by W Thomas Payne

Created on: September 14, 2008

There is no denying that Jesse Jackson represents a segment of the African-American (this will be the one and only time I use this phrase) community, but to say he represents the "needs" of all Americans of African lineage is like saying "Weird" Al Yankovic represents the "needs" of the polka community. Mr. Jackson has strayed so far from the dream of his mentor Dr. Martin Luther King that it has become unrecognizable. Mr. Jackson serves the needs of one and only one member of the Black community himself.

To understand my viewpoint, consider:

Mr. Jackson's organization, Rainbow/Push does not rely on donations for its operations no, the vast majority of its funding comes from government hand-outs. This is not the "hand up, not hand out" that would serve the Black community's true needs. Mr. Jackson has faced investigations into the use of those funds, and was found to have used nearly $4 million of that money for his own uses.

Mr. Jackson is for separation of the Black community into a separate sub-culture, not integration into American society. The phrase "African-American" is, in itself, an invention of Mr. Jackson, and helps create that very separation in the minds of the user.

Mr. Jackson stands against anyone saying the Black community needs to start helping itself, by getting kids off the streets and into school, and to hold their children to a standard of conduct fit for general society and to be accountable for themselves. This can be illustrated most famously by his derogatory comments following Dr. Bill Cosby's speech at the NAACP in 2005, and by his threat muttered on CNN following a speech by Senator Barack Obama in which Obama called upon the Black community to start fending for itself.

Mr. Jackson's defense of five men for starting a riot at a high school football game aged 19 to 23 and still enrolled at the high school although only one of them had achieved a status beyond ninth grade at the minimum creates the feeling that Mr. Jackson will defend the actions of anyone of his race, no matter how heinous, and at the worse shows that Mr. Jackson supports the lowest element within the Black community the thugs and hooligans. Why this wasn't treated by the media in the same vein as if the head of the American Nazi movement had come forward to loudly defend a lynching is beyond me.

Mr. Jackson works for two things: Securing increased funding for his organization and himself, and to keep his face and name in the media spotlight. To many, if not most, Americans, he has become a parody and a force for divisiveness within our society.

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