues facing black communities. Drugs, poverty, family decay, crime, imprisonment, voting access issues, the limited availability of good health care, etc. Any of these are worthy of a public media campaign. But the reverend has trivialized these grave situation with non-issues like this one. How can blacks who want to be real leaders and address real issues get any traction when all the publicity is being hogged by Jackson and his tantrums on behalf of spoiled brat multimillionaires?
10 comments:
Once again your post disappoints me to the point that I have to comment.
This sounds like standard right-wing straw-man characterizations of Jesse Jackson. I noticed you didn't link to the article making the claim you've attributed to Jackson - what exactly did he say?
Contrary to popular sports opinion organized sports has been far from a bastion of civil rights.
Nationally and internationally, the most significant issue around sport has consistently been racism (followed by the Cold War). A survey by the International Olympic Committee conducted at the height of the controversy over Apartheid South Africa’s participation in the Olympic Movement following the 1968 Olympic Games revealed that 98 percent of non-white nations opposed South African participation in the ’68 Games, while 68 per cent of white nations did not oppose South African participation.
What’s more, race was the singular issue with responsibility for the only two major American protest movements involving the cultural experience we know as “sports:” the first against the racial policies of the Nazi state holding the 1936 Berlin Olympics, and the second against the racial policies of South Africa. The point is that race has always been an important issue in one of our largest cultural phenomenon.
I doubt what you attribute to Jackson is actually true, and I suspect that it’s a corruption of a larger point he was making - one that, from you white privileged point of view, doesn’t rank with other issues facing people of color today but one that resonates with many black (and white) youth - namely, the American sports are and have been generally racist in their actions, if not always in their spirit.
There is nothing wrong with that and asking Jackson to retire makes you just another white voice demanding there are fewer black ones.
Of course you're disappointed. When else do you comment?
Except of course when I link to one of your pieces.
As usual, you take a comment about a specific incident and invent boogeymen that aren't there. Did you read the whole piece?
Because if you'd been paying closer attention, you'd notice that I DID link to the article in which Jackson attacked Bud Selig for not committing to attend Bonds' record breaker, even though that could be tomorrow or next month.
The rest of your comment is a typical strawman that you have perfected. Lots of huffing and puffing that has nothing to do with the points of my essay.
Your history of sports and race is spot on. And I never said or implied otherwise.
If you'd bothered to read my whole piece, you'd know that I was calling for Jackson to retire because the activism of real civil rights leaders get lost in the molehill of whether a baseball commissioner attends a particular game.
We need more voices who are going to speak on issues affecting poor working and middle class blacks, not someone who makes more in a few months (excluding endorsements) than most people will make in a lifetime. It is of no consequence to me whether Jackson remains in the public eye if this is the sort of non-issue that he is going to be wasting his time and precious media attention with.
And in case you were confused, I am no where near as bourgeois as Bonds, who makes about as much salary in a day as I do in a year and a half.
To implicate Bonds in the struggles faced by blacks who are fighting poverty, lack of access to health care, family breakdown, drugs, crime, high rates of imprisonment, racial profiling, etc. is an insult. I didn't become a progressive to waste my time worrying about the bruised ego of a spoiled brat making $19 million a year for playing a kids' game.
Find a single black mother trying to feed, house and clothe her kids on a couple of minimum wage jobs and try to keep them safe amidst gun violence and drugs. SHE is worth my attention, your attention, Jackson's attention, the media's attention.
I DARE you to go explain to her face to face why she or Jesse Jackson should give a good goddamn about whether Bud Selig attends a baseball game.
If you think that Bonds has any personal experience with these real struggles that are far too common within the black community (bearing in mind that his father was a rich baseball player too), then clearly you are far more out of touch than I thought. If you think he has a clue then you obviously don't.
Usually it's corporate fat cat Republicans who'd try to claim that a man being paid nearly $1800 an hour has anything to do with the struggles of working class. Yet you manage to do so.
Whether some multimillionaire businessman who runs baseball attends a game to honor the questionable achievement of another multimillionaire businessman who plays baseball is of no consequence to me. It's of no consequence to blacks facing real problems of poverty, housing and food. And you dare call me privileged?
And instead of suspecting, inferring, doubting, reading between the imaginary lines, huffing or puffing, why don't you try informing yourself and reading what Jackson actually said. It's always been linked to in my piece, contrary to your statement.
1-Jesse Jacksons time is over, he doesn't solve problems, he enflames issues.
2-Aaron did it on talent, Bonds did it on steroids. Bonds is lucky he wasn't playing 20, 30 years ago because if he stood at the plate and gloated over his homeruns, the next time up the ball would go in his ear.
2-When can we comment on the Adirondack Almanack?
