May
30, 2001
The Reverend and
The Movement
Big Daddy
and the Plantation
By Kevin Alexander Gray
I grew up in a National Enquirer house.
My mother reads it weekly and my brother works in the plant
that prints them. There is something cosmic about Reverend Jesse
Jackson, for whom I used to work, being in the same rag that
regularly reports on space aliens. Now, every time I think of
Reverend, Diana Ross's Love Child plays in my head. And I have
gotten enough email cartoons. The one with Reverend's head (with
a ponytail) on a little girl's body was low down-- as low down
as the state of black and progressive politics. And that should
be our real concern.
Some defend Reverend as a prophet
while others condemn him as a profiteer. As far as Reverend being
a prophet I can only suggest counseling for the believers. In
this case, the difference between prophet and profit resembles
the difference between praying and preying.
Recently, Reverend was cheered
when he attended a Chicago area basketball tourney. Every church
he has attended since the baby story broke has forgiven him.
Often when a black leader faces attack or criticism by the powers
that be, many blacks take the position that if white folk are
giving a "brother" hell then he must be doing something
right even when the person benefiting from support is screwing
them royally. This is the present day's version of racial solidarity.
Ironically, Bill Clinton benefits from this rule. Lani Guinier
and Jocelyn Elders did not. And for all the love that folk like
Toni 'the closest we will ever come to a black president' Morrison
shower on Clinton, more black men went to jail under NAACP Image
Award winner Clinton than under Ronald Reagan. I guess it hate
the game don't hate the "playa." In ghetto slang Reverend
and Clinton are "playa playas." [Translation -- They
are so good they can play the playas themselves; so good they
can con the cons.]
The age-old stereotype is that
blacks care little about Reverend's sexual behavior due to their
"inherent immorality." We hear the same thing whenever
Bill "Cotton comes to Harlem" Clinton and black people
are mentioned in the same sentence. A more useful idea-that black
people practice that rarest of all Christian maneuvers, hating
the sin not the sinner, understanding that Saturday night is
followed by Sunday morning, not the other way around. But this
is never suggested, possibly because in the "true"
white American Christianity, such tolerance and forgiveness do
not exist. (Ask Ashcroft.)
For most of those doing the
evaluating, the logic is far simpler: Clinton apparently likes
to fuck so he's black. Jackson is unquestionably black, so we
ought to expect him to fuck.
But the problem with Reverend
Jesse Jackson isn't that he fathered a child with a woman he
didn't marry. The problem is that Reverend has used a movement
predicated on protecting rights of the many with gaining privilege
for a few. Our movement is anti-privilege. Now, Reverend's
privilege and privileges are being challenged. Who's to say
that's a bad thing?
I once believed that Clinton
and Reverend really didn't like each other. For instance, I
was with Jackson and Tom Harkin in South Carolina when Clinton
called Reverend a backstabber. Reverend certainly didn't respond
to the remark by joking "Hey, it's just my homey Bill jonesing
a little on a brother." I was at the Rainbow meeting in
Washington when Clinton trashed Sistah Souljah. It took Reverend
a little bit to realize that Clinton had once again kicked him
in the ass but when he figured it out he was pissed. (For some
reason the expression "Arkansas cracker" comes to mind.)
Truth be told, how could
Jesse Jackson and Bill Clinton not like each other? They are
like peas in a pod or, anyway, at least a boss and a straw boss.
When Reverend was counseling Clinton I had two thoughts: It's
going to blow up in his face and they're comparing notes. So
maybe it was inevitable that Clinton and Reverend would become
cut buddies, each vying to be the cash and carry Negro leader.
The new "morality"
questions as well as past financial problems at Operation Breadbasket
that led to his split with Martin Luther King's Southern Christian
Leadership Conference are now regular fodder for the
Sunday morning talk shows. The pundits' assessment -- Reverend
is not now and has never been accountable to anybody. Washington
Post columnist David Broder gave Reverend's refusal to run for
mayor of DC as evidence of his fear of accountability. Columnist
Clarence Page, the only black guy on a news show on a regular
basis, said the stories and financial questions were old news.
Both fretted over Reverend troubles but neither counted him completely
out. Still, maybe his days as a national leader were numbered.
(Maybe?)
But the problem isn't that
Reverend is a has-been. It's worse: he's become an insider. That's
what makes my desire to see Reverend either change or be gone
from the scene different from Broder's and Page's. To them, Reverend
is becoming ineffective as the "designated Negro."
