Jesse Jackson, Making Me Better

I SAW JESSE JACKSON speak on a college campus in 1991, where I was teaching. My girlfriend and I attended together, and, I confess, I was much more excited about my date than about Jesse Jackson. Go figure, as we say. In an arena seating about nine thousand people, there were probably half that many people in attendance, and my date and I were among the very few "white" people there, sprinkled throughout the sea of black faces. I recall being a bit nervous, hoping we would be accepted, not regarded as posers, wearing some feigned, prominently displayed racial equality on our sleeves for appearances only. In retrospect, I needn't have worried. I must assume that when Jackson appeared on campuses up north, the crackers came out in much greater numbers. But in the deep south, whitie boy stayed home, probably sulking. Only the radical liberals dared venture forth to listen to an uppity N word griping about some imaginary racial inequality. My mother, who was born in 1920, was raised around racists, and hated racism passionately. She had more influence over me than my overtly racist father, thank heaven, who was brilliant, but should have known better, and knew better. When Jesse walked through the door and into the basketball arena, he was flanked by no fewer than a dozen very large, young, athletic looking African-American men, all wearing suits and ties. Jesse wasn't going to take any chances, play any games, or cater to anyone's misplaced sensitivities. He meant business, which was immediately evident. The most handsome group of men I had or still have ever seen, except perhaps when Elvis Presley or Neil Diamond appeared on stage alone. Jackson lost no time getting to the point. The theme of his speech was, and its title should have been and maybe was "they work every day." By this time the reverend had long since abandoned his attacks on racism only, and had expanded his repertoire to the working class, all pigmentations included. He had come to realize that the root problem is more comprehensive than mere racism, that it exrended to the entire working class, the exploited, largely forgotten part of the American people who do the actual work. Paraphrased, he said: "Tonight, when we finish here, we will all go back to our comfortable homes, our comfortable, well paying jobs, and we will carry on with our comfortable, privileged lives". He well good and well that he was speaking about a class of Americans to which a select, chosen few people of color had been admitted, by reason of some talent, some ability to entertain, or by sheer chance of birth or marriage. He knew his audience, the sons and daughters of the upper midddle class of white privilege. The well educated class. Nobdoy there was dressed in the clothing of the working class. No thread bare coveralls, no brown uniforms. "That's when they, the workers, will take our place here in this arena, which will need a good cleaning. And they will clean up our mess, and noody will know or care about what they did. We won't even bother to imagine what this beautiful building would look like, what it would become, without their deovted, crucial assistance. They alone make our presence here possible." He said more than this, but he needn't have. He had made his point, and we, the privileged few, got the point. We left the arena that night changed,somehow. I for one have never been the same. That was the end of my date. My date and I had done enough, heard enough.. I grew that night, in ways that even the reverend Jackson would never fully know or understand. I became a better person because of what he said to me, what he did for me. As Goethe said; "Confronted with great merit, the only resistance is love". The night I listened to Jesse jackson, I became a better person, and for that, I shall always be grateful.