Brian,
I was going to step in and attack the almanack editor's straw man fallacy( which, after reading his post he seems quite proficient at) but I see you beat me to it. I guess it helps that it's your blog.
Anyway, you said this...
"It is of no consequence to me whether Jackson remains in the public eye if this is the sort of non-issue that he is going to be wasting his time and precious media attention with. "
To that I would add, it should be of no consequence to anyone, especially his fellow African-americans since his seizing such oppurtunites to keep his name in the news( someting he always seems ready to do) does only himself good(and that would be questionable as well). Everytime he speak up in such a way, he renders himself more irrelevent. African-americans need better men in their corner, but they seem to be stuck with likes of him.
Jim
Brian,
I will try and make this my last comment for good on your blog. Your inability to engage in discussion without personal attacks is something you should take a look at.
First, I didn't see the link - and because I didn't I asked the question "what exactly did he say?" That didn't require your big hissy-fit to answer.
You wrote "I was calling for Jackson to retire because the activism of real civil rights leaders get[s] lost in the molehill of whether a baseball commissioner attends a particular game."
I guess that gets exactly to it.
I believe that right-wingers constantly make Jesse
Jackson's issues into molehills for their own rhetorical racist benefit.
Guess what? Regardless of what your white-privileged mind thinks, Jesse Jackson is still an important part of the limited voice of African Americans today. You don't have to agree with everything he says but calling for him to resign questions in my mind how much you know about him and the current struggle of people of color.
I never mentioned Bonds in my comment, your spending so much time on my "implications" is just one of the reasons I don’t comment more and haven’t open the comments on my blog.
I'm don't follow sports because I think they are fundamentally racist, violent, and a waste of time, money, and the energy of good people. At the same time, I don't call for the heads of sports stars, sports fans, or sports leaders. Sports isn’t my thing – unfortunately, too many white Americans think being black is something, like being white, that they know all about.
By the way, don't feel like you have to respond. I won't be following the rest of these comments anyway.
All you do is spending your time reading between the lines, divining the tea leaves and responding to everything EXCEPT what I actually write. The fact that you never mentioned Bonds in your comments is exactly what I'm talking about. Jackson's comment was directly related to Bonds. My disgust with Jackson's focus is related to my disgust with Bonds. Not talking about Bonds removes any context from Jackson's comments. You can't talk about my essay by completely ignoring the subject of Jackson's comments.
I've never had anybody spend so much time insulting me and then snivel that I'm insulting them. Hell, even the right-wingers who've commented my blog don't spend as many words avoiding the main theme of my essays as you.
It's sad that you spend so much energy berating someone like me who you know damn well agrees with you on the issues 90+% of the time instead of fighting the real powers that be. It's people like you who insist of absolute hegemony and berate anyone who expresses the tiniest disagreement on any issue that prevent progressives from forging coalitions.
Regardless of what my 'white privileged mind' might think, it's obvious that you have one as well, albeit much smaller. I've never criticized you for the subjects you choose to abord on your blog because it's your choice. However, I am sick and tired of some self-indulgent white person whose internet contributions focus on things like a guide to making fishing lure necklaces, hot nurse sex and demon rum and then launching belligerent tirades at me because I'm "privileged" and "are not part of the struggle." I've never had to justify myself to you and I'm not about to start now.
If this is your last comment, then you will not be missed.
Not that you need my two bits, but though we disagree 80-85% of the time, I 've yet to see you engage in an ad hominem attack on any poster.
We disagree a lot but you have yet to attack me personally. I feel like I'll always get a reasoned response from you(though, like I said, it may be hard for me to see your point of view)
Just my two bits.
Jim,
Even though we disagree more often than not, I appreciate your participation. With you, the debate isn't belligerent and accusatory, but rational and topical. You don't read between the lines for a straw man that isn't there but rather stick to what I write. You're not some pompous bully who rages about a topic that you admit to knowing nothing about. It makes for debate that's useful and worth my time. This is a forum for adults and you seem to realize that.
By the way, Almanack, the suggestion that I have no clue about the travails of poor black people is so ludicrous, I nearly wet myself laughing when I read it. Especially since I dedicate another entire blog essentially to this topic. Whether my comments raise 'questions in (your) mind' is of no consequence to me since you obviously don't know enough about me for any conclusion to be informed.
Brian, a tool of right-wing Republicans? Please. I'm a right winger, though no Republican, and to accuse Brian of that is silly. As for the racial rhetoric, anyone that is familiar with Brian's record knows he has solid progressive credentials- he walks the walk, talks the talk. He's been there.
And what's this absurdity about sports being fundamentally racist, violent and 'waste of energy?' You need to get out once in a while. Sports can teach you some good life lessons. If you don't believe me, Bran in fact knows a thing or two about sports and how to deal with successful players. In the least, sports are good for you physically.
You're quite the misinformed oddball, AE.
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