There are also those awaiting
the day when Vice-president Dick Cheney has the big one (or a
big enough one) so that Colin Powell becomes vice president.
Understanding racial solidarity, they believe that
African Americans will predictably rally around the first black
vice president. This group doesn't want Reverend to affect that
dynamic. So, they beat up on him now in hopes of getting him
out of the way. Things they ignored in the past make the Enquirer's
cover. They have no desire to see Al Sharpton elevated to "national
Negro leader" but they know that Powell trumps Sharpton
or anyone else for that matter. Powell as vice president would
be the death of black politics, and you could be sure that his
personal Operation Breadbasket, his participation in the attempted
cover-up of the My Lai massacre, would never come back to haunt
him.
This is the new dilemma for
Reverend and others who make their money by manipulating the
masses. How could they overcome what could be the ultimate manipulation?
The baby's mama drama is a
symptom of something else. Reverend isn't the first, only or
last man to have his brain in the wrong head. That's how he got
here. Give him credit for claiming his child? It was from
Reverend that I first heard that you don't get points for doing
the right thing. But the woman is no "that man used me"
victim. She's a thirty-something Ph.D. breast cancer survivor.
She wanted his seed. Initially, she said it wasn't Reverend's
baby. She lied to her mama to protect him, and in the part of
the nation that reads the Enquirer that's a lot more extreme
than lying to the FBI.
Workplace sex will always be
around. No doubt, on the job there is sexual harassment and conniving
plotters of both sexes. The problem with Reverend isn't workplace
sex (except maybe to his wife Jackie and those who believe a
minister and married man should act a certain way). Jesse Jackson
and the Rainbow Coalition's problems are patronage and bossism.
The Rainbow "organization"
is not committed to any movement - past or future (unless we
are foolish enough to believe in a "Wall Street movement").
Jessephiles have no particular political goals, agenda or ideology
beyond cutting the deal and protecting their privileges as part
of the black bourgeoisie. It's always been about big daddyism,
a concept from back in the day that covers it all: sexual harassment,
nepotism, exploitation, plotting, foolishness, favoritism and
all kinds of other isms, schisms and confusion. A "big daddy"
is a straw boss thinking he is the boss, or putting up the front
that he believes it, as part of doing the boss's business. Tupac
called it thug life.
Most--not all, but most-Jessephiles
want to be close, accepted, recognized or loved by big daddy.
They want big poppa's favor. Big daddy's on the inside, with
the status quo, the in-crowd.
To the Jessephiles, the Rainbow
Coalition's biggest accomplishment was to become Rainbow/PUSH,
but that's nonsense. The Rainbow Coalition was supposed to be
about politics and organizing. PUSH is about "getting the
gold." The "gold" comes with being silent about
the exploitation and unfair practices of the corporate givers.
To know whose doing the buying one needs only to read the magazines
or newsletters of any black organization. In return for silence
some "big daddy" gets some stock, a seat on a board,
a job or a check. Reverend isn't even the master of this game;
that would be Vernon Jordan.
Much of Reverend and his crew's
present good fortune comes from the lawsuits or threats of lawsuits
by grassroots groups whose primary concern is that their constituents
receive fair treatment. Grassroots groups sued merging banks
(such as Bank of America for gobbling NationsBank, which used
to be Citizens and Southern/Sovran) over adherence to the community
reinvestment act. The outcome was that Reverend and the Jessephiles
who got the gold. The price was the abandonment of attempting
to enforce the community reinvestment act. "Big daddys"
often stifle grassroots protest, threats of economic actions
or boycotts because there is an existing deal with the company
or a deal waiting to be made. Reverend often says, "The
only bad deals are the ones you are not in the room for."
A watered down CRA was passed last year with little public comment.
Why? Because the banks and the feds now sidestep grassroots
groups and cut the deal with the big daddys, who have become
their straw bosses in the matter.
The powerful have learned that
it is easier and cheaper to buy black leaders than to bust them.
The real money is in busting street niggers in bulk. That's
what racial profiling is all about. And Reverend isn't the only
one bought and paid for. Past NAACP director Ben Chavis and
ex-chair Doc Bill Gibson were part of the demise of grassroots'
effectiveness in maintaining a remote semblance of accountability
by predatory banks. The only thing that the late Khalid Muhammed
ever got right was what he said about Ben Chavis. Condemning
Chavis for stealing from the people, he called him counterrevolutionary.
