Joseph Williams, Boston Globe
- The Rev. Jesse Jackson’s offhand insult of Barack Obama last week has exposed a heated debate over whether Obama’s groundbreaking presidential campaign – and his repeated challenge to the black community to straighten out its own affairs – is displacing and alienating some in Jackson’s generation of black leadership, which held the government accountable for the plight of African-Americans.
Though Jackson apologized profusely for the remark, he still faced intense criticism, not least a sharply worded rebuke from his namesake son, who is a congressman and an Obama campaign official. Some in the black community said the clash demonstrates the elder Jackson’s resentment at having to make way for a new generation of leaders like Obama, who believe that black America is not blameless for its chronic social problems.
