Columnist George E Curry
While everyone was recently fixated on Jesse Jackson’s expressed interest in castrating Barack Obama almost overlooked was another insult to Obama made by John McLaughlin, host of the McLaughlin Group.
McLaughlin asked, “Does it frost Jackson, Jesse Jackson, that someone like Obama, who fits the stereotype blacks once labeled as an Oreo – a black on the outside, a white on the inside – that an Oreo should be the beneficiary of the long civil rights struggle which Jesse Jackson spent his lifetime fighting for?”
First, calling someone an Oreo is as outdated as wearing Ivy League pants. Second, who is McLaughlin to reduce Obama and all that he has accomplished to a racial stereotype? Third, Obama is not black on the outside and white on the inside; he’s black and white inside and out. That puts him in a unique position to help narrow the racial divide in this country.
While we’re on the subject Jesse Jackson, anyone who has been around him for any length of time probably wasn’t surprised by the coarse language he used to describe what he would like to do to Obama. Knowing how crude Jackson can be, my first response was: “That’s all they caught on tape?”
Obama has run a successful presidential campaign without any guidance from Jesse Jackson. I suspect that irritates Jackson and, hence, the crude outburst. Obama frequently pays homage to civil rights warriors who have come before him – he did that again at the NAACP convention in Cincinnati – but that doesn’t mean he needs to win Jackson’s stamp of approval before deciding on a course of action.
This whole notion of “Who Speaks for the Negro?” – the title of a 1965 book by Warren Penn Warren – received a big jolt with the release of an annual Gallup Poll. The public opinion group reported that 29 percent of African Americans cite Obama as the leader they would choose as their spokesperson on racial issues. Far back in second place was Al Sharpton at 6 percent and Jesse Jackson with 4 percent. This is the first known national poll where Sharpton outranks Jackson.
With a sample of only 608 blacks and a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percent, I have my doubts about the validity of this poll, especially when it found that Bill and Hillary Clinton, with a ranking of 3 percent each, have three times the level of support on racial issues of Minister Louis Farrakhan, Colin Powell and Bill Cosby, all tied at 1 percent each.