But, that's what all the big daddies do. It's what Ben Chavis
was taught, and taught by experts. Look at the King family's
exploitation of all things Martin, right down to pimping footage
of his speech from the March on Washington as a product advertisement.
Today many civil rights organizations
work counter to black empowerment. Promotion of individuals,
symbols and organizations, all living on someone else's past
glories, replace movements of the poor and disenfranchised. The
NAACP and the Urban League have their fair share or economic
development programs. The black churches and preachers take the
money with no demand on the system except maybe a bank loan to
build a bigger church. Every big daddy gets as much money as
they can from wherever or whomever they can get it. COINTELPRO
was never so effective at turning politics in the black community
to shit.
The movement business is good
to Reverend and his kids. One son is an alcohol distributor in
Chicago, a second is an investment banker and Jesse Junior is
a Congressman. But in spite of the fact that one son is a "legal"
dealer, Reverend is hypocritical on the issue of drug legalization
and on the wrong side in the war on drugs. What he should do
is demand that the POWs be set free. Start protesting at the
prisons. Call for active resistance against the drug war. Those
are things that need saying and doing. The drug war is now spawning
the next wave of black voter disenfranchisement. The background
checks by the Florida
Republicans were possible because of that state's disenfranchisement
of ex-felons for 15 years after their term of imprisonment. That's
why the Republicans were able to run criminal background checks,
falsely report the results, and prevent balloting by thousands
of black voters. The same tactics are going on in South Carolina
and across the South. The only way to stop this is to oppose
drug criminalization.
Cash checking services, cash
advance lending, predatory mortgage practices, property rights,
land loss and decreasing home ownership are just some of the
pressing the economic issues affecting blacks. In cities such
as Washington, DC, Charlotte, Atlanta and many others, inner
city blacks are dealing with redevelopment, gentrification and
eroding voting districts. So why aren't the Rainbow, Urban League,
NAACP or the SCLC dealing with these problems?
A recession in the country
as a whole and it's a depression in the black community. The
latest unemployment statistics, officially edging towards 10
percent, bear out worsening conditions in black households.
How does Reverend's Wall Street Project help black Americans
forced into the secondary lending markets during hard times or
at any time? The high ass interest charges blacks pay is what
makes the investment bankers on Wall Street billionaires; it's
where the funding for the Wall Street Project comes from, too,
and Reverend and the other big daddies know it, which is why
they don't challenge it.
Ask the average person what
the Rainbow stands for and if they say anything it will be "it's
Jesse Jackson's organization." But what has Reverend and
his organization produced? What can that person on the street
see, feel and touch? No one can call the organization on the
phone for help. They can't get a question answered or a problem
solved. They see no action. They feel nothing. They see nothing.
That's because there is nothing-for them.
Reverend's legacy is that he
ran for president, twice. He's been out the movement for a long,
long time. He's been in the movement prevention business just
as long. Any chance of movement building died when he dismantled
the Rainbow to suit Clinton and Ron Brown in 1988. After that
Reverend truly became "Jesse Jackson Inc." The tradeoff
for scattering the troublemakers the 1984 and 88 campaigns brought
into the political tent was job as head overseer on the Democratic
Party plantation. Now Reverend holds the franchise on black votes.
If he has a fear, it's losing the franchise.
Many of those at the center
of the Jackson campaigns, like Jack O'Dell who worked with Martin
Luther King, Frank Watkins who worked with Reverend for more
than 20 years, Ron Daniels, Nancy Ware, Steve Cobble and a host
of others including me--wanted to connect to the people, build
an organization and create a movement. They were not chumps.
They put the larger than life photos of Reverend at the headquarters
in Chicago in historical prospective. But big daddyism got the
best of them. They moved on and the Rainbow's potential to really
change and challenge America went with them.
As an institution, the Rainbow
will fade away completely. Then maybe we will build organizations
capable of responding to the people's needs. Maybe if we stop
depending on the straw boss we can take protest back to the to
the streets and begin tearing down those institutions and ideas
that need to crumble. Since the glory days of 1988, we have been
poor stewards of the goals of a progressive/black movement. The
success of that movement is the salvation of this country; its
failure is its damnation.
The goals were set at the founding
of this country. Black politics is the counter to anti-black
politics. It's the demand for equal opportunity, equal treatment
and protection, due process and economic justice for the descendants
of enslaved Africans, which is the only way those things can
be ensured for everyone else. CP
Kevin Alexander
Gray is a longtime
civil rights organizer who lives in South Carolina.
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