Kevin Powell, Huffington Post
- The Reverend Jesse Jackson’s very crude comment about wanting to cut off Barack Obama’s testicles, breached a psychological levee in Black America. Yes, the remark was whispered, unbeknownst to Rev. Jackson, while his Fox News mic was live, but it was said nonetheless. And we know this is not the first time that Rev. Jackson has made a snide remark about Obama. I do not want to pretend to be inside the mind of Rev. Jackson, or any other Black political leader, but it has become evident to me, as a longtime community organizer, and as a current Democratic candidate for Congress, that Obama’s campaign has brought the Civil Rights generation’s chickens home to roost, finally.
It began as soon as Obama announced his candidacy. Was he Black and qualified enough to be a leader because a) he was biracial b) he was too young to have participated in the Civil Rights Movement and c) he was not a minister. Obama was an enigma to the old Black guard because they did not create him, and because they could not control him. This is the root of the generational split in Black America. The Civil Rights battles were fought to give future generations an opportunity to achieve the unthinkable just forty years ago. But now that many of us have the audacity to run for public office, to own businesses rather than spending our lives working for someone else, to become big-time donors in campaigns, there is a heavy resentment from the established Black gatekeepers.
