Jesse Jackson’s Egregious Comment Against Barack Obama

Jesse Jackson, the heir-apparent to the MLK legacy and standard bearer for the glory days of the Civil Rights Movement in this country, may well be remembered for the disparaging and unthinkable comment he made against Democratic Presidential candidate, Senator Barack Obama; as opposed to the fight for equality for women, human rights, and social justice for people of color as well as poor Whites. Jesse should have known better, since he lived through those turbulent years in America of racial hatred, miscegenation and Jim Crow Laws, voter disenfranchisement and poll taxes for Blacks; not to mention discrimination at lunch counters, and signs displaying the word “COLORED” or “NO COLORED ALLOWED” in public places such as in parks, swimming pools, public transportation, playgrounds, water fountains, theatres, restrooms, etc.

Jesse Jackson is an astute student of history and knows full well the psychological impact of the word “castrate” on the Black male. In the almost forgotten memories of the past, resurgent images of Black bodies flayed with the whip, stripped bare and bloodied, dangling from a noose attached to the sturdy branch of a tree; stripped bare, naked, impotent, trembling, emasculated, robbed of humanity, spirit, dignity, while painful screams fall upon deaf and uncaring ears, and the final and shameful blow, the cutting, tearing and ripping away of that precious symbol of masculinity and manhood, the ‘genitals.’

There can be no excuse for any Black man to be so careless in using the word ‘castrate’ and there is no equivalent nor can any apology assuage this socially blasphemous deed. Jesse may have had a little ‘capital’ before this incident but it is all used up now. In fact, Jesse is bankrupt and bereft of any moral or spiritual leadership and authority whatsoever. Rosa Parks, who was formerly referred to as the “Mother of the Civil Rights Movement” by refusing to get up give up her seat to a White man on a Birmingham, Alabama transit Bus, thereby allowing all of us to stand; Jesse Jackson needs to sit down now because it seems that he has been standing way too long.


Robert Randle
776 Commerce St. #B-11
Tacoma, WA 98402
July 14, 2008
pbks@hotmail.com