I'm curious what you board liberals think
 

...... about someone like Jesse Jackson?

What did the good Reverend do this time?

Nothing. Just a thought I had.

I would be interested to know what kind of appeal a guy like Jackson has these days.

If he gets behind your cause, is it dead in the water? Kind of like having Johnny Cocran show up to defend you at trial...it just doesn't look credible (even though he has passed on now)

Understood.

I'm no liberal, but I think Jackson hurts more than he helps whatever it is that he is trying to do. Teaching people to always play the victim is not going to change anything.

I know what I think of the guy, I think he belongs in prison for being a life long extortionist.

But I'm curious as to what the liberals think of him.

Jesse has his place within a very small community. I would say that for the most part he is irrelevant, and every time he becomes involved in an issue it damages the movement that he seeks to support. Sort of like Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell. So I wish he would be quiet.

I'm not a liberal but I'll let Booker T. Washington sum of my opinion on Jesse and Al.

"There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs. There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don't want the patient to get well."

And I'd add that there's politicians of all stripes and colors who are like this. They make their living off bringing up the same issues over and over but they never really try to solve anything, because it's not in their best interests.

But no one does it better than Jesse and Al.

Thanks. At least one of the board liberals had the guts to answer.

Wow, that is an amazing quote--do you have a reference for it? I've never heard that before (from him) but it is stunningly relevant to Sharpton and Jackson.

I read it a few years back, but it stuck with me. Here's a link to wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booker_T._Washington

His patient approach fell out of favor in the mis 20th century, and I think rightly so, blacks were correct to demand their rights now since it appeared the south wasn't gonna budge. But I think his ideas of hard work, industry, and rejecting victimhood could serve well not only the black community but all people in this day and age.

Please, for the love of God. If Booker T. Washingon clones had managed black efforts to win equality promised by the Bill of Rights and that was their due per natural law, red state blacks would still be going to separate schools and being sent to the back of the bus and being regarded as second class by their religious faith of choice. Booker T. Washington's great and brilliant contemporary and antagonist W.E.B. DuBois, who wound up moving to Paris in disgust, is a worthy study in contrast to put Booker T. Washington in his proper place in history.

That Booker T. Washington would write such a thing while his fellow blacks were suffering the degredation of Jim Crow is quite reprehensible and says it all about who were his real constituents. I doubt that passage was quoted by Wikipedia in a laudatory way.

That Tex would lap that quotation up like a dog to his vomit says all I need to know about Tex's true state of mind about race issues. Venkman, you should be ashamed.

Tex, you go ahead and keep quoting Booker T., so that all whom you will encounter will appreciate immediately the content of your character. Yeah, go ahead and tell me how many black friends you have. I'm not impressed. That's what they all say.

Personally, I don't give a rat's ass about Booker T Washington's body of work, good or bad. The quote posted above is spot on.

Your spiteful confessed ignorance concerning black history in the same sentence as you pontificate about contemporary black culture is priceless.

I don't know enough about black history to understand the context of the quote. To an outsider observing today's black culture, it appeals to us outsiders.

And I believe the concept could be turned on its head to apply to most of our political leaders.

And if you are completely ignorant of Booker T. Washington why do you regard him as an authority worthy of citation on this isssue?

I'm saying that the merit of the above quote attributed to Booker T Washington should be indepedent of anything else he did in his life. It's the words, not the person.

Contemporary black culture? It hardly needs to be that expansive. We're talking about Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton here. What they have done in the name of race relations/equality is simply shameful.

If you want to take umbrage with that claim, feel free to do so.

Ashamed of what? Did you not read my post directly before yours? I said that blacks were correct to abandon his approach because the South wasn't going to budge on civil rights. I referenced his quote because it's exactly what I think about Jesse Jackson. Spare us the righteous indignation.

Any white should at least be sensitive to the possiblity that he is, by virtue of his own limited experience, potentially limited in his ability to apprehend lingering racism or effects of racism in our culture. I hadn't thought I needed to explain this: The context does matter very much in this instance because of the immediate loss of credibility on the part of any white who quotes Booker T. Washington as authority for a position that blacks should just shut up and move along, while such white admittedly does not appreciate nor care to appreciate the irony of Washington's words in light of the historical context, or how history has come to judge Washington's aquiescent approach to race relations.

I don't necessarily disagree with the point. I just am appalled that anyone should quote Booker T. Washington to make it, particularly someone who admittedly doesn't know nor care to know anything about Washington. Try Clarence Thomas or Bill Cosby or Stephen Carter but for the love of God quoting Booker T. Washington for this concept comes back at you like a bungy chord that has come loose from its mooring.

This whole personal responsibility/social injustice thing conservatives & liberals argue over is a false dichotomy. Blacks need to be more responsible, but that doesn't mean there aren't structural factors screwing them over.

Jackson & Sharpton are counterproductive, but having bad leaders itself is a legacy of slavery. It's hard to have initiative when for 300 years you're instructed not to do anything unless told. Little wonder the most prominent leaders, Colin Powell & Obama, are born of Jamaican and African immigrants.

I spent half my mission in the NYC ghetto, and I've noticed caribbean people start their own businesses, have tight-knit families, and have kids who excel in school. Same race of people as African Americans. Denial of victimhood is ridiculous.

All:

I said I didn't necessarily disagree with the basic point, as made in the 21st century after the Civil War, the Civil Rights Act and other legislation, Brown v. Board, etc. But quoting Booker T. Washington to make it is downright funny it's so misguided.

I'm not here to start a Booker Washington Defenders of Cougarguard club, but it's realy easy to dismiss BTW as an uncle tom and laud Dubois as a hero when the reality isn't that clear-cut. DuBois was born to free prosperious blacks, received a Harvard education and could take his hard-line stance from the relative safety of academia and the north.

Booker T. was born in slavery and was more in tune with the reality of life for southern blacks. As bad as life was for blacks in the 50's and 60's, it was much worse at the turn of the century. Booker T. was doing his best to improve the lot of his people. And being in tune to reality in the south, he knew he had to do a little going along to get along.

As I said earlier, his approach ultimately proved unsuccessful and blacks were correct to DEMAND their rights in the 50's and 60's, but then again, do you really think MLK would have succeeded back in Booker's time? I seriously doubt it.

I maintain he was the right man at the time and helped lay a groundwork for the modern civil rights movement to build upon.

Then I trust you won't quote Booker T. in the future to support a position that blacks should now cease demanding anything unless you want to completely undermine this position, indeed, make the opposite point. I could see someone in rejoinder to Bill Cosby saying, yeah, that's what Booker T. said too.

I thought Booker T, now known as King Booker was a WWE Wrassler? ;)

Maybe I completely misunderstood Venkman, but I'm pretty sure he's not saying blacks should "just shut up and move along."

I agree that that oversimlifies and does not do justice to the proposition he was trying to support by citing Booker T. But I was not necessarily challenging the point that Venkman was trying to support. Just the way he tried to support it.

My position wasn't that "blacks should now cease demanding anything". My point was simply that Booker T. summed up my feelings of Jesse Jackson. I thought it was a good quote.

As for Booker T. saying it back then, was it a good or bad thing? I don't know, not knowing the full context in which it was made.