Conservative Blacks: Jesse Jackson Irrelevant
Dave Eberhart, NewsMax.com
Friday, Feb 25, 2005
WASHINGTON – It was not a good evening for Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), the NAACP, and the Congressional Black Caucus at the Heritage Foundation Thursday as a panel concluded these reputed icons "have utterly failed to provide moral leadership in the Black community and have become the tools for extremist political agendas."


Story Continues Below



The panel of conservative Black Americans called for the reinstitution of principled black leadership in the tradition of Booker T. Washington and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

The Brotherhood Organization of A New Destiny (BOND) and The Heritage Foundation co-sponsored the historic conference – "Responding To The Call: The New Black Vanguard Conference" - to address what they see as a crisis in leadership and "the spiraling moral and physical decline taking place within America's inner cities."



Panel moderator Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson, Founder and President of BOND, told the audience and his fellow panel members that his organization annually rallies against Jessie Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH, but did not bother to hold the event this year because of "Jackson's growing irrelevancy."


"It's time out for all those not called by God but by their mama," jeered Peterson, who noted that unlike Jackson he was "proud to be an American and not stuck in Africa somewhere." Rev. Peterson spent about an hour prodding the panel into observations about and possible cures for the breakdown of the family and the church in the modern Black communities.


One of Peterson's own observations was that so many great cities have a Black police chief, Black mayor, "but they're still blaming the white man."



Roy Innis, the national chairman and chief executive officer of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), noted that his organization, which is now 63 years old, pioneered many of the tactics of the civil rights movement. Innis noted, however, that the old civil rights movement has changed. "Martin Luther King would not recognize it today."


Innis said he was especially disturbed by the Jackson, et. al., characterization of no real progress being made in neutralizing racism. He pointed to Virginia, "the queen state of the Confederacy that elected a Black governor [Douglas Wilder]."


"All Americans won the civil rights movement," Innis declared. "After any revolution things go haywire. In our case it was rebel against everything American – change your name from the Christian slave name to the [ironically] Muslim slave name. We are still in a post-revolutionary era."


Innis lamented the "liberals coming into Black churches" and "the 1500 black children aborted every day." He chided the myth that "slavery has done some irreparable harm."


"Our children are not reading Mark Twain [considered a racist for using the N-word] but are listening to violent rap."


"The liberal media advertises that these folks [Jackson, et. al.] speak for us," Innis said. "Yet the polls suggest that Black people oppose homosexual marriage and favor school vouchers."


As to the reputed dearth of real Black leadership: "We have a black leadership; George Bush is our leader. We must break the invidious censorship of good in the black community. It is necessary for the sanity of Black folks."


Another panelist, Gloria Jackson, president of the Booker T. Washington Speakers Network and the great granddaughter of Booker T. Washington, lamented that "so much of his life and legacy was lost because his voice was silenced."


She noted that Washington's mantra was that "personal transformation starts from within. We need to be leaders within our own lives, our own schools, our own vibrant communities."


Jackson expressed hope that after "40 years of dependency," the cycle could be broken with Blacks once again taking charge of their own destinies. She recalled the Rev. Jesse Jackson coming to her church recently where he received "a lukewarm reception" – not the wild enthusiasm noted in past visits. "Things are changing," she said.


Panelist Mychal Massie, director of Project 21, a media outlet that supplies speakers around the country, challenged everyone to "believe we are all Americans - not a hyphenation."


Massie said he hoped Blacks could break free of "imprisonment on an ideological plantation."


Massie noted that Project 21 had its roots in the 1992 Los Angeles riots – when he and others were disturbed by Jackson, et. al., intimating that the riots had a "just reason."


"The left wing liberal media establishment – they have the voice and impact the eardrums of our people – more than we. We must demand equal time," Massie said.



Niger Innis, son of Roy Innis and the national spokesman for CORE, expressed the sentiment that "to look forward we must look back. Booker T. had a brilliant plan."


He conceded, however, that the Jackson brand of left wing leadership "still has impact and control."


Niger Innis also warned that the "clear and present danger to the black community" was something he calls the "entertainment/industrial complex," a phenomenon that he suggests accounts for the unhappy perception in inner city communities that "cops are bad and criminals chic."
[I sure hope this is another nail in the jesse jackson,s political coffins!jco]